TSJ speaks with Ben Moss, Principal Evangelist for ERP One at Klipboard, about the tiling industry’s interconnected requirements, the biggest challenges facing distributors, and the role of AI in the sector’s future.
Q: Can you give us a brief introduction to Klipboard and your role at the company?
A: Klipboard is a leading provider of specialist business management and ERP software for distributors, merchants, wholesalers, and service-based businesses. We help customers gain complete visibility and improve operational control, connecting purchasing, inventory warehousing, sales, finance, delivery, or customer service, all within a single platform.
As Principal Evangelist for ERP One, my role is to inform and help shape our strategy, ensuring our customers achieve measurable business outcomes from their investment in us as partners. I also help Klipboard keep delivering and developing the solutions that address the real-world challenges that are facing merchants and distributors today, and in the future.
Q: What does ERP One offer the tiling industry specifically?
A: The tile industry has many interconnected requirements, such as managing varied product ranges, across different branches or potentially different counties. All these businesses need to track batches and shade variations, tile samples, and manage the pricing and costs of all of those variables. Many tile businesses provide a showroom presence, and balance that with ensuring they’re servicing their customer’s ecommerce needs, which means that they’re managing both trade accounts and retail accounts. The list goes on and on. And all the while they need to maintain the levels of customer service that differentiates them from a competitor.
Klipboard ERP One is purpose-built to help distributors and merchants meet these demands from a single unified platform. Our solution enables tile businesses to manage their inventory and stock visibility across their branch structure, warehouse and showroom network, and improve the purchase decisions that those tiling businesses are making. Our customers streamline order processing, fulfillment, pricing, quotation, and account management, and manage their real-time costs and margins across their operation.
We also offer an integrated e-commerce platform and provide those showroom operations where they’re required. ERP One exists to businesses run more efficiently, make better decisions day-to-day, and create a better experience for both their customers and their employees.
Q: What challenges are tiling firms facing at the moment? What is Klipboard doing to help?
A: It’s a really tough environment for lots of businesses out there at the moment, and the tiling industry is no different: whether that’s cost-of-living pressures on tiling industry’s customers, resulting in more fragile demand, an increase in shipping or fuel costs, or having your product stranded or delayed in a container somewhere.
Many tile distributors are dealing with fragmented systems and manual processes with limited visibility of key areas of their business. It’s more difficult for them to respond to where that changing demand may be, identify opportunities to improve margin, or determine where costs are suddenly increasing.
For any tile merchant or distributor under that sort of pressure, it’s more important than ever to have a partner like Klipboard that not only has the skills and experience within the tiling market, but has software specifically designed for their industry. Where ERP One can really help a tiling business is not only forecasting and purchase control but order processing. If you’ve got a customer right there in front of you, it’s more important than ever to be able to service that order quickly and accurately; and hope to secure their repeat business of course.
Embedded payment processes are increasingly important in the market to improve cash flow, reduce errors in processing, and reduce administration which frees up your valuable employees to work on more profitable tasks. By joining these business functions together, Klipboard customers have the information that they need to make confident, rapid decisions in a time where there’s a lot of stress in the market.
Q: What role do you see AI playing in the future of the tiling industry?
A: Artificial intelligence has the potential to become a gamechanger across the whole tiling sector and really transform how businesses can make more informed decisions.
Where we see opportunities in the tiling industry are demand forecasting and inventory optimisation, sales forecasting, and pricing analysis. AI can identify trends or opportunities; uncover insights that might take many hours of manual analysis to realise and present those insights in an actionable way so they can take advantage.
AI is only going to be as effective as the depth and quality data that you feed it. Businesses need to have strong operational processes and a secure, modern technology platform that provides accurate connected data in the first place. The most successful companies will bring together their industry, domain and customer knowledge and use AI to strengthen the service they can provide to customers. We’ll get the best gains from AI if it enables and strengthens people, not replaces them.
Q: Is the importance of sustainability growing or diminishing?
A: Sustainability is increasingly important across the whole construction supply chain, not just the tiling industry. Whilst many businesses are understandably focusing on the environmental aspects, I think a lot of sustainability links back into operational efficiency. Companies that are reducing waste, optimising their stock levels and improving their delivery planning – for example, making sure that heavy goods like tiles are in the right place at the right time to reduce fuel costs – will contribute to broader business performance while helping meet environmental goals as well.
Reducing excessive waste, making sure that you’ve got the inventory that you need where you need to sell it, purchasing accuracy, optimising delivery routes and logistics, minimising paper-based processes through digitisation and the use of mobile apps, warehouse efficiency: all of these things are part of the broader sustainability push. All of this requires strong operational control, and that’s what modern ERP systems deliver.
Q: What are some common misconceptions around ERP technology in the tiling industry?
A: I think one of the most common ones is that ERP systems like Klipboard provides are only relevant to large organisations, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. In practice, many of those smaller, growing tile distributors and merchants may see the greatest benefits, because they’re trying to manage increased complexity, opportunity and demand with limited software capability.
Underpinning that is a long-standing view that implementing a new ERP system is primarily a technology project. And whilst obviously a technology boost is an outcome, with Klipboard it’s a shared business improvement initiative with joint goals to make sure that business is achieving ROI from faster and accurate decision-making, integrated processes, improved cash flow and profit.
And finally, I think there’s also a belief that an ERP implementation will always be very disruptive and very difficult. ERP systems are at the heart of how businesses work day-to-day, and therefore if it’s going to be too risky and create significant upheaval, why invest?
Modern solutions with the right partner – supported by the industry-specific expertise that Klipboard has and the proven deployment methodologies that we use – de-risks adoption and is sensitive that a business needs to keep moving forward whilst the implementation is occurring in parallel. As an expert in the industry, we see this every day and have a proven record in successfully helping customers through any change.
Q: What is Klipboard’s core message to the market?
A: We recognise the tile industry is going through a sustained period of change and challenge, and businesses are under real pressure to deliver better customer experiences that makes their business stand out in a competitive market.
The businesses that will thrive over the next decade will be the ones that are able to combine that deep industry and product expertise with modern connected technology.
Klipboard is primed and ready to continue to support this space, as we have been doing for decades, helping merchants and distributors modernise their operations. Klipboard isn’t just providing a software solution, we view ourselves as long-term partners helping tile businesses become stronger, more efficient, and ultimately more profitable operations in the future.
www.klipboard.com
