Industry revenue in the timber flooring and carpet retailing and distribution sectors has been affected by strong import growth and increasing competition from substitute flooring products. However, higher demand from the residential housing and construction market has helped sustained upward momentum in this niche industry.
Australia’s housing market price falls in the short term will be underpinned by a stable economic growth, record-low interest rates and a steady population rise. High overseas migration is likely to increase in the following years and with stable economic conditions supply is still expected to be less than demand. This is a good forecast for the construction market and its suppliers.
Seizing Growth Opportunities and Differentiation
To beat overseas competitors and stand out in an extremely competitive market, successful flooring and carpet businesses are seizing new opportunities to grow with cloud-based software designed to streamline the operations of the carpet and flooring retail, wholesale and installation industry. Leaders in this space are streamlining business operations in order to develop new products and services, improve supplier relationshiops and order and inventory management, meet customer demand, manage eCommerce, and make informed, data-driven decisions in real-time.
Whilst technology is enabling Australian manufacturers to migrate to Advance Manufacturing in order to deliver the personalised products the industry, Aussie companies are not focusing on modernising. The trend in the industry is to increase marketing expenditure, states the AMGC in their report: Advanced Manufacturing, a New Definition for a New Era, and the results haven’t been very promising.
In the report, it is concluded that more Australian companies introduced new marketing methods (18.5% – 25%) and new products (20.6% – 24.3%), but overall trading fell 13.3%. Only around one-fifth (19%) of Australian manufacturing companies increased their IT spending but may not be getting the most out of their investment.
There is a huge opportunity for Australian manufacturing companies to modernise their business models. Only 8% introduced a new product-related service in 2013-2014, and only 6% used flooring industry specific ERP’s . The digital divide opens an interesting window of opportunity for companies to differentiate as ‘service champions’.
Investment in new marketing methodsInvestment in new productsDigital spenditureNew services related to existent productsSpecialisation of current products
Cloud Technology for Flooring and Carpet Businesses
NetSuite is a cloud-based, single business management platform eliminating the need to update multiple customer, vendor, inventory and marketing systems. Using NetSuite, a single system solution, provides you with the ability to:
- Have a single customer record across the entire business, allowing you to profile, predict and push 1:1 marketing campaigns, using NetSuite’s unified CRM functionality.
- Automate workflows across your business.
- Gain real-time visibility into full business operations across all stores.
- Use NextService, a native to NetSuite field service solution, to schedule deliveries and installations via mobile app, complete with GPS routing for drivers, compliance checklists for field service staff when they arrive at the job, and customer sign off upon completion.
- Use the mobile app to schedule service calls – this could be for after-care treatment of flooring, repairs, maintenance, cleaning services and more.
Upgrading to a modern, scalable, cost-effective system means that your IT strategy is future-proof, providing you with more time to spend on building a seamless customer experience and business strategy.
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Feel free to call our experts today and find out how cloud-based technology can make your Flooring and Carpet Business a manufacturing beast with NetSuite and NextService, our proudly Aussie field service app.
