From customization and pricing to inventory management, selling make-to-order or configure-to-order furniture and accessories comes with a unique set of challenges. It’s a time-consuming process that’s prone to order errors, and tends to keep reps and associates from being present with customers on the sales floor. Altogether, the whole experience is tedious and inefficient for everyone involved.

eCat simplifies and streamlines the configure-to-order sales process, and was tailor-made with upholstery, outdoor and casual furniture companies in mind.

Build a Delightful Customer Experience #

eCat helps you turn complex configuration into a simple and fun experience for both reps and customers (no matter how many times they change their minds). Through a single interface, your reps can capture customer preferences accurately while the system ensures that nothing is missed and no 'illegal' selections are made. You’ll always have all the data you need, in real time, right there in the app.

• Tap to Configure: Within the eCat app, reps and associates can simply tap the options on the screen to configure products, including fabric, welt, wood color, cushion grade, and more. Visual images of swatches or color choices are displayed together making choices easier and more fun. In some cases, end-customers can configure products on their own; either online or in-store.
• Calculate Pricing Faster: eCat handles pricing complexities, including grade-riser pricing, by automatically calculating the cost based on fabric grade, cushion type, finish, and other options your buyer chooses so your reps can quickly calculate the right price for every item, in real time.
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Reps and associates will spend more time with their customers, and customers will spend less time waiting and wandering the store — and more fun building the makings of their interior-design dreams.
• Include notes when you need them: Add notes to each order line item to help customer, back office or installer on big orders with things like which room the piece is for or reminders about customer decisions.

Once orders are complete, your team can immediately send an order acknowledgement email, including a summary of all the customer’s chosen options; complete with images of selected options.

Improve Sales Processes and Efficiency #

In addition to its incredibly powerful sales capabilities, eCat's user-friendly interface makes it accessible to everyone on your team — anyone with a finger and an iPad can use this system to get better visibility into sales, insights and processes.

• Train Your Sales Team Faster: eCat’s ease of use enables anyone in your business to write orders accurately and completely. The order history and customer favorites features bring new reps up to speed on customers needs. Smart sales features and unlimited product info fields enable reps to be an expert with all the info at their finger tips. You’ll reduce training time to hours (versus months), and shorten the learning curve so your reps and designers are the pros in every customer interaction.

• Boost Efficiency & Productivity: The intelligent features within the eCat app help your reps work faster, so they can refocus their limited time on advising the client, growing the account and building new relationships. Clients using eCat see at least a 2x increase in the amount of business they were able to process in their showrooms the first year.

• Ensure Order Accuracy & Reduce Errors: eCat takes the complexity out of writing custom configuration orders, ensuring order accuracy, eliminating wasted inventory due to remakes, and ensures your customers get the right order, every single time.

• Automate & Streamline Pricing: eCat handles pricing complexities, including grade-riser pricing, by automatically calculating the cost based on fabric grade, cushion type, finish, and other options your buyer chooses. This streamlines the sales process and reduces errors, so your reps can quickly calculate the right price for every item.

Simplify the Process End-to-End #

Customization takes time, which can result in longer lead times compared to pre-configured furniture. By removing the complexity from this process, eCat helps your team create more value in your business.

• Streamlined Configuration Setup: Your team can set up configuration options easily within the system — without the need to “explode out” all configuration options. You’ll have the ability to offer a seamless customization process with required and non-required options, reducing order errors that can strain a customer relationship.

• Inventory Management and Trend Insights: Balancing fabric inventory levels, tracking trends, and ensuring optimal utilization of materials is key to sales success. With eCat, your team can monitor customer preference trends against sales performance, ensuring timely adjustments to inventory levels and maintaining constant visibility on inventory locations.

• Visual Data Helps Capture More Revenue: With visual data, you’ll have more insight into fabric or style trends than you would glean from basic line-by-line data reports. Enabling your team to "see" things earlier and make business adjustments that save you from costly liquidations.
  
  
  For example: Looking at recent orders, you notice that florals are trending down in popularity — with a ton of stock on hand, you’re facing the possibility of liquidating your inventory for pennies on the dollar.
  With eCat, your visual data is right there in the app, increasing the likelihood that you notice that trend early on. So instead of liquidating at the last minute, you can sell your floral inventory earlier using a base-fabric discount and recoup a larger portion of your costs. It’s a win-win for both customers and manufacturers.
• User-First Design: With the most frequent and client-driven product feature releases in the industry, you can be sure eCat is growing right along with you.

Transform Your Upholstery Business with eCat #

Using SuperCat Solutions's B2B sales software (eCat) for configure-to-order furniture business, you can revolutionize your sales process by tackling the challenges of customization, pricing complexities, inventory management, and order accuracy — all while streamlining the sales process, making customers happier and gaining the advantage in a highly competitive industry.

Are you ready to learn more about how eCat can take your sales process to the next level?

Schedule a complimentary consultation with our team today!