Every two years flooring retailers come together for the QFloors Users Conference to learn and share best practices to improve their business operations. Attendees are urged to ask questions and converse with each other.
“We’re here to help our dealers become better users of the software, to provide advanced training on more difficult parts of the system and specific things that they want training on,” said Trent Odgen, CFO and co-owner, QFloors.
Attendees found it helpful to hear how other businesses are using products in different ways.
“This was probably our best conference that we’ve ever had,” said QFloors President Chad Ogden. “Almost every person that I’ve talked to said they have a list of things they’re taking away from here and they can’t wait to get back to implement these ideas in their own business.” Here's a glimpse of what they learned.
1. Specific Reporting Capabilities
QFloors allows users to create custom reports, depending what data the business needs, which Dave Bone, CEO, San Diego Flooring Pros, found useful.
“It was great to hear how other companies are using very specific reporting capabilities unique to the custom setups available through QFloors,” Bone said. ‘That will be my year-end goal: to get much more detailed and focus on labeling the reports that will pertain to my business for lead tracking and specific sales numbers.”
2. Developing Processes & Procedures
Brad Carver, general manager at Absolute Flooring in Gallatin, Tennessee, learned how to use QFloors technology to set up processes and procedures for his business.
“While our staff has general knowledge and can put together proposals, work orders, invoices, etc., there has not been a set procedure for these,” he said. “This has resulted in items on proposals, invoices, and work orders being in many different orders. With procedures in place, anyone will be able to look at these documents and easily find any needed information.”
3. Commercial Project Management
Rich Seland, Seland's Abbey Flooring said he focused on learning the commercial project management capability of QFloors.
“This is something QFloors built into the software but we had yet to utilize the feature. We wanted to up our game in specified commercial bid field,” Seland said. “We learned everything from bid lay-out, material handling, change orders, progress billing and how to produce AIA reporting through QFloors. We are looking forward to implementing these valuable resources on future commercial projects.”
4. Networking
“Something we learned at the conference was to listen/talk to other dealers,” said Denise VanderHeide, design consultant, DeHaan Floor Covering in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “See how they handle different procedures and see if that would help your business in any way. It was so good to speak with other dealers just to get ideas and suggestions, some work and others are just not for you! We learned so much, or many times just refreshing what you already know but may not utilize as much as you should,”
5. New Technologies
This year’s conference had a major focus on the new technology being developed by QFloors.
“The new software that’s coming through QFloors’ web-based platform through QPro is super exciting to us as dealers,” said Scott Nolt, Nolt’s Floorcovering in Lebanon and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Dealers learned about QR codes that include product specs, pictures, visualization and pricing.
Ogden also announced that the company’s cloud-based accounting system, QPro, will be up and running by the next conference in 2025. QPro is a browser-based cloud software that will be more easily accessible and have more features for users to benefit from. The QFloors team set up a simulation of QPro for conference attendees to get a sneak preview.
QConnect is another product that QFloors has been working on. The product allows information to be sent from external sources into QFloors. This includes transferring external leads into QFloors’ sales modules, QPay and report back status. The features that are still in the works include email campaigns, product catalogs and the installation viewer. The installation viewer is predicted to be complete by The International Surfaces Event, according to Chad.