Touch and go
Business Micros’ new Touch Vendor remote selling software for installers goes live on January 6, and will be available to purchase from the website at bm-touch.co.uk/installer.
It gives installers everything they need to sell more easily in today’s post-Covid world, the company said. It also comes with a month’s free trial to allow users to see the difference the software could make to their business.
Touch Vendor is an easy-to-use lead generation, quoting and ordering tool that installers can easily add to their existing websites. It has been designed to be supremely flexible to suit the way that installation businesses need to work now and in the future.
In lead generation mode, it’s a user-friendly design tool that web visitors can use to create their choice of doors and windows online and submit an enquiry via the website. This can then be instantly converted into a quote and priced up automatically with no re-processing.
In virtual sales mode, it lets installers use a more advanced design tool to create fully specced windows and doors themselves on a screen shared with the customer and, in field sales and survey mode, it adds in measurements so that the homeowner gets a quote in real time during a socially distanced sales visit.
Users of Touch Vendor select the list of products they sell from a menu within the system and add their own colours and logo to personalise their version. They can quote on multiple products on one customer enquiry and add in their own live pricing options, which they can turn on or off depending on which mode they are using.
Touch Vendor also allows installers to manage enquiries and generate and track quotes more easily via their own Vendor account. This is where the enquiries land from homeowners and where installers edit the enquiry and make any necessary additions, before adding their price and automatically generating a quote via email.
The team behind the new software, which includes Business Micros and The Consultancy, point out that there are three important factors that set Touch Vendor apart from the other online sales tools that have risen in popularity since the start of the pandemic.
The first is that it uses accurate product data sourced and continually updated by Business Micros using the master datasets from the industry’s leading profile suppliers. Vendor contains “an unrivalled” list of products, including advanced shapes and designs and all the relevant colour combinations.
Crucially, it has inbuilt knowledge of product design limitations so it will only generate a design for a product which can actually be manufactured, the company said.
The second is that it uses crafted product imagery and realistic renders created by The Consultancy to deliver a satisfying user experience and to generate impressive, professional looking paperwork and quotes.
And the third is that it is the first element in the end-to-end Touch software platform which the Business Micros Group will be rolling out to fabricators as well over the coming months. This will enable an order to go all the way from retail enquiry to online ordering, manufacturing and delivery via one fully integrated software solution.
Once Touch Portal for fabricators comes online, users of Touch Vendor will be able to choose whether to use the software in Standalone or Connect mode and sync with their chosen fabricator to generate quotes and place orders.
