As the “tech generation” begins to wield its financial strength and move into the housing market, online marketing and services grow in importance, especially when it comes to specialty retails’ survival.
“The floor covering consumer has changed for good and is now deciding the fate of retailers almost exclusively based on their websites,” said John Weller, vice president of marketing, FloorForce.
FloorForce has recently upgraded its entire system and will be launching Floorforce 3.0 in September. According to Weller, Floorforce 3.0 will include features like an all new responsive website platform (will automatically fit the consumers screen size), responsive product catalog, request a sample feature and many others. “Our all new platform gives the flooring retailer all the tools that todays top retailers must have, and the user experience needed to excite todays most discriminating consumers,” Weller said. The new platform can be found at TheFutureofFlooring.com.
Software veterans, like Dancik, in business for 30 years, also offer a competitive advantage for its customers. According to Greg Grady, director of business development, the Dancik development team recently designed a comprehensive mobile sales portal that is compatible with any tablet or smart phone device. Grady said that Dancik customers can, “easily access sales statistics, pricing, product knowledge, inventory availability and location, contact information, and seamlessly send emails from their phone or tablet.”
Create Your Space also focuses on the online consumer experience. According to Jay Flynn, vice president of sales and marketing, the company’s proprietary platform allows it to efficiently provide and customize content, tools and images uniquely built for the flooring industry. “We have the unique ability to create customized ‘microsites’ ideally suited to provide a distributors content within their dealer’s websites, while still enabling the dealer to brand the content to themselves and fully control the online lead, while leveraging the distributors content.”
Create Your Space is currently testing and beginning the initial launch process for its fifth generation of the Creating Your Space proprietary online marketing platform, which will include new features such as responsive design, increased customization capabilities, tools designed to improve Google rankings and much more.
Bid Tech is also offering products that help bring businesses to the next level. According to Erwin Twerdochlib, president and CEO, the company’s EZ Estimator (Total Solution) offers businesses a total solution — will handle your Blueprint take-off requirements whether paper or electronic as well as generate scaled floor plans from site measurements. It also offers unique functionality like automatic generation of job costing, sales orders, bid proposals, purchase/change orders as well as installation/service and repair work orders while streaming data directly into Quick Books Pro Accounting Software. “Our clients throughout North America enjoy a greater R.O.I. by incorporating specialized technology into their business — guaranteed to deliver increased productivity in a reduced time element,” Twerdochlib said.
According to RFMS sales director, Dave Dumoulin, research shows that closing in the home increases the sale ratio by 20 percent. The newest addition to the RFMS software family, Measure Mobile- Sales Connect, helps RFMS customers do just that, along with supplying its users with many other features.
“Even if the sale is not closed in the home, double entry is no longer needed to generate a quote in RFMS. With this increased close ratio and decreased turnaround time to provide the customer with an accurate quote, a sales professional should be able to close an additional 2 sales per week on average,” said Dumoulin. He added that, figuring an average revenue of $3,000 per sale and an average of 30 percent profit margin, that could turn into an additional $1, $91,600 per year. “Not a bad ROI for a piece of software that costs less than your cell phone bill,” he said.
RFMS Measure software
According to Chad Ogden, president and CEO, QFloors, the company’s software can be used to manage retail flooring, new construction, commercial, multi-family housing and distribution, and includes versions specific to small, mid-size and large businesses. In addition to its basic version, which can be used alongside QuickBooks or other generic accounting software, Q-Floors software also has options for cloud based computing. “QCloud allows dealers to enjoy the efficiency and productivity that technology can bring, without the headache and risk,” said Ogden. “With QCloud, you never have to worry about computers going down, servers failing, or loss of data. Your data is more secure and is accessible anytime, anywhere.”
According to Ogden, QFloors allows owners to easily and accurately track exactly what is happening in their flooring business. “Built in CRM tools offer lead tracking, marketing and advertising tracking, and a wealth of information regarding what you are selling, to whom, and how,” said Ogden. “You can know whether your advertising or promotional dollars are being well spent.”
For RollMaster Software its Cloud-based system, whether the focus is retail, commercial, property management, homebuilder or distribution, is determined to deliver the tools to manage the entire business. “Our Cloud-based software is designed to provide information and automated processes that connect all areas of the business in real-time, at the lowest possible cost. This continually drives job cost and critical financial information to managers through every step of the business process,” said Dev O’Reilly, president and CEO. Additionally, RollMaster offers residential and commercial measuring software to help quantify and bid jobs.
According to O’Reilly, the company’s latest development is a browser-based business dashboard for owners, managers and sales. From any internet enabled mobile device dealers can view/change installation schedules and track leads. The dashboard displays sales data as well as key financial metrics relative to accounts receivable, accounts payable, and inventory. “By tracking every incoming lead, ensuring they are followed properly and measuring close-rates dealers can manage resources to insure that opportunities are maximized,” O’Reilly said. “The Lead Tracking fills a niche of ‘shop-at-home’ flooring sales that the flooring software industry has yet to address,” he added.