Many companies' market practices, as well as how many customers shop, have changed dramatically as a result of technological advancements. In the furniture industry, technological developments have resulted in a major increase in the number of active online eCommerce shops as well as overall growth.
The furniture industry, which has traditionally been associated with handcrafted and manufacturing methods, has recently begun to embrace new technologies. However, as technology increasingly reshapes many facets of modern society, furniture manufacturers must keep up with consumers' technological demands, as well as their shifting tastes and behaviors.
Every link in the manufacturing value chain will be transformed by digital manufacturing technology, including research and development, supply chain, and factory operations, as well as marketing, sales, and service. Yet, while manufacturing generates more data than any other sector of the economy, few companies are harnessing the power of Industry 4.0, AI, ML, etc.
Why We Need End-to-end Solutions For Furniture Solutions?
Even as the cost of raw materials, electricity, and transportation rise, the furniture and fixtures industry continues to outperform the economy. Manufacturers are reengineering their core business processes, from sales to planning and development to warehousing, distribution, and customer care, in order to improve profit margins.
Brainvire has the technology you need to take care of your business in this ever-changing global marketplace.
- Improve cost control, lean methodologies, and main cost factor management to reduce waste.
- With a rules-based Product Configurator that ensures rapid, accurate configuration, you can streamline order processing while improving accuracy.
- To achieve the best outcomes, strengthen coordination in the supply chain.
- Increase bottom-line sales by gaining a better understanding of front-office, warehouse, and manufacturing plant activities.
- Improve preparation and scheduling to keep costs under control.
- With powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) features, you can improve customer contact.
Technologies That Drive Revenue In The Furniture Industry
Technology and the internet have accelerated the pace of change in recent years, making it much more difficult to assimilate and obey. Be it in terms of design, manufacturing, or even selling goods, furniture follows this pattern.
3D Visualization & Product Digitalization
The transition from conventional analog marketing to digital marketing is not without its challenges. Many would have thought it unlikely a few years ago, but today's advances in product digitalization have enabled many furniture brands to undergo a complete digital transformation.
Product digitalization is a significant shift, but it is well worth it because it provides you with data files that can be easily shared across sales, production, and business partners across various channels and media types.
The end result is a 3D model that can be used in a variety of marketing assets, such as social media videos or styled environments. It's also simple to change the surface, color, or texture. Much as you will be able to do with your furniture.
ImageScripting
ImageScripting technology can be used to create photorealistic images of each furniture item, allowing the item to be showcased in breathtaking detail online. Customers can zoom in and out without losing consistency or transparency, rotate images at any angle, and see each piece in a variety of colors and designs while viewing the items online.
Portions of the image can even be dissolved in order to reveal hidden components and features. ImageScripting is more than just a cost-effective alternative to conventional 360° product photography; it's only possible thanks to today's advanced computer generation technology, making it an exciting and important phase in your digital transformation.
Product configurators
The ability to provide excellent customer service is a vital component of your current and potential success. You must take the next step to retain your advantage and grab a greater share of the target market in an oversaturated market where rivals are already well on their way to their own digital transformations. Product configuration tools offer you a way to both provide the customer with a positive experience and also stand out from your competitors.
You can display your entire catalog of goods, styles, colors, and textures in a neat, enjoyable, and engaging way with this simple customizer app. Customers can engage with your products in this way, which encourages them to continue on their consumer journey and eventually leads them to select their favorite product and complete their purchase.
WebAR
Augmented reality sounds like it belongs in a science fiction film set many years, if not decades, in the future. But the fact is that it exists today and can assist you in achieving your objectives in a truly remarkable manner. This advanced method of visual communication will assist you in meeting and exceeding customer standards, resulting in increased sales and development for the furniture industry.
WebAR will help you solve two crucial challenges in the furniture industry: bringing your products to market on time and effectively communicating the value and usefulness of a difficult and costly product in B2B.
BIM objects
When you invest in furniture technology trends, you will reap a slew of benefits that would have been difficult to understand a decade ago. Take, for example, BIM (building information modeling). This cutting-edge technology is specifically designed to help you complete projects in less time, with less or no defects, and at a lower cost.
BIM allows you to streamline your projects by using data files that have been built with unique parameters to significantly enhance and expand your modeling projects. Building these models from the ground up allows for the creation of intuitive objects — intelligent objects that allow for precise calculations with minimal effort and greater project versatility.
CAD packages
CAD was once a technology reserved for architects and other professionals who needed to create uninteresting and highly technical digital models. However, CAD has fully merged with the digital world and can now be used to create incredibly innovative and immersive 3D visualizations of a wide range of items.
The advantages and possibilities of CAD models are virtually limitless. A single CAD model gives you a single example that you can use however you want. However, investing in CAD packages would really open the doors to increasing sales and improving digital images for the customers. Then you’ll have access to illustrations of potentially all of your products that can be placed together in different environments, forming a more complete picture.
Need for ERP software in Furniture Industry
Dimensions, colors, finishes, fabrics, and product options abound in furniture. These factors are increasing the pressure on information systems to provide the reliability and flexibility that the furniture industry requires.
It is critical to keep track of all used and unused raw materials, how many goods are developed and sold, consumer and vendor information, the total amount spent and received, and so on in order to effectively manage resources. You risk manufacturing errors, late deliveries, and out-of-control costs if you don't have solid control over your operational and financial processes. Whether you’re selling high-end custom chairs or cabinet drawer pulls – spreadsheets can only take you so far.
Brainvire recommends Odoo ERP Solution for the Furniture Industry. It ensures accurate sales quotes, product pricing, and promotions by streamlining the order fulfillment process associated with complex, customer-specified items. Manufacturers may use our manufacturing system to meet consumer delivery deadlines, bills of materials and routing, inventory visibility, and finished product costs.
It eliminates production bottlenecks in the company and streamlines production to accelerate delivery with proper advanced planning. When assessing an effective promise date, all available inventory, delivery schedules, product lead times, and manufacturing capability are taken into account.
Salient Features to Look Out For
Integrated CRM Software
Our solution is completely integrated with comprehensive and centralized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to link sales, support, field services, and installed base tracking facilities.
Furniture Inventory Software
You deal with a lot of inventory as a furniture fabricator (especially if you mass produce), and you need to have enough on hand to deliver when goods are purchased. Stock information, such as quantity, characteristics, and locations, should be readily accessible at all times.
You will use this data to make informed decisions about how much inventory to order and how to handle your suppliers. If you sell via an eCommerce site, integrating the two will help you in determining turnaround time with incredible precision. You can find Magento development services to build an effective online store.
Multiple Warehouse Management
Data for several warehouses can be accessed from a centralized system providing a clear image of overall warehouse inventory and operational processes to management. It improves performance and precision while also streamlining inventory and order fulfillment.
Purchase Management
Purchase orders can be streamlined, which reduces the operating system's overall effort and expense. The system effectively helps to monitor vendor performance.
Supply Chain Management
In order to find the best prices, many furniture companies import products from a number of countries or locations. This is something that an ERP system with supply chain management will help you with. It has the ability to run several warehouses in different locations. That eliminates the need to cross-check locations on multiple Excel spreadsheets.
Quality Control
Your furniture manufacturing ERP software can assist you in performing quality checks to ensure that your customers receive high-quality goods. You may set them up such that they must be checked at specific points during the manufacturing process or before being delivered. The timing of these tests will also assist you in identifying where problems exist, which will aid in the long-term resolution of issues.
Software Integration (CAD, Nesting software, etc.)
In general, software integration with ERP saves time because workers don't have to enter the same data twice in two different applications, and it also eliminates mistakes because entering the same data once rather than several times reduces the chances of making a mistake.
With respect to furniture manufacturing, many companies use tools such as CAD software and nesting software for design and production. Integration of these tools can make your production process more seamless.
eCommerce Integration
Integrating your eCommerce store with your ERP system allows you to automatically transfer inventory and sales information, and provides other benefits as well.
Catalog Management
Product catalog data is the omnichannel connection between your brand, your customers, and the products you sell. On retail websites, an ERP allows brands to become more available to home furnishings shoppers. By instantly linking your website with updated items from the brands you carry, catalog management software will save retailers thousands of dollars and hours per month in retail store development.
Shop Floor Management
You can automatically capture mundane tasks on your shop floor with the Job Cards, Operations, and Workstations features. The real-time status of job work, the position of each workstation, employee tasks, and the status and next steps of each work order are all shown on a single screen.
Subcontracting
Outsourcing is important in the furniture industry. Some work, such as polishing and varnishing, must be outsourced. Subcontracting allows you to conveniently monitor all activities when supplying raw materials to a third-party distributor or supplier.
Capacity Planning
Optimize your workstations for open production orders depending on the resources available. Develop a capacity plan to identify and remove bottlenecks on the shop floor. You can also create and manage planning schedules for a specific time span (30 days, 45 days, etc).
Benefits of an ERP Solution for Furniture Businesses
One Centralized Platform
Although this is a general benefit of ERP for any business, it is especially beneficial to furniture manufacturers. Your entire organization will be linked by an ERP system, which will enhance communication and production processes. It will save you time and energy by eliminating the need to navigate and move between multiple apps. Finally, data can be more easily moved from one department to another.
Reduces Production Costs
Business processes are streamlined with Rexo ERP implementation, resulting in improved accuracy and reduced waste, as well as naturally optimized money flows. Users should keep a close eye on product quality and react quickly when issues arise.
Higher Customer Satisfaction
ERP systems assist in achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction by offering a forum for quicker data collection, saving client histories, and automatically answering all of their questions.
Effective Resource Planning
Furniture manufacturing necessitates obtaining vast amounts of different products while also working with numerous vendors. You can, however, track orders and relationships with suppliers more efficiently and escape administrative hell by using a single application system.
Total Control Over Your Production Cycle
With our Production Analytics Report, an aggregated view of production status, you can keep an eye on your furniture manufacturing company and ensure orders are fulfilled. It comes with a number of reports to assist you in analyzing manufacturing load and making informed decisions.
As you can see, the furniture industry profits greatly from ERP. It provides you with insight into your business and aids in the management of your manufacturing, inventory, and supply chain processes. Many solutions also allow you to integrate with other applications you might be using, allowing you to stay completely connected.
How the Furniture Trade is moving into the Digital Age?
The furniture industry's greatest obstacle right now is digital transformation, but it also presents a lot of opportunities. Customers, in the end, demonstrate how they want the best shopping experience possible: consistent and above the definitions of online, offline, and mobile. There is no longer any distinction between the real world and the digital world for tomorrow's customers. The sooner a furniture store is modernized in this way, the better prepared it will be for the challenges of the future.
Embracing and advancing these technological developments in the furniture industry will not only change the way you do business but will also strengthen and enhance your ability to better reach customers and improve their customer journey. Overall, you'll outperform your rivals' efforts, streamline previously time-consuming processes, adopt retail store development, and generate revenue as you've never seen before.
