Kitchen & Bath

National Tiles

National Tiles of Australia is a market leader in tiles and flooring, providing fresh design ideas and useful technical advice. National Tiles has nearly 40 stores across Australia and more than 400 team members in the tile family, selling nearly 4 million square meters of tile every year.

Selling more when showing more

In Australia’s hot climate, tiling isn’t reserved just for bathrooms and kitchen backsplashes. Whole areas of living space might be tiled, including floors in the kitchen and open areas, entryways and stairs. Tiling also often extends to outside areas including dining patios and columns.

Tile Express, a Visual CPQ solution from VividWorks, has changed the way National Tiles do business. When a builder takes on a housing project, standard tiles are chosen and calculated into the cost of the build. Builder plans are imported directly into the Tile Express solution room by room, and clients can make their tile choices and see them instantly displayed providing fast and accurate 3D visuals of the room and tiles.

"3D modelling solved the age-old problem of customers not being able to visualize the outcome of a Design Consultation in real time"  – Brian Smith, General Manager of National Tiles

Rendering mode is turned on to make nice pictures, as tiles gleam and textures show beautifully. Tile Express is providing the builder with an additional competitive edge and is helping to scale up their business.

Accurate calculation instead of careful estimation

The starting point of the project with VividWorks was to streamline the sales process, but Tile Express offers much more than just that. In one simple package, Tile Express delivers the ultimate client experience and seamlessly integrates reporting and costings to support business.

By default the customer has a few options to choose from but can upgrade tiles and lay-patterns to anything they want for an additional cost. With tiles and tiling easily taking up tens of thousands of a building budget, customers often think twice before upgrading their tiled areas. Tile Express was launched in August 2018, but National Tiles has already seen boosts to its bottom line as customers upgrade their tiling projects.

"Existing and potential new customers have certainly been excited about the offering and we see Tile Express as a key differentiator in our market."

Fixtures and fittings are selected from a large library of renders and Tile Express calculates quantities of all relevant materials, labor rates and costs. Tiny mosaic tiles up to giant tiles can be modified to fit a wall to the customer’s specifications.

In addition, waste calculation is consistent and accurate which leads to waste reduction, Smith adds.

National Tiles wanted a solution that speeds up the process by calculating quantities but got a visual sales tool that provides both clients and tilers with accurate information and ingredients for easy decision-making. The addition of the high-quality Visual CPQ sales tool to their sales process is really making a difference.

We certainly believe that what we have developed today is the tip of the iceberg, Smith states

Here are some of the benefits

Want to see how it works?

You can try the Vividworks implementation straight from their website.