Across the window fashions industry, many fabricators have been forced to increase prices due to rising materials costs. This places even more importance on the ability of retailers to have up-to-date pricing and product details automatically integrated into their configure, price, quote (CPQ) systems.
It also serves as a significant reminder of how important it is to have the right software partner in order to ensure accuracy and reliability.
What distinguishes one partner from another? This article covers three major reasons why Solatech has been able to provide truly accurate, highly efficient software for window fashion retailers for decades. And we’ll touch on why their competitors haven’t.
1. The Partnership
The old adage is true about being known by the company you keep. One critical reason why retailers turn to Solatech is because they know that Solatech partners with a wide range of window fashion manufacturers. And that they’ve maintained those partnerships for years. The company works closely with each fabricator to not just enhance their production, but to give their product database immediate, reliable updates regarding every product detail, including specification changes and updates in pricing.
Likewise, fabricators know that Solatech works with dealers to streamline the pricing and ordering process to make it easier, more efficient and more accurate. In fact, recently a regional fabricator was turned down by a particular dealer because they were not a Solatech Partnership Alliance member. This meant the dealer would have to bypass the efficiencies provided by Solatech’s software, which would double or triple the amount of work needed in order to sell the fabricator’s products. According to the fabricator, the dealer decided, “why create more work for ourselves?” The fabricator contacted Solatech shortly afterward.
Often when other software providers claim that they support specific fabricators, that support is only superficial. They don’t support the rules, validations and all the details that are necessary for accurate and complete quoting and ordering. Their systems are “estimating” tools only.
2. The Tools
The technology itself has been and continues to be a game changer for Solatech. The data engine and other tools driving Solatech’s software were developed specifically to handle highly complex product configurations and to be quickly updated anytime a fabricator makes a change. This is still a unique and defining quality of every Solatech software solution.
For example, one of the largest fabricators in the industry offers roller shades with as many as 1,000 different fabrics and over 15,000 different configurable validations just for that one product. Now multiply that by the number of different products that fabricator offers and you end up with millions of potential product possibilities. And that is only one of the many fabricators supported by Solatech.
This is why the custom window covering industry is one of the most complex industries in terms of product configurations. It’s also why Solatech developed such a robust, flexible data engine. They are a software company first. Others have been able to develop ordering systems that work well for a time. But they simply don’t have the capability to keep the information always up to date. This leads to pricing discrepancies, product ordering errors and other costly mistakes.
Imagine creating an estimate for a customer, only to find out your pricing information was out of date. The difference will cost you time, money, the customer — or in some cases, all three.
3. The Team
The third key difference is Solatech’s team of experts who work with dealer and fabrication partners to ensure they are getting the most out of the software. The team is always working to improve, customize, update, train and support the performance of its software solutions for each client.
It comes down to the fact that Solatech is a software company that serves the window covering industry, instead of a window covering company that offers software (often developed through outside vendors that don’t necessarily understand the industry and the complexity of window covering configurations).
At Solatech, those experts are in-house and ready to answer questions, help with training and anticipate how the software needs to evolve for dealers over time.
We encourage you to set up a demo, so you can see how Solatech’s software solutions set themselves apart in significant ways for window covering dealers. It’s also the perfect opportunity to ask the experts about how Solatech’s solutions could work for your business. In the meantime, feel free to read about the different CPQ tools available.