Case Study

From Scattered Emails to a Unified Design Pipeline

Case Study

From Scattered Emails to a Unified Design Pipeline

How Dew Diamonds replaced manual tracking, email approvals, and disconnected spreadsheets with a single platform that manages every stage of their jewelry design workflow, giving management real-time visibility and customers a premium digital experience.

About Project

Dew Diamonds: Design Pipeline Digitization

The Engagement: Jobin & Jismi designed and delivered a purpose-built digital platform, deeply connected to Dew Diamonds' existing Oracle NetSuite ERP, that brings every stage of their design pipeline into one place. From the first customer brief to the final approved design ready for manufacturing, every assignment, approval, timeline, and customer interaction is now managed, tracked, and reported within a single system, with each team member seeing only the work relevant to their role.

Industries

Jewellery Manufacturing

Micro Verticals

Fine Diamond Jewelry Manufacturing, B2B Jewelry Design & Production

Location

India

Service

Web Application

Executive Overview

Dew Diamonds is a fine diamond jewelry manufacturer whose creations pass through a rigorous multi-stage design journey before a single piece reaches production. Every design begins as a customer brief and travels through hand sketching, CAD modeling, editing, photorealistic rendering, and 3D print preparation, each handled by a different specialist team. For years, managing this journey meant a constant flow of emails, WhatsApp messages, and manually updated spreadsheets. Status updates required interrupting designers. Approvals happened verbally. There was no reliable way to know, at any given moment, where a particular design stood.

Design workflow stages fully managed in one platform

Specialist roles with tailored, personalized dashboards

100%

Design data flowing automatically into NetSuite, no manual ERP entry

External tools needed, every workflow in one place

The Business Challenge

Dew Diamonds runs a studio where art and precision manufacturing intersect. The quality of each piece depends not just on the craftsmanship of individual designers, but on the handoffs between them, the clarity of the brief passed from the sales team to the sketcher, the feedback from the sketcher to the CAD designer, the approval that moves a render into production. When those handoffs happen over email and WhatsApp, critical details get buried, decisions go undocumented, and managers are left flying blind.

No Single View of What Was Happening in the Studio

With each design stage managed separately, sketches in one folder, CAD files in another, renders shared over email, there was no way for management to see the current state of all active jobs at once. Getting a status update meant tracking down the responsible designer and asking them directly, interrupting productive work just to answer a question that should have been answerable instantly.

Approvals Left No Paper Trail

When a sketch was approved for CAD, or a render rejected for revision, the decision happened over a message or in conversation, and then it was gone. There was no record of who approved what, when, or why something was sent back. Rejected designs were resubmitted without a documented reason, which meant the same mistakes recurred because feedback wasn't captured anywhere permanent.

No Visibility Into Designer Performance

How many designs had a particular designer completed this month? How many were approved on the first submission versus rejected and reworked? Were promise dates being met? Management had no answers to any of these questions. Performance conversations were based on impression rather than data, and there was no way to identify bottlenecks or celebrate genuine high performers.

Customer Presentations Felt Informal and Fragile

Sharing design options with customers meant emailing photo attachments or sending images over WhatsApp. There was no professional, curated experience, just files in a thread. And once a photo was sent, there was no way to know if the customer had seen it, which designs they preferred, or how their feedback connected back to the design record. For a luxury jewelry brand, the client experience at this stage fell far short of what the product deserved.

The ERP Had No Visibility Into Studio Operations

Oracle NetSuite managed Dew Diamonds' financials and inventory effectively. But the rich operational data being generated in the studio, who designed what, which materials were needed, how long each stage took, what the customer had approved, never made it into the ERP. This broke the link between the creative process and the business data needed for accurate job costing, material planning, and client reporting.

The Solution: One Platform for the Entire Design Journey

Jobin & Jismi built Dew Diamonds a purpose-designed digital operations platform, not a generic project management tool adapted for jewelry, but a system built specifically around how a fine jewelry design studio actually works. Every workflow stage, every role, every approval, and every customer interaction was designed from the ground up for this industry.

A Connected Seven-Stage Design Pipeline

The platform follows the natural flow of Dew Diamonds' creative process, with each stage formally tracked and linked to the one before it:

1. Customer Brief & Design Concept

The process begins with a structured brief capturing everything the sales team knows about the customer's requirements, the occasion, the metal and stone preferences, the budget range, the target demographic, the priority level. This brief becomes the anchor for every downstream stage, so every designer working on the job knows exactly what the customer wants.

2. Sketch

A sketcher is assigned to the brief. The platform records the brief date, the promised delivery date, and the actual completion date. The required number of sketches and how many were selected are tracked. When a sketch is submitted, it goes through a formal approval, and if it's rejected, the reason is documented and stored alongside the sketch forever.

3. CAD Design

Approved sketches are passed to a CAD designer with the original brief attached. Delivery timelines, required outputs, and actual completion times are all tracked. The same formal approval workflow applies, every CAD submission is either approved or rejected with a documented reason, creating a clear record of each design's evolution.

4. CAD Editing & Revision

Post-CAD refinements and adjustments are handled as a distinct stage with their own assignment, timeline, and approval gate. This separates revision work from original design work, making it possible to understand how many iteration cycles a design typically requires, and where time is being spent.

5. 3D Render

Render artists are assigned per design, with start and completion dates tracked against promised delivery. The photorealistic images produced at this stage are stored in the platform and automatically linked to the customer's portal, so they're ready to share the moment they're approved.

6. CAM Print Preparation

Before a design moves into casting, the 3D print preparation stage is tracked, who is handling it, when it starts, when it's completed, and whether the print has been produced. This stage links directly to the manufacturing record, closing the loop between the design studio and the production floor.

7. Design Master: The Company Design Library

Approved, production-ready designs graduate into the Design Master: Dew Diamonds' permanent, searchable library of every design they've ever produced. Filterable by category, metal type, stone type, weight range, occasion, and more, it becomes a growing asset that the sales team can draw from for future customer briefs, with complete material and specification records flowing automatically into NetSuite.

Every Team Member Sees Their Work, Not Everyone Else's

When a CAD designer logs in, they see their CAD assignments. When a sales representative logs in, they see their customers and active concepts. When a manager logs in, they see everything. Each role has a personalized navigation and filtered view that shows only what's relevant to them, which means less noise, faster onboarding, and no risk of someone inadvertently editing work that isn't theirs.

A Professional Customer Design Portal

Rather than attaching photos to emails, sales representatives curate digital design albums within the platform and share them with customers through a private, branded portal, accessible via a secure link, with no login required from the customer. Designs are presented professionally, grouped by album, and filterable by date. For sharing with external buyers or agents, the platform generates a link that automatically expires, ensuring designs are never left accidentally accessible online.

Real-Time Studio Visibility for Management

The platform's management dashboard gives leadership a live view of every active design job across all seven stages, filterable by designer, customer, department, concept, and date range. At a glance, a manager can see which designs are overdue, which designers are at capacity, and where jobs are getting stuck. No more interrupting the studio floor to find out what's happening.

Designer Performance Reporting

For the first time, Dew Diamonds has data on how their studio actually performs: how many jobs each designer handled, how many sketches or renders were selected versus rejected, how estimated times compare to actual times, and how consistently each team member meets their promised delivery dates. This turns performance conversations from guesswork into evidence-based discussions.

Customer Feedback, Captured and Linked

When a customer reviews a design and provides feedback, on metal color, weight expectations, style adjustments, that feedback is recorded in the platform against the specific design and customer record. Sales representatives can track all feedback from a customer in one place, and management can report on trends across the client base. Nothing falls through the cracks between a WhatsApp message and the next design brief.

After-Sales Repair Tracking

Repair jobs are managed within the same platform, with the same rigor as new designs. Each repair request is logged against the original piece, assigned to a team member, tracked with estimated and actual time, and documented with before-and-after images. For the first time, the cost and capacity impact of repair work is visible alongside new design production.

Everything Flows into NetSuite, Automatically

Every record created in the platform, every design concept, every assignment, every approved design, every material specification, is linked to the corresponding NetSuite record and kept in sync automatically. The ERP no longer has a blind spot where the studio used to be. Job costing is accurate. Material planning has real data. Financial reporting reflects the true state of the business.

How We Delivered It

Phase	What We Focused On	What Was Delivered
Phase 1 Discovery	Mapping Dew Diamonds' existing workflows, roles, and NetSuite data structure	Complete workflow blueprint, role-permission plan, and NetSuite integration design
Phase 2 Foundation	Core platform build: all data structures, user roles, and navigation	Working platform with all master data collections, role-gated interfaces, and user management
Phase 3 Pipeline Workflows	All seven design stages with assignment, image management, and approval flows	Sketch, CAD, CAD Edit, Render, and CAM Print modules; time tracking; rejection documentation
Phase 4 Design Bank & Customer Portal	Design library, customer-facing portal, album management, and secure sharing	Filterable design bank; secure customer portal; expiring share links; customer feedback module
Phase 5 Reporting & Analytics	WIP dashboard, designer performance reports, delivery reports, feedback reports	Live management dashboards; per-designer KPI reports; customer feedback analytics; design delivery tracking

Business Impact

The platform changed the way Dew Diamonds manages its studio, not by changing the creative process, but by giving it a structure that hadn't existed before.

Area	Before	After
Studio visibility	Managers had to ask designers directly for status updates, interrupting work	Live WIP dashboard shows every active job across all stages, filterable by designer, customer, or date, instantly, without asking anyone
Approval documentation	Approvals and rejections happened verbally or over messaging apps with no record kept	Every approval, and rejection is logged with a reason, creating a permanent audit trail for every design decision
Rework and repeated errors	Rejected designs were resubmitted without documented feedback, designers repeated the same mistakes	Rejection notes travel with the design, so every resubmission addresses the documented feedback
Designer accountability	No data; performance reviews relied on memory and subjective impression	Per-designer reports: jobs handled, selection rates, delivery punctuality, actual vs. estimated times, conversations grounded in facts
Client experience	Design options shared over email attachments and WhatsApp, informal, untracked, insecure	Branded, private customer portal with curated design albums; professional presentation that matches the quality of the product
ERP completeness	NetSuite had financial data only; no studio operations data entered manually because it was too time-consuming	Every design, assignment, material, and approval flow into NetSuite automatically, accurate costing and traceability without any manual entry
Delivery promises	Promise dates existed only in the designer's head or in an email thread; no system-wide visibility	Promise dates and brief dates tracked per stage; overdue jobs surface automatically in the WIP dashboard before they become customer-visible
Repair operations	Repair jobs tracked informally; no idea of time spent, or cost impact	Repair module captures time, assignments, and images; repair costs and capacity are measurable for the first time

The Compounding Value: Beyond immediate operational gains, the Design Master, a growing library of every approved design Dew Diamonds has ever produced, becomes more valuable with every new piece added. Sales teams can instantly search past designs when briefing new customer requests. The design history becomes a competitive asset that no competitor starting fresh can replicate.

Challenges We Navigated

The Design Process Isn't Linear and the Platform Had to Reflect That
It might seem natural to build a pipeline where each stage must be completed before the next begins. But jewelry design doesn't work that way. A sketch might be approved and handed to CAD while a parallel concept is still in early sketching. A repair job needs no sketch at all. Some designs skip straight from sketch to final approval. Building a rigid sequential system would have forced the studio to change the way it works, which was never the goal.
How We Solved It:
Each stage was built as an independent module linked to the central design concept, rather than as a locked step in a fixed sequence. Any stage can be initiated, skipped, or run in parallel. The management dashboard pulls together the full picture without enforcing an artificial order. The result is a system that fits how Dew Diamonds actually works, not how a software diagram suggests they should.
Getting Customer Access Right, Professional but Frictionless
Dew Diamonds' B2B customers are busy buyers and retail partners who visit the portal occasionally when a sales representative shares new designs. Asking them to create and remember login credentials for something they use intermittently would have created friction and support overhead. But making designs freely accessible to anyone with the link was out of the question for a luxury brand sharing unpublished collections.
How We Solved It:
The customer portal uses secure, unique links that are specific to each customer but require no password. For ad-hoc sharing, sending a specific album to an external buyer or agent, the platform generates an expiring link that automatically stops working after a set period. Customers get immediate, frictionless access to their designs. The brand retains complete control over what is accessible, to whom, and for how long.
Master Data Complexity Specific to Diamond Jewelry
Jewelry manufacturing involves an unusually wide range of interconnected master data: metal types, metal colors, stone quality grades, setting types, carat weights, stone sizes, shape classifications, category hierarchies, collection groupings, brand lines, style families, and occasion types, all of which affect how a design is described, searched, and costed. Getting this master data structured correctly, and keeping it in sync with NetSuite, required careful upfront design.
How We Solved It:
Each master data type was built as a standalone, independently maintainable lookup, mirroring the corresponding list in NetSuite and syncing automatically. This means that when the product team adds a new metal color or quality grade in NetSuite, it becomes immediately available in the web platform without any development work. The design bank's advanced filtering, by category, weight, metal, stone shape, and more, works cleanly because the underlying data structure was designed with search in mind from the beginning.

Common Questions

Is this platform only for diamond jewelry, or can it work for other types of fine jewelry?
The core workflow, including concept brief, sketch, CAD, render, CAM print, design library, applies to virtually any fine jewelry type. The diamond-specific specifications (stone quality grades, carat weight, setting types) are configurable lookup lists, not hardcoded logic. These can be adjusted or replaced with the relevant attributes for coloured gemstones, pearls, enamel work, or any other specialty. The platform is the IP; the configuration adapts to the product.
Can this platform work for jewelry manufacturers who don't currently use NetSuite?
Yes. The workflow management platform, including the design pipeline, approvals, customer portal, WIP dashboard, functions independently of the ERP connection. The NetSuite integration is additive: it means data flows automatically into NetSuite for clients who already use it, but the platform delivers full operational value on its own. For manufacturers considering a move to NetSuite, this platform can also serve as a natural on-ramp, establishing clean data and process discipline before the ERP is introduced.

What This Project Taught Us

Fit the system to the workflow, not the other way around. The biggest risk in digitizing a creative process is imposing a structure that looks logical on paper but doesn't match how skilled people actually work. The most important design decision on this project was building a flexible, hub-and-spoke workflow rather than a rigid pipeline, because that's what the studio needed.
Role-specific views are a productivity feature, not just a security measure. When a render artist logs in and sees only render jobs, they get straight to work. When a sales representative logs in and sees customer briefs and albums, they don't wade through production data that has nothing to do with them. Designing for role clarity made the platform significantly more usable than a one-size-fits-all interface would have been.
Time tracking data becomes more valuable over time, not less. The estimated vs. actual time fields built into every design stage feel like a small feature at go-live. But after six months of data, they tell a story, which categories take longest, which designers consistently underestimate, where promise dates are routinely missed. The compounding value of operational data is worth building for from day one.
The design library is a growing competitive asset. Every approved design that enters the Design Master makes the platform more valuable for the sales team on their next brief. A structured, searchable archive of past designs is something a competitor using WhatsApp folders and email attachments simply cannot replicate.

Services That Powered This Project

This engagement drew on Jobin & Jismi's expertise across NetSuite implementation, custom development, and manufacturing operations. Explore the services behind this work:

NetSuite Custom Development
NetSuite Implementation
NetSuite Integration Services
Manufacturing ERP Solutions
Custom Web Application Development
NetSuite Consulting

Is Your Jewelry Studio Still Running on Email and Spreadsheets?

If you recognize Dew Diamonds' challenges in your own business, scattered approvals, invisible WIP, informal client presentations, Jobin & Jismi can deploy and configure this platform for your studio or design a bespoke solution around your specific workflow. Let's have a conversation.

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About Jobin & Jismi

Jobin & Jismi is an Oracle NetSuite implementation partner and custom software development firm that specializes in building industry-specific digital operations platforms for manufacturing, distribution, and professional services companies. We bridge the gap between what an ERP does natively and what a business actually needs at the operational level, delivering purpose-built systems that make complex workflows manageable, visible, and scalable.

www.jobinandjismi.com | contactus@jobinandjismi.com

Oracle NetSuite Partner Jewelry Manufacturing ERP Custom Development Design Workflow Automation NetSuite Integration

Note on Metrics: The workflow capabilities, design stages, and system features described in this case study are verified against the delivered platform. Where before/after comparisons describe operational improvements, these reflect the capabilities introduced by the system rather than formally measured post-implementation benchmarks. Jobin & Jismi is committed to honest, verifiable case study content.

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