Success Stories: Pandora Jewelry | Gross Mendelsohn’s Technology Solutions Group

“Chris Haiss, Tony Marinaro, Bill Walter and Jeremy Weisinger are always willing to roll up their sleeves and dive into problems. They see things through and give solid technology and business advice along the way. Their willingness to get really involved in our business, which is not a trait of every consultant out there, is what keeps us a happy customer."

Former Director of IT
PANDORA Jewelry

About PANDORA Jewelry

About

PANDORA Jewelry is one of the world's favorite jewelry brands.

Size

$2.88 billion in 2016 sales; employs more than 21,500 people worldwide.

Mission

As one of the best known jewelry brands in the world, PANDORA's vision is to become the world’s most loved.

Industry

Manufacturing and Distribution

The Challenge

As one of the world’s largest jewelry brands, you can imagine the logistics of getting product out the door and into the hands of consumers around the globe.

Like many successful companies, PANDORA faced challenges with fulfillment and shipping due to the growing popularity of its product. Just as PANDORA’s market share grew, so did their number of employees. This growth really pushed the limits of the company’s ERP system. That growth left them with an incredibly important question: Which ERP system could meet PANDORA’s needs and grow with them?

On the IT infrastructure side of the table, PANDORA wanted to increase security by minimizing threats from both inside and outside the organization. In addition, when PANDORA opened an office in Panama City, they needed to extend the full functionality of their network security protocol to the new office.

How We Helped

When PANDORA first hired Gross Mendelsohn’s Technology Solutions Group in 2005, the company used Sage 100 Standard, as its ERP system. To help address PANDORA’s shipping challenges, our team integrated the company’s shipping system with Sage 100 Standard.

Due to PANDORA’s explosive growth, and the increasing number of ERP users, they outgrew Sage 100 Standard and we helped them upgrade to Sage 100 Advanced. Eventually, PANDORA pushed Sage 100 Advanced to the hilt and the sales module crashed on a nearly weekly basis.

It was time to reevaluate PANDORA’s ERP system. We helped them review several Microsoft products, one of which was Microsoft Dynamics GP. PANDORA chose to implement Microsoft Dynamics GP because it had more out-of-the-box functionality than other products, yet could still be customized when needed.

Our Dynamics GP experts got to work, first by doing some thorough planning, then by implementing PANDORA’s new ERP system and creating some customizations to automate companywide processes.

On the security front, our team of IT experts designed a network infrastructure in layers, set up network access control, tightened administrative rights and created centralized administrative access for increased security. When PANDORA opened a new office in Panama City, just one of PANDORA AMERICA’s emerging markets, our team replicated these security measures for that new location.

Members of Gross Mendelsohn’s Technology Solutions Group regularly collaborate with PANDORA’s internal IT department for high-level planning for growth and efficiency enhancements.

The Result

Armed with a thorough knowledge of PANDORA’s business processes, our team customized Dynamics GP to automate various sales, warehouse and shipping processes.

These customizations gave PANDORA’s warehouse pickers better information so they could quickly see which products had to be shipped next based on pre-defined customer preferences. This allowed pickers to work more efficiently, which in turn increased product turnover and fulfillment without increasing the number of warehouse workers. With more product being shipped daily with the same amount of effort as before, PANDORA saw an increase in revenue.

Gross Mendelsohn also customized integration points between PANDORA’s website, ERP system, warehouse management system, credit card processing and shipping, which streamlined the company’s order to cash chain. This streamlining was essential in order to fulfill the level of sales being generated by PANDORA’s marketing and sales teams.

PANDORA chose to implement Dynamics GP as its ERP system because of how flexible and customizable it is. Building PANDORA’s “rules” and processes into the ERP system through various customizations made their employees’ lives easier. Through automation, employees no longer had to memorize or keep notes on detailed step-by-step processes. The ERP system took control over these processes, allowing employees to focus on fulfillment and company growth.

Because of the security measures that have been put into place, PANDORA’s computer network and data is highly protected. Their network configuration gives them the ability to monitor, log and react to threats from inside and outside the network. Moreover, the process that we followed in replicating all of those security measures in PANDORA’s Panama City location gives them a roadmap to follow when opening new offices.

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PANDORA Jewelry

Large-scale implementation of Microsoft Dynamics GP, along with the design of customized business processes, helped this jewelry manufacturer streamline operations.

Former Director of ITPANDORA Jewelry