FloorDaily.net's Kemp Harr met up with QFloors CEO Chad Ogden to discuss the 2023 QFloors Users Conference, the new technologies coming under way, and what makes QFloors unique from other software vendors in the industry.
Listen to the interview here:
Video Transcript:
K. Parr: Good morning. You're listening to FloorDaily.net. I'm Kemp Parr. This morning my guest is Chad Ogden, the president of QFloors Software. Chad, how are you doing?
C. Ogden: Doing well, thanks for having me.
K. Parr: It's great to talk to you. I wasn't able to personally attend your users conference, which was held last week at the gate of Zion National Park. So, I thought we'd do a quick interview where you can give us a couple of highlights. First, just for background, QFloors is a business management software specifically designed for flooring dealers. You and your brother were third generation flooring retailers, you had a tech background, you left the flooring business, and then you came back and wrote the software. For our listeners' benefit, tell us the difference between your software solution and others in the market.
C. Ogden: I think from the feedback that we get all the time, there's two main things that people always tell us. One is the ease of use and the ease of training, and being able to get into it, compared to other experiences people have had with software like QuickBooks. People tell us QFloors is by far an easier solution to get up and going and to implement. We can get people going pretty quickly, even though QFloors is a full ERP business system. The second thing is our customer support. I can't tell you how many reviews and ratings mention our support. Those seem to be the two biggest things that people always comment on. If you go to our Google reviews those are the things that are most frequently mentioned.
K. Parr: Alright, so you had this meeting in Springdale, Utah. It was a three day meeting, and it had been a year and a half since you'd met before. It attracted about a hundred people, is that right?
C. Ogden: Yeah there were over a hundred people in attendance. I think the last night we had 130 people at dinner. We brought some of our employees in from up north and it was a big hit. It was the biggest conference we've ever hosted.
K. Parr: Talk about the highlights of the conference. What did you accomplish?
C. Ogden: So this was a three day conference. The first day there was an introduction, and then we had a day of dealer interaction, where we had some dealers give presentations on things that they do specific to their business. This gave people ideas on things they could implement. Then we had a question and answer session between the dealers, where they had the opportunity to ask other dealers in the room questions on how they did certain things…It was very interactive between our dealers. It was very networking heavy, so they got to meet one another and get to know each other. Throughout the next couple of days of the conference they could continue that interaction. The second day we held specific courses taught by our staff on specific QFloors topics like commercial, (and that's one thing that we're really focusing on - we're doing a lot more commercial work and bid work) warehousing, financials, how to read those financials, etc. Those were some of the kind of courses that were taught. Then on the third day we had a wrap up and gave an opportunity for any last questions. We also introduced a new feature…which is basically a browser based installer viewer that is specifically designed for installers to view their upcoming jobs that they're working on.
K. Parr: Like many of the softwares that are out there, aren't you moving toward a cloud-based situation so people can access the software from any PC?
C. Ogden: Yeah we have our current cloud solution called QCloud that works with QFloors. But we are also completely rewriting our current software. We started all over from scratch to create a solution that would run natively in a browser, and would be originally designed to run in a browser. So it's a complete redo of our current QFloors solution. It's called QPro and we're getting close to having that released with all the accounting stuff in it. We showed everybody where it's at and gave an update on it during the conference.
K. Parr: Did you get to spend some time in the park while you were there?
C. Ogden: Absolutely. Most of our mornings were taken up by events at the resort's conference center. But then in the afternoons, we kind of turned everybody loose to go do whatever they wanted and explore wherever they wanted within the park. They loved it. They love the combination of having both class time and downtime, so that's kind of how we did it.
K. Parr: Alright Chad. Well I appreciate you spending time with us, and telling us about your meeting. I've been talking to Chad Ogden, the President of QFloors Software, and you've been listening to Kemp Parr of FloorDaily.net.