Chicago—Project Summit. It’s the big news coming out of the Cyncly Connects Flooring event, which took place here May 20-22. What is Project Summit? To put it simply it’s the company’s new cloud-based and AI-supported ERP system.
But it’s much more than that.
First, the new ERP system aims to unite the company’s current and future retail partners under one fluid system that is not only scalable but future proof. Today, Cyncly’s retail partners have access to RFMS Next, which was launched last year and is its latest ERP system, as well as ERPs within RollMaster and Pacific Solutions. Project Summit will not piggyback off any of these previous systems but will be an entirely new architecture capable of tasks and services the others simply are not.
“If you are a Pacific Solutions customer, you’re on the path to Summit; if you’re a Rollmaster customer, you’re on the path to Summit; if you’re an RFMS customer, you’re on the path to Summit,” said Mark Lukianchuk, general manager, Cyncly Flooring.
And while that is true, it does not mean that any dealer needs to leave their current ERP. “You are safe where you are,” explained Kurt Wilson, director of product management. “We will continue to support the existing solutions that you’re using. We recognize that this is a journey. The timelines you saw, it’s not a deadline, it’s not saying that by ‘X year’ you have to leave your current platform. This is our commitment to providing you with a modern, cloud-native solution built for you, and you move when you’re ready.”
Future-proof features
The new ERP system will not only be cloud-based but also capable of tasks no other flooring-specific software solution has yet to provide. Granted, the product is still under construction, but Cyncly promises a bevy of features designed to bring flooring sales into the future.
“It’s almost like the gloves are off,” Wilson said. “I can dream big; we can solve problems in a completely new way. So there’s a lot of excitement, and that has trickled down all the way to everyone in the engineering organization now. It has actually been a really freeing feeling for the last few months as we’ve kicked things off.”
The new platform will, for example, support the advancement of new technologies in perpetuity. Artificial Intelligence, for example, can provide robust reporting, visualization, manage inventory and even make predictions in sales and trends, just to name some of its potential.
Summit will be AI-supported, and while some may question retails proclivity for embracing technology like artificial intelligence, Cyncly says it’s already beginning to take hold. “Every single one of the customer conversations I had [on Tuesday] involved the idea of AI, which was unprompted by me,” Wilson explained. “I had at least five customers yesterday tell me how they’re using AI. I had a 62-year-old gentleman tell me how his wife is now using AI to analyze her reports from RFMS, and now she works four days a week instead of five.”
Size, segment doesn’t matter
The fluid integration of advancing technologies like AI is just the beginning. Cyncly’s goal is to launch a next-generation product that will support the needs of any flooring dealer—regardless of size or market focus, also a first for flooring-specific software solutions.
“It’s always been known that if you’re a $2M-plus dealer, you’re a good fit for RFMS,” Lukianchuk noted. “But there are a lot of dealers out there that don’t meet that threshold. There’s an opportunity with Summit to address the needs of smaller dealers or what I call the ‘emerging big dealer.’ They can get involved with our ecosystem and start with a simpler solution that’s easier to use, which Summit will be, and grow with us. [Summit] also scales to the multi-hundred-million-dollar dealer. So the advantage of it is it actually makes our solution more accessible.”
What’s more, as the flooring retail community continues to diversify, Summit will incorporate a variety of product categories and market segments. “The biggest thing we learned during our strategic planning process last year was that somewhere around two thirds of flooring dealers sell more than flooring,” Lukianchuk explained. “And in some cases, in some segments, it’s an even higher percentage than that. They’re realizing that today it’s hard to put all your eggs in just retail; it’s hard to put all your eggs in just flooring. Yet we have systems that are not designed to accommodate that. I’ve spoken with over 200 customers since I’ve joined a year ago, and the majority dabble in or are already in—in addition to residential—commercial, new construction, multifamily, wholesale, they do all of it. What that means is they’ve had to adapt RFMS in ways that it was really not originally designed for.”
When it comes to new product categories specifically, Cyncly also has a leg up in its development of Summit. “Flooring is not the largest business unit in Cyncly,” Wilson noted. “The largest is Kitchen & Bath. And what makes that so powerful is the content—the fact that we can actually enable manufacturers around the world to design the cabinetry, etc., and then populate those into a cloud catalog where they can then be incorporated into a consumer facing design tool. Summit will incorporate all of that. We’ll have the only version of that in the world where you have a cloud catalog that contains multiple categories of living spaces; products that can be populated directly by manufacturers. So this is a complete rethink and modernization even for the flooring industry at large, being able to provide new ways for the manufacturers to engage with consumers and new ways for our dealers to expand more readily into those categories. If you’re a dealer now, and you want to expand into kitchen and bath, well, good luck. You have some work ahead of you. But Summit can solve those problems in an elegant and simple way.”
Retail input and support
Another major aspect of Project Summit is its reliance on the input of the dealers who will use it. As Lukianchuk explained, the new software will not be built in a silo with sporadic updates made on its progress. Instead, the retail community will be kept in the loop, bi-weekly, monthly and even provide input as members of its new Co-Innovation Community. This all supporting the company’s new focus on improved customer service.
“What you’re going to see now is a commitment to transparency,” Lukianchuk said during the event. “An announcement that I’m pleased to make is our Flooring Co-Innovation Community. What does that mean? It means you have a voice. It means it’s not just about what we are telling you we are building, it is getting your feedback and continuing that loop. This journey starts today.”
Michael Hirsch of The Carpet Guys in Troy Michigan is one such member of the Co-Innovation Community. His business is not a typical mom-and-pop shop with a retail showroom but an in-home sales business, which gives Cyncly a look into one of the many unique retail operations its software supports.
“Our business model is different than, I would say, 80% of the people in this room,” Hirsch told FCNews at the event. “We’ve shared best practices and ideas on how to best support an in-home organization as opposed to a brick-and-mortar/showroom-type environment. And that’s exciting because their system should not be ‘This is our system. You figure out how to use it for your business.’ It should be ‘Let’s hear about as many different types of businesses that we support and let’s build a system to support those where it’s possible.’ I don’t know that the partnership has ever been better. There’s a renewed spirit, renewed energy, renewed commitment to this collaboration.”
For more traditional retailers, the expansion into new products and market segments is poised to be a game-changer. “Carpet Weavers has used the core RFMS product that’s been around for a long time but for our builder and commercial segments we’re operating in the traditional [generic] software,” explained Michael Turner of Champaign, Ill.-based Carpet Weavers. “As the world evolves, as everything becomes more cloud- and web-based, bringing those segments and products together allows for a more cohesive experience. The biggest part now is getting from point A to point B. That’s the scary part. The concept sounds wonderful, but what’s it going to take to do the conversion and have it be seamless for our sales staff, which is what it’s really about. Hopefully we can be a part of it as it grows, as it enhances—contribute to that process. It’s exciting.”
