FurnishWEB in partnership with SuperCat Solutions has implemented SuperCat’s eCat iPad app for Bassett Mirror.  ECat is a sales representative tool for enhanced product presentation and order taking.  FurnishWEB together with eCat combines for an unbeatable combination for sales support in the furniture industry.

We’ve planned for sometime to offer our clients an iPad extension for FurnishWEB and we’re so pleased to have found a perfect match in SuperCat’s eCat solution.   Both companies have worked to integrate the system by creating a Connector so that data and photos in FurnishWEB can be fed into SuperCat.

And now our very first FurnishWEB customer, Bassett Mirror, has chosen to work with us and our partners at SuperCat.  The implementation went great.  The Connector is performing well.  Bassett Mirror’s sales reps started using eCat on their iPads about a month ago and all reports are very positive.  The eCat program with FurnishWEB integration is being very well received by the field.

Also, here's a post from HandShake 2.0 about FurnishWEB and eCat .... Handshake App for Sales Orders and Sales Reps in Home Furnishings.

Enjoy!

We spent significant time and money late 2010 and early 2011 creating an iPad app worthy of the FurnishWEB name.  We learned quite a bit and felt we were on the right track when I met Steve Thrasher, president of SuperCat Solutions.  Steve and his great team of developers have developed a beautiful iPad app that is perfectly targeted at the independent furniture sales rep user.  Exactly what we were working toward here at FurnishWEB.

In that first meeting, I knew Steve was someone we could work with.  Since then, we've halted work on our own iPad and threw our support and endorsement behind SuperCat Solutions eCat app.   Along the way both companies have worked together to integrate our two products.  We gave FurnishWEB a module to feed data and photo's directly into eCat.  And eCat has a new window that allows sales reps to access their FurnishWEB without leaving eCat on the iPad.  Its turned out to be a classic example of 1 plus 1 equals 3. 

We're very pleased to be working with SuperCat Solutions and we excited to offer the eCat app as an iPad extension of FurnishWEB ... giving sales reps an additional tool for presenting their product line and landing sales.

Here's a recent press release published in Furniture Today

Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, July 19, 2011

SuperCat's eCat Offering FurnishWeb Portal

WILSON, N.C. - SuperCat Solutions' eCat sales app is now offering a portal service that allows customers using an iPad access to FurnishWeb while logged into the eCat sales app.

SuperCat Solutions worked with Internet Databases, developer of FurnishWeb.

Sales representatives can now access FurnishWeb supplier extranets within eCat - an iPad app that takes the place of printed sales kits, among other uses - without app switching or a separate login.

FurnishWeb is an order management extranet for dealers and reps, featuring an online order, inventory, shipping and tracking system.

The update, which was released in the iTunes app store, makes it easy for sales reps to use FurnishWeb, said Steve Thrasher, president of SuperCat Solutions.

Earlier this year SuperCat purchased the eCat sales app from case goods importer Sarreid, where it was developed. The app automatically updates product, pricing and inventory information, submits orders, and checks inventories and order status.

Why "by Month"?

We've had Smart Sales in FurnishWEB for some time now.  FurnishWEB accumulates data from shipments/invoices by dealer and product for historic reporting.  Since we introduced Smart Sales the reports have shown annual data in a comparison format with columns for quantities and dollars for LAST_YEAR, LAST_YEAR_TO_DATE, and THIS_YEAR_TO_DATE.  Sales managers and sales reps have praised this addition to FurnishWEB, but (yes, there's almost always a "but") ... but, they'd like to also see this data by monthly buckets in addition to annual buckets.

I'd say that this has been the most requested enhancement to FurnishWEB by the sales reps over the past year.

Well, the wait is over!  Smart Sales now reports, prints, and downloads data with a monthly option.

Slice & Dice!

In adding the new monthly options, we decided to go ahead and improve the drop-down options and performance allowing more options to Slice & Dice the data. 

• Sales Managers and company Owners can now run product reports that are company-wide instead of one sales rep territory at a time.
• Speed and performance are vastly improved by a new method for sorting and paging through all the records.
• Drop-down options have been added for sales reps and staff to select individual dealer account to review detailed trending without having to go to the Dealers tab and drill down.
• And more ....

Future?

Wow... the options are endless for the future of this data.  We see charts and graphs, searching, more options to slice & dice, and maybe a new visual option of the data.  We'll get feedback from our great user base on this latest upgrade and go from there.  Just like we always do!

Lazzaro Leather Selects FurnishWEB as Customer Service & Sales Portal

We've worked with Patrick Long before.  Great guy and fantastic leader in our industry.  We haven't had the pleasure of working with Richard Reichick but we're definitely looking forward to it.  Reading their press release in the Furniture Today reminded me to blog about them and how happy we are to have them as our newest client.

Patrick appoached us as he took over the task of leading the Sunton Tanning US operations, aka Lazzaro Leather.  He knew the capabilities of FurnishWEB and we've worked well together in the past.  It was an easy decision to work together again.

As the product line is getting re-developed, warehouse operations are coming online, and the sales team is getting established, we are working hand-in-hand with Lazzaro Leather staff to make their launch of FurnishWEB a success.  We can't wait and are looking forward to a long relationship.

I really love our statistics page.  In fact, it may be one of my favorite pages anywhere.   I really like checking how many FurnishWEB users are currently online (145 right now and 622 in the past 24 hours).  Its really cool!

But yesterday our lead developer, Jeff Roberson, pointed out to me during a Skype chat a fact I'd overlooked:

Jeff: Hey Barry.  Have you looked at the stats page recently?

Barry: Yes.  Look most every day, why?

Jeff: Our clients sales are over 1/2 billion dollars?

Barry: You're kidding, right?  I mean, that's a lot! 

Jeff:  Nope.  Its true.  Check it out:

Jeff: See.  That is sweeet.  You should blog about that.

And so, I am "blogging about that".  Even though 3 of our 25 clients do not post sales to FurnishWEB, we're still over 1/2 BILLION DOLLARS in our clients sales over the past 12 months.  Significant!

We've replaced our website which was primarily static HTML with a Blog/CMS program.

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We are updating the current www.furnishweb.com site.

Thank you for Your Patience.

FurnishWEB has been successfully moved to a bigger, faster server with the latest server software upgrades. The move took a lot of planning & testing. Over the weekend, we shut down FurnishWEB from 8:00 PM Friday EDT to around 12:00 Noon Sunday EDT while copying & testing all the programs & data. After a couple of hiccups, we brought the new server online for full system testing on Saturday which went very well. So we cut over to the new server late Sunday morning.

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Our users asked and we listened. FurnishWEB has always had Order search and filter capabilities but it just wasn’t working great for everyone. This latest release addresses those issues and provides greater flexibility for anyone searching or browsing orders.

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Now, with Smart Sales, we have data accumulated and reportable for entire territories. This allows a sales rep or sales manager to compare year-over-year data for a territory ... product, dealer, and collection data aggregated, totaled, and sortable quickly and easily. There's even a series of PDF reports to snap shot the data for printable review.

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