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Technology · ERP implementation · Gemstones · Jaipur

Four months from paper to live. Audit passed the same month.

SK Gems manufactures gemstones for global jewellery brands, and those brands audit their suppliers. With stock and production run on paper, passing that audit was at risk.
Client SK GemsEngaged Jun – Oct 2026Status Live, brand system audit passedScope Process standardisation, ERP build, barcode hardware, training, audit
Scoping to go-live4 monthsJune to October 2026, including process standardisation before any build began.
Brand system auditPassedOctober 2026, with every brand requirement met. Led by Debox.
TraceabilityInvoice → stoneEvery bag traced to its purchase invoice; every finished stone to its source SKU.
01

The short version

SK Gems is a gemstone manufacturer in Jaipur. It buys stones, works them through assortment, preshaping, calibration, drilling, drill polishing and polishing, and supplies finished stones to global jewellery brands.

Those brands audit their suppliers. They want to know where each stone came from, what was done to it, and that stock in the system matches stock on the shelf. At SK Gems all of that lived on paper and in spreadsheets, which put brand orders at risk.

From June 2026 we scoped the work, standardised how the factory operated, and built an ERP on Zoho Creator covering sales orders, inventory, work orders and dispatch. We set up barcode labels, printers and scanners, tested every flow and trained the team. The system went live in October 2026. That same month we led the brand system audit, and SK Gems passed with every requirement met.

02

Brands want proof. Paper could not give it.

In the gemstone trade the brands set the rules. A supplier that cannot show where its stones came from, how they were worked and what was done to them is a supplier the brand cannot keep.

01
Brand audits. Brands audit for traceability, stock control and process discipline. Paper and spreadsheets could not show a clean trail from purchase to dispatch, and a failed audit can mean lost business.
02
Room to grow. Every new order added more stones, more bags and more paperwork. Growth on paper meant more people chasing records, not more output.
03
Visibility. Management could not see how much stock sat at each stage, what an order would yield, or how each person was performing. Decisions rested on memory.

Underneath all three was one gap. Every stone had a history; nobody could read it.

Give every stone a history, and every brand a reason to buy.

03

From paper to one system in four months

01
Scoping. Mapped how SK Gems actually worked, from buying to dispatch, and agreed exactly what the system had to do — including what the brands would audit.
02
Process standardisation. With the team, standardised how stones are received, bagged, issued to production, moved between stages and dispatched, before any of it was built.
03
Inventory method. Bag-level tracking with a running ledger for every bag, so stock is counted the way it is physically held.
04
Build on Zoho Creator. Four modules — sales orders, inventory, work orders and dispatch.
05
Hardware. Barcode labels, label printers and scanners, so every bag is scanned rather than written down.
06
Testing. Every flow tested on real transactions, every issue logged by severity and priority, retested until signed off.
07
Training and adoption. Each user trained on their part of the process, with us there through the first weeks of live use.
08
System audit. We led the brand audit in October 2026, walking the auditors through the system and the trail behind every stone.

Steps one to three are why the build was right first time. Software built on an unclear process only records the confusion faster.

04

One system, built around the stone

Gemstone manufacturing has needs of its own. Stones are bought by weight, sold by weight or by piece, lose weight at every stage, and move in bags rather than boxes. Commercial goods move in larger lots priced by the carat; precision goods are cut to calibrated sizes and counted by the piece. Some carry certifications, and every treatment has to be recorded and disclosed.

Traceability

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Incoming stones weighed and counted against the supplier’s invoice before they enter stock.
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Every bag carries its full history: the invoice it arrived on, and every stage and person it has passed through.
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Every finished stone traced to the source SKU it was cut from, with percentage utilisation recorded at each stage.
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Bags split and merge under set rules, so history and weight always carry across correctly.
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Country of origin and supplier declarations travel with the stone, for brands asking about responsible sourcing.
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Photos stay with the bag and stone record, ready for brand approvals and audits.

Production

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Stage-wise entry by the person doing the work, across all six stages.
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Issued weight reconciled against received weight at every stage. A mismatch is flagged and the stock is blocked from moving on until it is resolved.
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Breakage, rejection and re-cuts logged with their weight and cost.
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Output and yield recorded per person, giving factual input for people decisions.
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Job work tracked out to outside workers and back.
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Quantities and values worked in pieces or carats at any point — something most standard ERPs handle poorly.

Sales, stock and control

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Commercial and precision flows side by side, each with the right unit and level of detail.
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Stones graded, with grade-wise pricing. Stock reserved against a customer order so it is never sold twice.
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Treatments and certifications attached to the stone. Memo sales and returns tracked until sold or returned.
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Customer-specific SKUs and prices mapped to internal SKUs. Multi-currency sales with packing lists and invoices generated from the system.
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Masters for material, colour, shape, cut and treatment built to international gemmological conventions.
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Role-based access, stage-wise stock dashboard, consistent valuation, scanner-based stock-takes and stock ageing.

Every stone has a story. Now every stone can tell it.

05

Making technology fit the trade

Standard ERPs think in units, not carats. Most off-the-shelf systems assume a fixed unit of measure. A gemstone business needs to switch between pieces and carats, and to account for weight lost at every stage. We built that logic into the system itself, available wherever an order, a bag or a stage needed it.

From paper to screens on the shop floor. The people cutting and polishing had always recorded work on paper, if at all. We designed stage-wise entry around each user’s own step, kept every screen to what that person needed, and backed it with barcode scanning, so recording work took less effort than writing it down.

An audit date that would not move. The brand audit was set for October, the same month as go-live. We tested every flow against what the auditors would ask for, then led the audit ourselves so the team could show the trail behind any stone with confidence.

Make the right way the easy way, and people use it.

06

Audit passed, business protected

MeasureResultBasis
Brand system auditpassedOctober 2026, all requirements met. Led by Debox.
Scoping to go-live4 monthsJune to October 2026.
Traceabilityinvoice → stoneFull history on every bag; every finished stone linked to its source SKU.
Yield visibilityevery stagePercentage utilisation from source SKU to finished stone.
Modules live4Sales orders, inventory, work orders and dispatch, on Zoho Creator.
Production stages tracked6Assortment, preshaping, calibration, drilling, drill polishing, polishing.
Recordsone systemFrom paper and spreadsheets, with barcode labels and scanning on every bag.

How to read this

The audit is the headline because it was the reason. The system was built so SK Gems could keep and win brand business. Passing the audit in the month of go-live is the clearest proof that it does.

This is a coverage result, not a performance one. We can tell you what was built, in what time, and that the audit was passed. Yields, cost per piece and where material is lost become measurable once the system has a year of data behind it.

Who did what. We scoped, built, tested and set up the system, trained the team and led the audit. SK Gems’ team standardised their way of working with us and now run every order through it.

07

From compliance to growth

The system is live at SK Gems’ Jaipur factory, every brand requirement from the audit is met, and the team runs sales, stock, production and dispatch through it.

Next: less typing, more thinking. The next phase uses AI and automation to remove manual entry points — creating sales orders and packing lists from a simple prompt, and checking every combination of attributes when a new SKU is created, so an incorrect SKU never enters the system.

Next: data that drives decisions. With clean data from every stage, the focus moves to using it: yields by stage, cost per piece and per carat, and where time and material are lost.

Audit-ready today. Data-driven tomorrow.

08

What we now build in from day one

Start from the audit, work backwards. In this trade the brand audit defines what the system must prove. Scoping now begins with what the auditor will ask for, and every flow is tested against it.

Track stock the way it is held. Gemstones live in bags, so the system tracks bags, with a ledger behind each one. Matching the physical world is what makes the numbers trustworthy.

Fit the system to the trade. Pieces and carats, commercial and precision, treatments and certifications — gemstone logic is built in from the start rather than bolted on later.

If your customers audit you

Scope the system from the audit backwards. What the auditor will ask for is the clearest specification you will ever be handed, and it is free — most businesses write requirements from how they work today and discover the gap during the audit itself.

And track stock the way you physically hold it. If material moves in bags, the system counts bags. Every translation between how stock is held and how it is recorded is a place the two can drift apart.

Measurement note. Scope, timeline, modules and production stages are from our own project records. The brand system audit was conducted by the client’s customer in October 2026 and led on SK Gems’ side by Debox; the outcome is as recorded by that audit. This page reports what was built and delivered rather than operating performance, which becomes measurable once the system has a full year of data behind it.