Dealer Software Evolution: How today’s software is helping flooring retailers protect profit and deliver a better customer experience – August 2026

By Meg Scarbrough

Five years ago, a flooring retailer shopping for software was probably looking for a better estimating system, a more reliable scheduler or an easier way to manage inventory. Software was an important part of the business, but it largely lived in the back office, quietly supporting daily operations rather than shaping how retailers sold flooring or served customers. That conversation has changed.

Retailers still expect technology to save time, but they’re asking far bigger questions than they were just a few years ago. They want to know how software can improve the buying experience, get more leads, help employees accomplish more with leaner staffs and, perhaps most importantly, protect profitability in a market where every project carries greater weight. 

The timing isn’t accidental. Higher interest rates and softer demand have forced dealers to become more disciplined operators. Consumers are taking longer to commit to purchases, labor remains difficult to find and homeowners increasingly expect the same seamless digital experience from a flooring retailer that they receive from nearly every other business they interact with. They research products online, communicate by text, sign documents electronically and expect updates throughout the project. By the time they walk into a showroom, many assume those digital interactions will continue without interruption. Meeting those expectations requires far more than a modern website.

Instead of functioning as a collection of disconnected back-office tools, today’s software platforms are increasingly expected to connect every stage of a flooring project—from the customer’s first online search through visualization, estimating, scheduling, installation, invoicing and payment. Increasingly, they’re also expected to interpret the information flowing through those systems, helping retailers identify problems before they become expensive mistakes.

“The customer has changed, and the dealer has changed,” says Kurt Wilson, director of product for Cyncly’s flooring business, whose portfolio includes RFMS, Pacific Solutions, Broadlume, Measure and Mobile Marketing. “When you think about spending $5,000 as a consumer today, what kind of experience are you expecting? You’re expecting something that’s digital first. You’re expecting proactive communication. You’re expecting to be able to communicate from your phone, see your options on your phone and move through the process without friction.”

That kind of experience, Wilson argues, can’t be stitched together with software that operates independently. “It requires an integrated platform that starts from the front end—the website, digital acquisition—and carries all the way through the system,” he says. “It cannot be provided if you have unintegrated systems that don’t talk, or only partially talk, with one another.”

Retailers are no longer looking for software that solves one problem at a time. They’re looking for technology that reduces friction across the entire business while helping them protect the one thing that has become increasingly difficult to maintain: profit.

EVERY DOLLAR MATTERS

Every flooring retailer has experienced it. The estimate is solid. The customer signs the proposal. The expected margin looks healthy. Then the small problems begin to accumulate.

A change order never reaches the invoice. Material is loaded incorrectly. An installer arrives with outdated information. Office staff re-enter the same customer information into multiple systems, creating another opportunity for error. A payment is delayed.

No single mistake is large enough to threaten the business. Yet over the course of hundreds of projects, those seemingly minor breakdowns quietly erode profitability. 

John Abrashkin, head of communications for Cyncly, believes the industry needs a better way to measure that loss. Rather than focusing exclusively on gross margin, he encourages retailers to think about what he calls margin realization—the percentage of expected profit that actually reaches the bottom line once the job is complete.

“Every flooring job is quoted with an expected profit,” Abrashkin says. “The margin realization rate is how much of that profit a dealer actually keeps when the job is done.”

Too often, he says, retailers don’t recognize how much money disappears between the initial sale and the final payment. 

The concept is deceptively simple, but it changes the way technology is evaluated. For years, software companies sold efficiency—faster estimating, better inventory management and easier scheduling. Those advantages remain important, but they matter for a different reason today. Efficiency protects profit.

That distinction has become more important as retailers operate with smaller staffs and tighter margins. During the industry’s strongest years, many operational inefficiencies were hidden beneath rising sales. Today’s market offers far less room for error. 

For Paweł Rajszel, CEO of Roomvo, the visualization platform owned by Leap Tools, which also owns QFloors, protecting margin starts with creating a smoother experience for everyone involved in the transaction—not just the customer standing in the showroom. “The greatest impact flooring technology can have is creating a seamless buying experience for the customer,” he says. “That includes obvious customer-facing experiences like websites, visualization and in-store interactions, but also estimates, ordering, installation, contracts and payments.”

Many of the most important improvements, he notes, are invisible to the homeowner. “When information flows smoothly behind the scenes, customers don’t have to repeat themselves, employees can respond faster, and jobs move forward with fewer delays,” Rajszel says. “Great technology removes complexity for the retailer so the customer never notices a thing.”

That operational consistency doesn’t simply improve customer satisfaction—it improves financial performance. “Software has the biggest impact on profitability when it helps retailers do more business with the same team,” Rajszel says. “The easier it is to access information, collaborate across the business and complete everyday tasks efficiently, the more productive employees become.”

Matt Buckley, general manager of Floorzap, a flooring CRM and workflow management platform, believes that shift explains why conversations about software sound so different today than they did only a few years ago. “The speed at which software can be developed today makes it possible to solve much more discrete problems for much smaller audiences,” he says. “You can build products for a small retailer that’s just getting started, for a shop-at-home operation or for a large commercial contractor. Those are very different businesses, and you can now design software specifically around those workflows.”

The next step, he says, isn’t simply building more software. It’s building software that’s smart enough to help retailers improve the way they operate. “For years, software was a system of record,” he says. “It told you what happened. Increasingly, it needs to become a system of intelligence that tells you what it’s seeing—and what you should do about it.”  

That shift—from documenting the business to helping improve it—may ultimately become the defining story of flooring technology over the next decade. And it begins with protecting every dollar a retailer has already earned.

WINNING THE CUSTOMER BEFORE THEY WALK INTO THE STORE

Not long ago, the sales process began when a customer walked through the front door.

Today, that customer may spend days—or even weeks—researching flooring before ever speaking to a salesperson. They browse retailer websites, compare products, read reviews, scroll through social media and narrow their choices long before scheduling an appointment. By the time they reach a showroom—if they reach a showroom at all—they expect the retailer to pick up exactly where that online journey left off.  

That shift has fundamentally changed the role software plays in flooring retail.

“Consumers have changed their buying habits,” says Wilson. “They’re doing more research on their own, and they expect businesses to meet them where they are.” For retailers, that means the website is no longer a digital brochure. It’s become the front door to the business.

“The experience starts online,” Wilson says. “Customers expect to browse products, communicate digitally, schedule appointments, receive updates and move through the process seamlessly. If the first interaction creates friction, there’s a good chance they’ll simply move on.”

But meeting those expectations isn’t simply a matter of adding more technology. 

Justin Wirpel, CEO of Flooring OS, a cloud-native flooring business platform focused on integrations and AI, says one of the biggest changes he’s noticed is generational. As younger owners take over family businesses—or launch new dealerships of their own—they bring very different expectations about how technology should work. “The question they ask isn’t, ‘Can the software do this?’” he says. “It’s, ‘Why does this take so much work?’” 

That expectation has fueled rapid growth in customer-facing technologies, particularly visualization. For decades, flooring retailers relied on samples spread across a showroom floor or propped against a customer’s wall at home, asking buyers to imagine how a 6” sample would look across an entire room. Visualization removes much of that uncertainty.

Instead of guessing, shoppers can upload a photograph of their own room—or increasingly use live camera technology—and instantly see dozens of flooring products installed in the space.

“When consumers can actually see flooring in their own home, it removes uncertainty,” says Rajszel. “Customers become much more certain about their decision, and confident customers make decisions faster.”

That confidence has measurable business value. Retailers spend less time overcoming hesitation, customers are less likely to second-guess their selections, and installation-day surprises become less common because buyers have already developed realistic expectations before placing an order.

“It’s often viewed as a marketing feature,” Rajszel says. “But anything that increases customer confidence improves conversion. When customers feel confident, they move forward.”

Visualization is also becoming more valuable because it no longer operates as a standalone application.

Leap Tools’ integration of Roomvo with QFloors reflects a broader shift taking place across the industry. Retailers increasingly expect customer selections, estimates and project information to move automatically from one stage of the buying process to the next instead of forcing employees—and customers—to start over every time a new system enters the conversation.

Edgar Aya, founder of Comp-U-Floor, a flooring-specific business management software platform, believes that’s exactly how the experience should work. “If a consumer has already selected products online,” he says, “why should they have to repeat everything when they get to the store?” His answer comes without hesitation. “They shouldn’t.”

Instead, Aya says, retailers should already know what
consumers have been researching before they ever arrive at the showroom. That changes the role of the salesperson. Rather than spending the first part of every appointment gathering names, addresses and product preferences, the conversation can begin where it actually creates value: helping customers choose the right floor. “The less time we spend typing,” Aya says, “the more time we spend selling.”

The result isn’t simply a smoother customer experience. It’s a more productive sales process, one that allows retailers to spend less time managing information and more time building relationships with customers.

AFTER THE SALE: WHERE RETAILERS WIN—OR LOSE—MONEY

Closing the sale has always been the objective. Increasingly, however, software companies argue that it’s only the beginning.

For years, technology investments focused primarily on helping retailers generate more business through faster estimates, better proposals and stronger marketing. But as margins have tightened and experienced employees have become harder to find, many dealers have discovered that the greatest threats to profitability often emerge after the contract has been signed.

That’s where John Abrashkin’s concept of margin realization becomes tangible.

“The biggest opportunity now is transparency through project completion,” Wilson says. “That’s where planned margin turns into realized margin—or doesn’t.” 

That reality has changed what retailers expect from software. The question is no longer whether a program can perform a particular task. Dealers want technology that keeps everyone—from the showroom to the warehouse to the installation crew—working from the same information.

“Execution through to the end of a project helps the smallest, historically underserved dealers,” Wilson says. “When dealers compete, the edge increasingly comes down to how clearly they communicate with the installer, how easy their digital scheduling and product loadout are, and how smoothly the job actually gets done.”

For decades, much of that work was simply accepted as part of running a flooring business. Salespeople filled out paperwork by hand. Office staff re-entered the same information into multiple systems. Managers spent part of every day tracking down the latest version of an order or confirming that everyone was working from the same schedule.

Modern cloud-based systems have begun eliminating much of that manual effort—not because retailers suddenly became less tolerant of paperwork, but because they can no longer afford the inefficiency.

“If you have a good cloud-based mobile point-of-sale flooring system,” says Aya, “that is the biggest innovation you can bring to your store.”

Aya has watched retailers fundamentally change the way they work over the past several years. Instead of taking measurements and notes in a customer’s home, returning to the office and preparing an estimate hours later, salespeople can now build proposals, revise orders and complete transactions before they ever leave the driveway.

The customer receives answers immediately. Just as importantly, the information doesn’t have to be recreated later by someone back at the office, reducing another opportunity for errors that can ripple through the project.

“The office isn’t one place anymore,” Aya says. “The business goes wherever your people are.” That mobility extends well beyond the sales staff. Owners can review performance while traveling, installers receive updated schedules on their phones and warehouse personnel work from current inventory instead of yesterday’s printout. The technology itself isn’t what matters. What matters is that everyone is working from the same version.

Wirpel argues that’s where many retailers have reached a turning point. “People don’t want eight different systems that don’t communicate with each other,” he says. “They want software that removes work instead of creating more of it.” 

Rajszel hears much the same thing from dealers evaluating technology. “Retailers have adopted significantly more technology over the last several years,” he says. “But what we’re seeing now is significantly more dealers looking for complete solutions that work together rather than adding more systems to manage.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean buying every application from a single provider. Instead, it reflects a growing recognition that every time employees have to re-enter information, search through multiple databases or make another phone call to verify an order, they’re spending time that could have been devoted to customers.

Buckley believes retailers often underestimate just how much of the workday disappears into searching for information. “The easier it is to access information,” he says, “the more productive everyone becomes.” It’s an important distinction. Better software doesn’t necessarily make people work harder or faster. It removes the interruptions that prevent them from doing the work that actually creates value.

For retailers, that value isn’t measured by how quickly an order can be entered into a computer. It’s measured by how consistently the business delivers the profit that was built into the sale from the very beginning.

FROM SYSTEMS OF RECORD TO SYSTEMS OF INTELLIGENCE

If the last decade of flooring software was defined by moving information into the cloud, the next may be defined by what software does with that information once it’s there.

Artificial intelligence has quickly become the industry’s latest buzzword, but behind the excitement is a far more practical conversation. Retailers aren’t asking whether AI will replace salespeople or run their businesses on its own. They’re asking how it can eliminate repetitive work, help new employees become productive more quickly and make better use of the information they already have.

That’s an important distinction. Traditional software excelled at storing information. It tracked customers, recorded orders, generated invoices and preserved a history of completed projects. Artificial intelligence has the potential to do something different. Rather than simply documenting the business, it can identify patterns, surface relevant information and help retailers make decisions faster.

Wirpel believes many retailers are intrigued by AI but aren’t sure how to begin. “It’s not that people are opposed to using AI,” he says. “They just don’t know where to start.”

His advice is surprisingly straightforward. “Start with repetitive tasks,” Wirpel says. “Look at the things your employees do over and over again that follow a set of instructions. Those are the first places AI can make a real difference.”

Just as important, he says, retailers need to establish clear expectations before AI becomes part of everyday operations.

“If one employee is using ChatGPT, another is using Claude, and somebody else is using something different, you’ve got a problem,” he says. “The first step is deciding which AI platform your company is going to use and making sure everyone understands the policy.” 

That preparation extends beyond choosing a platform. AI is only as useful as the information it can access.

“AI is fantastic at looking at large data sets,” Wirpel says. “But if your information isn’t organized, it can’t help you.” He highlights a project his company has been developing to illustrate the point. When an experienced employee leaves, years of accumulated knowledge often disappear with them. Instead of digging through emails, spreadsheets and handwritten notes, managers can ask an AI assistant which projects were in progress, which proposals remain open or which deadlines still need attention. “The ability to interact with that information simply wasn’t economically possible before,” Wirpel adds. 

The same principle applies inside a flooring dealership. Much of what makes a great flooring salesperson isn’t written in a training manual. It’s learned through experience—how to handle objections, when to recommend one product over another or how to guide an uncertain customer toward a confident decision. 

Traditionally, that knowledge was passed from one employee to the next over months or even years. AI offers a way to capture and share that expertise much more quickly.

Wirpel says Flooring OS is developing tools that pair common customer questions with the answers seasoned salespeople have learned through experience, giving newer employees immediate access to that institutional knowledge.

“It takes about two years to get a good flooring salesperson fully trained,” he says. “If you can reduce that to six months because the knowledge is available on demand, you’ve created an enormous advantage.” 

That, Buckley argues, is where artificial intelligence is likely to have its greatest impact. “The technology isn’t replacing people,” he says. “It’s helping people make better decisions faster.” 

It’s also consistent with a theme that surfaced throughout nearly every interview for this story. Flooring remains a relationship business. Customers still expect knowledgeable professionals who can answer questions, solve problems and guide them through one of the largest purchases they’ll make for their home.

Technology hasn’t changed those expectations. If anything, it’s raised them.

“The reason customers come into a flooring store is because they want an expert,” Wirpel says. “They want someone who will help them design the project, make sure they have the right amount of material and be there if something goes wrong. That’s where the value is.” 

Artificial intelligence isn’t replacing that expertise. Like the cloud-based systems, visualization tools and integrated workflows that came before it, its greatest value may be in removing the repetitive work that keeps retailers from doing what they do best: serving customers, protecting margins and growing their businesses.

PROTECTING EVERY DOLLAR

Abrashkin keeps coming back to the same phrase: margin realization. It’s a deceptively simple concept. Every flooring project begins with an expected profit. The question isn’t what the margin looked like when the proposal was signed—it’s how much of that margin survives through ordering, scheduling, installation and final payment.

Viewed through that lens, the technology reshaping flooring retail looks very different.

Visualization isn’t simply about helping customers imagine a new floor in their home; it gives them the confidence to make purchasing decisions more quickly. Connected software platforms don’t just make life easier for employees; they reduce the communication breakdowns and manual processes that quietly erode profitability. Artificial intelligence isn’t replacing experienced salespeople; it’s beginning to handle the repetitive work that keeps them from spending more time with customers.

Individually, none of those innovations is transformative. Collectively, they represent a fundamental change in the way flooring retailers operate.

Throughout these interviews, software executives described different approaches to solving different problems. Yet they all pointed toward the same destination. The retailers that thrive over the next decade won’t necessarily be those with the newest technology or the longest list of software providers. They’ll be the ones that use technology deliberately—eliminating unnecessary work, improving communication and protecting the profit already built into every sale.

For all the advances in software over the past five years, one thing has remained remarkably consistent. Flooring is still a relationship business. Customers continue to look for knowledgeable professionals who can answer questions, solve problems and guide them through one of the largest purchases they’ll make for their homes. Technology can’t replace that expertise, and none of the executives interviewed for this story suggested it should.

Instead, the best technology fades into the background. It removes friction, connects information and gives retailers something that’s become increasingly difficult to find: more time to focus on customers instead of processes.

In the end, that’s what margin realization is really about. It’s not simply protecting profit. It’s creating a business that’s efficient enough to deliver the experience customers expect while ensuring that more of the value a retailer creates actually reaches the bottom line.