SuperCat, Upward Technologies Partner Up

April 2, 2012  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Retail Technology on April 3, 2012 SuperCat Solutions and Upward Technologies have partnered to integrate a robust barcode-based showroom order-scanning solution with an iPad-based road-sales app.

The new agreement enables SuperCat to provide total integration of a proven showroom solution, a leading sales extranet portal, and its iPad-based sales app, eCat.

"We want to offer our clients the best of all worlds," said Steve Thrasher, president of SuperCat Solutions, developer of the eCat sales presentation and order taking tool for road sales reps. "We've already integrated eCat and the well established FurnishWEB sales and product information portal. Our collaboration with Upward Technologies will enable manufacturers to let sales reps use eCat to efficiently take orders at trade shows while at the same time ensuring reliability and a good experience for customers and reps. Orders scanned into eCat will wirelessly sync with a showroom server to provide robust order processing and real time sales reporting for management, making eCat an all around tool for both the road and showroom."

OrderXpert from Upward Technologies, a company that has offered showroom order scanning solutions for the home furnishings industry for more than ten years, is a full featured, server-based showroom order entry solution. eCat, developed by SuperCat Solutions, provides an iPad-based sales presentation and order taking tool specifically designed to meet the needs of companies and sales representatives who sell a visual product on the road for the home furnishings, lighting, and gift industries. FurnishWEB is a manufacturer portal for the home furnishings industry, enabling manufacturers to share product and order information with their retail and design customers, sales reps, and staff over a secure Web site.
 
"Companies already using eCat will be able to begin running OrderXpert in their showroom in a matter of minutes and use the same eCat iPad app they are familiar with, saving substantial setup and training time while providing critical showroom specific features," said Matt Ridge, owner of Upward Technologies.  "Additionally, our OrderXpert customers can now implement iPads in their showrooms without losing the features they need.  Showrooms can even mix handheld scanners with iPads to give their sales associates the flexibility to use the tools that best suit their needs."

The benefits of the SuperCat Solutions and Upward Technologies collaboration include:
* Data is maintained in a single location greatly reducing maintenance cost.
* iPads already used by reps on the road can be mixed with hand-held barcode scanners used by staff that do not have iPads.   All devices talk to the same server.
* To keep order entry fast and simple, complex rules-based Market discounts and promotions can be hosted on the server rather than on the OrderXpert hand-held device.
* Server based printing is generally faster and more reliable than printing directly from iPads.
* Because Internet connectivity can be notoriously unreliable during trade shows, OrderXpert and eCat work over a local network instead of requiring an Internet connection.
* The OrderXpert support team attends all the major Markets to offer on-site tech support. 
* OrderXpert offers a rich variety of reports that enable companies to track sales progress throughout Market.
* Multiple backups are kept on the server and on the iPads to ensure data security.

"Collaboration with companies like Upward Technologies and FurnishWEB that are specialists in their fields and have spent many years developing a great product, enables us to offer the very best solutions to our clients," Thrasher said. "Partnerships help each of us to focus and become better at our primary businesses. For SuperCat, that means we can devote full attention to the continued development of eCat as the best, most reliable, and easiest to use sales app on the Market."