RFMS CEO Wheat Helped Bring Efficiency to Retailin

Northport, AL, October 16, 2006--In the late 1970s, Terry Wheat took a hard look at the way he was running his growing carpet business, according to the Tuscaloosa News. He realized his employees were spending a lot of time on administrative tasks -- payroll, billing and inventory control. He knew he could save time and money if he could develop a more efficient way to handle those functions. So he turned to the emerging world of computer technology. Wheat spent $7,000 on an IBM XT computer with a 4.77-MHz processor and 10 MB of hard drive -- a fraction of the memory packed in an Apple iPod -- and began to develop software that is now used by floor-covering businesses around the world. “Managing all of those functions, and managing them well and in a proactive way, was difficult to do manually," said Wheat, the owner of Wheat’s Carpet One, during an interview Wednesday. To really grow, he said, he had to automate those tasks. There was available software, but none tailored to the floor-covering industry. So he hired a computer programmer who designed a database. He soon realized that he would have to develop the software himself because he knew the business. The program he started using at his carpet store in 1984 became the software company RFMS, which originally stood for Retail Flooring Management System. It’s now Resource and Financial Management Systems, which employs about 80 people in an office in Palisades Court off Skyland Boulevard. Carpet vendors noticed the success Wheat was having with his software at his own business and began spreading the word to their other clients. He had not originally considered marketing the software, but by the end of 1985, carpet dealers in Alabama, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Colorado were using Wheat’s product to run their businesses in a new way. “We built software that makes businesses more competitive and profitable," Wheat said, by eliminating the time it took to manually complete all the tasks involved with doing business. The software controls functions from the beginning to the end of a sale, such as estimating costs, ordering flooring from suppliers, scheduling and managing accounts and monthly statements -- prompting the user at each step. Many of those functions wouldn’t be addressed until the end of a sale, Wheat said. The streamlined, computerized method simplifies that and ensures that work is completed when a job is done. Paavo Hanninen, director of the Small Business Development Center at the University of Alabama said that the success and growth of Wheat’s business is that he understood the industry and the nuances of running a retail business. “That gave him a keen insight into developing the original software and then as he reached out to other carpet retailers. Since he was carpet retailer he intuitively knew what they would like to have in an information system, what they needed to know and to have at their fingertips," he said. “Bottom line? There is no substitute for experience. He understood its value for his own company and went from there." Today, more than two decades after Wheat started using the software in his own store, about 3,500 to 4,000 businesses operating 7,000 to 8,000 stores use it. The businesses pull in annual revenues from $800,000 to $350,000 million and are in every state as well as Canada, Australia, England and Dubai. Al Feldman, senior vice president and CFO of Guy Floor Services in Denver, began using RFMS software at his stores in 1991. “Because Terry is a flooring guy, he’s been able to meet the needs of the flooring industry," he said. “In any industry, that’s a critical aspect when it comes to software development." He said that when he chose RFMS, it was one of the very few programmers at the time that dealt specifically with the carpet business. “They are the most well-used and well-known. Their strength is inventory and o