By Reginald Tucker
Retailers large and small employ a range of RollMaster’s suite of flooring software products to execute numerous tasks or business functions—i.e., estimating, measuring, inventory management, accounting, etc. But there’s something most users, regardless of their size and scope, have in common—they all attest to the efficiencies and problem-solving capabilities that RollMaster’s programs and tools consistently provide.
Delbert Welch, operations supervisor with Seland’s Karpetland in Coon Valley, Wis., is one of them. “Prior to RollMaster, all of our customer files were handwritten on paper,” he explained. “The organization, efficiency and productivity have all improved drastically throughout all facets of our business. It is the greatest tool to manage your business to another level of success that might have been unattainable in the past.”
That’s not the only area where Seland’s Karpetland saw improvements thanks to RollMaster. The task of managing inventory also improved utilizing the company’s software programs. “It has become an easy task with RollMaster’s Barcoding System,” Welch added. “Using the system, we are able to know what material we have on hand, how long we have had it and how much it costs. That alone has helped us increase our sales significantly—by just knowing exactly what we have to offer customers without searching the warehouse or a price list every time a customer comes in.”
Other dealers, including Zack Ditner, vice president of operations for Bigelow Flooring in Ontario, Canada, agreed. In particular, he said RollMaster software has helped him better track inventory because it’s based on a platform that understands flooring. “For example, tracking by roll width for rolled goods, square foot or by piece for tile,” he explained.
Like Seland’s Karpetland, Bigelow Flooring saw an improvement over older, antiquated, paper-based systems by installing RollMaster’s software. “When we hit a certain level of sales, we really lost control at a per-item level of what was going on with our old system, which was mostly paper and excel spreadsheet based.”
But it’s perhaps the ability of RollMaster’s software products to seamlessly integrate with other critical programs that Ditner said impressed him the most. “The largest benefit to doing your accounting with RollMaster is the integration from start to finish with quoting, inventory and accounts payable so you have a good control on vendor invoices,” he said.
Change for the better
Most—if not all—RollMaster users cite a vast improvement across many facets of their operations once they switched from a generic platform to the more flooring-specific software RollMaster provides.
Case in point is Jestin Kemp, owner of Burnsville, Minn.-based Infinite Floors. His entire operation used to run on QuickBooks before making the switch to RollMaster. Now, he said, there’s no turning back.
“It has improved every single aspect of our business and given us the structure we needed to continue to succeed and thrive in our daily operations,” Kemp told FCNews. “Having all of our large suppliers’ products updated in our catalog via B2B saves us precious time and money during our estimating. It ensures up-to-date pricing and ease of entering estimates, purchase orders and invoices. We can now almost seamlessly run our jobs from start to finish and know the system will keep us moving from start to finish.”
Installer payables—one of Infinite Floors’ problem areas—also improved dramatically not long after making the switch to RollMaster. For instance, the ability to run detailed reports such as open aging AP or sales tax was nonexistent using a previous system. “In the past, we had to play the guessing game by the time payout came; now, we are able to keep retainage for errors, insurance info, borrowed funds, etc., and have a perfect record of it,” Kemp explained. “This single feature has tremendously saved us a ton of time and headache. Another huge concern with growing our business was commission payout to our sales team. RollMaster has made this feature easy to maintain and keep track of all in one system.”
Users who have applied various RollMaster programs at Lindon, Utah-based Empire Flooring reported similar benefits. “RollMaster has been really good as far as helping us to get our inventory in order with their Barcoding System, and everything we’ve incorporated has helped us better organize our inventory,” said Chris Steffen, estimator. “Along with the same Barcoding System it has also been a great asset to have the ability to use any Android or Apple device to scan different barcodes and immediately pull up pricing that we can give to our customers right on the spot. It’s better than having to go back to a computer and look it up in a spreadsheet or another system.”
Other Empire Flooring employees reported enhanced bookkeeping abilities and customized financial reports by using RollMaster systems. “Even simple reports such as an invoice register report—I can quickly see what our overall job cost listings are at any time within running that report,” said Kylee Anderson, finance manager. “If there is any job that has a low margin, I can take care of it right then and there and figure out what happened on that job. We appreciate having that visibility because obviously we want to make sure we’re making money on every job.”
Built to suit
The problem with some off-the-shelf flooring software products is they don’t always address an end user’s specific needs. But that’s not the case with RollMaster, which went above and beyond to customize its offerings for Modesto, Calif.-based Flooring Liquidators, a client of 15 years. Case in point: When the retailer launched a stone fabrication business, it required something special—and RollMaster delivered.
“We have found RollMaster is more open than some of the other software providers to doing custom programming,” said Stephen Kellogg, Flooring Liquidators’ president. “For example, when we opened our stone fabrication shop, there were certain things we needed such as hard plastic slap tags—nobody had anything that was really going to work for us. RollMaster developed an add-on and worked with the tag printer, IT team and stone fabrication group to come up with a way for us to use it.”
Having this kind of capability and flexibility in a vendor partner is particularly critical for dealers like Flooring Liquidators because the company is so heavily diversified with respect to the end markets and product sectors it serves. Whether it’s providing customized software to help run its multi-family division or programs and platforms to support its nascent cabinet business, Kellogg said RollMaster does it all.
“I don’t know that there’s a part of RollMaster that isn’t used in our business, and we are about as diverse a flooring business as you can find,” Kellogg stated. “Any business segment I move into I can adapt RollMaster to work in that segment and do it efficiently—not just sort of ‘band-aid’ it. Outside of some software systems that require lots of custom programming, there isn’t anything that I’ve seen that’s as plug ’n play as RollMaster.”
