THE LATEST NEWS + EVENTS

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Valsoft Corporation Enters the Marketing Automation Space with the Acquisition of DemandBridge

September 12, 2023

DemandBridge, (“DB”), a leading provider of comprehensive eCommerce tools for seamless brand management and marketing content distribution, is thrilled to announce its acquisition by Valsoft Corporation Inc. (“Valsoft”), a Montreal-based company specializing in the acquisition and development of vertical market software businesses.

DemandBridge offers a range of powerful platforms designed to address various business needs. These comprehensive solutions are expertly engineered to tackle individual business challenges by seamlessly connecting robust accounting, operational, and inventory management systems with leading multi-channel brand management and eCommerce portals. Additionally, they feature a web-based procurement solution, developed by industry professionals with an in-depth understanding of the field.

“I am thrilled to announce that DemandBridge has entered a new and exciting chapter by joining the Valsoft family. This decision reflects our commitment to ensuring the continued growth and success of DemandBridge. With Valsoft's extensive expertise and resources, we are confident that DemandBridge will not only thrive but also reach new heights in delivering innovative marketing automation solutions to our valued clients." - Dave Rich, CEO DemandBridge

In addition to these platform-specific benefits, DemandBridge provides a wide array of advantages, including cloud-based services for flexibility and scalability, customizable marketing tools through a software-as-a-service model, enhanced data management, advanced integration options, improved reporting capabilities, upgraded sourcing technology for cost savings, and a commitment to agile development with continuous updates driven by user input.

“DemandBridge offers an unmatched end-to-end solution for Marketing Automation” said Gustavo Vargas, Operating Partner at Aspire Software, the operating division of Valsoft. “We are excited about the opportunities this collaboration brings and look forward to leveraging the combined expertise and resources to provide transformative solutions for DemandBridge clients. This acquisition represents a significant milestone in our growth trajectory, and we are thrilled about the immense opportunities it brings to drive success and create a brighter future for both Valsoft and DemandBridge.”

About DemandBridge

With over 4 million registered users and 10,000 brands spanning various industries, DemandBridge's platform empowers distributors to comprehensively address their customers' marketing and sales needs, from traditional hard goods to full digital content distribution. The fully integrated platform streamlines time-consuming marketing tasks through a user-friendly interface that adheres to brand standards, fostering strong customer relationships and positioning providers as trusted partners.

About Valsoft Corporation

Valsoft Corporation acquires and develops vertical market software companies through which each business can deliver the best mission-critical solutions for customers in their respective industries or niche. A key tenet of Valsoft’s philosophy is to invest in well-established businesses and foster an entrepreneurial environment that shapes a company into a leader in its respective industry. Unlike private equity and VC firms, Valsoft does not have a predefined investment horizon and looks to buy, hold, and create value through long-term partnerships with existing management and customers.

Valsoft was represented internally by David Felicissimo (General Counsel) and Ssin Choi (Senior Legal Counsel), DemandBridge was represented internally by Mark Bruno (Legal & Commercial, Acting VP) and externally by DLA Piper.

For more information on the companies, please visit www.demandbridge.com or www.valsoftcorp.com.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q3 2023

August 31, 2023

DemandBridge is excited to report some of the many developments we have been working on this past quarter, related to product enhancements and new integrations. We strive to provide constant improvements to products, services, and customer support.

In this quarterly review, we'll feature highlights from the DB Commerce platform:

Introducing Office Products Integration within DB Commerce: Revolutionizing Your Ordering Experience—We are thrilled to unveil a game-changing addition to our already powerful DB Commerce platform—the Office Products Integration. In our continuous pursuit of enhancing your ordering capabilities, we have partnered with Essendant to seamlessly merge their extensive catalog of office supplies with the DB Commerce experience.

Introducing Office Products Integration within DB Commerce Revolutionizing Your Ordering Experience

We are thrilled to unveil a game-changing addition to our already powerful DB Commerce platform—the Office Products Integration. In our continuous pursuit of enhancing your ordering capabilities, we have partnered with Essendant to seamlessly merge their extensive catalog of office supplies with the DB Commerce experience. This innovation opens a world of possibilities, allowing you to order printed documents, personalized templates, promotional products, and office supplies all within the same, user-friendly session.

A Universe of Office Supplies at Your Fingertips

With this integration, we bring you a universe of office supplies, from essentials like paper and pens to larger items such as furniture and cutting-edge technology. Now, you can conveniently shop for everything you need for your office or business, all in one place, streamlining your procurement process like never before.

Effortless Navigation and Search

Our catalog navigation and search functionalities have been meticulously designed to empower you with swift and precise item discovery. Whether you're searching for school supplies, ergonomic furniture, or the latest in tech gadgets, DB Commerce's intuitive interface ensures you find what you need, when you need it.

Seamless Shopping, Familiar Workflow

We understand that a seamless shopping experience is paramount to your productivity. That's why we've ensured that our office products integration seamlessly blends with the familiar item display and checkout workflow of DB Commerce. Now, ordering office supplies is as effortless as ever, and these items can be effortlessly combined with your existing orders for maximum convenience.

Complementing EQ Commerce Office Products Solution

We understand that some of our clients are already utilizing the EQ Commerce office products solution. Rest assured, the integration with DB Commerce is here to complement, not replace. Our dedicated implementation team stands ready to guide you through the setup process, ensuring a smooth transition and enabling automatic price and item file uploads for your convenience.

Contact Us for More Information

For further insights into how our new office products integration can elevate your ordering experience, please do not hesitate to reach out to our dedicated implementation team at service@demandbridge.com. We're here to help you unlock the full potential of DB Commerce, making your procurement process more efficient and effective than ever before. Welcome to a new era of office product ordering with DB Commerce.

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July 17, 2023

In an important article from PPAI, the record year experienced by the Promo Industry in 2022 is laid out and discussed.

A few questions explored were:

• Is this record growth sustainable?

• What factors were in play?

Additionally:

• How do we take advantage of this growth?

• How do we increase our business when our staff is already fully tasked?

• How can our staff spend less time on manual tasks and more time servicing customers?

• How do we grow without adding additional staff?

• How do we improve our quote-to-order process to ensure we win more business?

If you find yourself asking those same questions with your business in mind, DemandBridge’s solution, DB Sourcing, may be for you.

In today’s evolving business landscape, gaining a competitive edge and expanding your print and promotional business requires adopting innovative strategies and keeping up with changing market trends. DB Sourcing is the only solution that offers a complete quote-to-order process for all of your customers' printing and promotional products needs. With over one hundred print templates to work from and a direct integration to Sage, your team will save hours every day that can be used to service your customers and improve satisfaction. Labor is your largest cost, why not make them as effective as possible and help them thrive with additional time.

Take control of the most significant function affecting your profitability … the procurement of goods and services you sell with DB Sourcing.

13% Increase over 2021 sales

PPAI noted that a 13% increase over 2021 total sales suggests that the industry has fully rebounded from the unprecedented circumstances of the first year of the pandemic. With this rebound, comes an opportunity to further your businesses growth and profitability.

With DB Sourcing, businesses can streamline their procurement processes by centralizing and automating various aspects of: vendor management, purchasing, and order tracking. This can lead to increased efficiency, reduced costs, and time savings, ultimately improving profitability.

“Distributors and end buyers are increasingly incorporating promotional products as part of their integrated marketing strategy, resulting in a higher share of their budgets being devoted to promo.”

As businesses expand and grow, managing procurement can become more complex. DB Sourcing can offer scalability, allowing businesses to handle increased procurement volumes without compromising efficiency or profitability. It can also provide tools and features that support growth initiatives and enable businesses to seize new opportunities.

“People are really starting to understand that the cost per impression, and the return on the investment of a promotional product and the longevity of it, has such tremendous value relative to other forms of advertising.”

With the increased significance of Promotional Products in our customers’ growth strategies, DemandBridge is proud to partner with SAGE to offer a host of capabilities within the DB Sourcing product to enhance our web-based procurement solution.

DB Sourcing is popular amongst customers due to its:

✔ EASE OF USE AND TRAINING OF NEW STAFF

✔ JOB STATUS DASHBOARD ON ALL PROJECTS

✔ QUICK & SEAMLESS QUOTE-TO-ORDER WORKFLOW FOR ALL PRINT/DISPLAY/POP/POS/PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS

Additional network of suppliers who are vetted in our industry and can give you complete domestic coverage and some international solutions.

Now offering a complete backless platform so you can connect DB Sourcing to any back-office system!

To read the whole article from PPAI, please click the link below.

https://media.ppai.org/ppai-magazine/what-makes-a-record-year-for-promo

To learn more about DB Sourcing and see a demo, please reach out to productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

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Seizing Global Markets: DemandBridge-Peecho Partnership Offers Print Flexibility Worldwide

June 28, 2023

Marketing and sales automation platform DemandBridge and Print-on-Demand provider Peecho have entered a partnership to offer DemandBridge clients unlimited print flexibility. Benefits for DB clients include localized printing, procurement, and immediate local tax compliance for international print orders, so they can enter new international markets with confidence.

Peecho's checkout software is now integrated with DemandBridge’s DB Commerce platform. This integration enables users to order printed materials directly from the platform. It removes the complexities associated with legal and tax regulations, allowing DemandBridge clients to expand into international markets more easily.

Furthermore, Peecho’s global network and localized printing approach not only benefits the environment, but also minimizes shipping and logistics issues. It provides clients with the most efficient, cost-effective and sustainable print experience to date.

Streamlined Competitive Advantage Boost

Glenn Miller, President Distributor Management Solutions at DemandBridge, expressed his excitement about the partnership: “This will revolutionize how our clients approach their print logistics on a global scale. By expanding our DB Commerce platform with a robust global print network, DemandBridge is empowering them to think globally and streamline their printing processes. Aside from extending their reach into new international markets, it enhances their customer service and boosts their competitive advantage. In the end, this provides them with a more predictable cost structure, faster supply chain times, and a seamless printing experience."

Sustainable International Focus

Lachlan Hicks, Partnerships and New Market Development Manager at Peecho, added: "We're excited about the possibilities that this partnership offers. DemandBridge has been a huge player in the US eCommerce ecosystem for many years. Now that we've teamed up to enable international ordering capabilities, we're confident domestic and international clients will be thrilled to collaborate on a global scale."

About DemandBridge

Offering a wide range of tools for marketing asset creation and distribution, DemandBridge is a leading marketing and sales automation platform. Among their clientele are Fortune 500 companies in industries such as Retail, Healthcare, Franchise, Financial, Energy, Non-Profit and Distributorships. For more information, please visit demandbridge.com or call 800.448.1484.

About Peecho

Peecho offers global enterprises an effortless way to fulfill their global print needs through easy-to-use software. Their ‘plug and print’ solutions give global marketing teams access to print, whenever and wherever they want. The result: lower printing costs, drastic carbon reductions and unequaled global brand consistency. For more information, please visit peecho.com.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q2 2023

June 5, 2023

In this quarterly review, we'll feature highlights from DB Distributor and our NEW EQ Link platform:

Enhanced Cash Receipts Gateway & New Search Utility in DB Distributor - A new utility program is available in the Accounts Receivable module of DB Distributor that allows existing AR Invoices to be matched up with qualifying prepayment entries, and at the same time, allows these invoices to be paid off with these matching prepayments at the user’s discretion. The cash receipts gateway has also been enhanced with the ability to import prepayments in bulk.
Introducing EQ Link: Streamlining Your eCommerce and DB Distributor Back Office Integration - We are thrilled to announce the launch of EQ Link, a cutting-edge technology solution that seamlessly connects your DB Distributor back-office system with our EQ Commerce storefront platform. With EQ Link, you can now experience enhanced efficiency and productivity in managing your online business.

The Cash Receipts Gateway and the new Search Utility for prepayments can be used in combination to:

1. Import prepayments in DB Distributor

2. Apply the payments to invoices in the future

There are two parts to this workflow:

1. The Cash Receipts Gateway module has been enhanced to allow the import of prepayments in bulk. (It is possible to manually enter prepayments as well if the user chooses to do so)

a. Click here to view the “Cash Receipts Gateway layout” document for the import file specifications.

2. A Search Utility has been created that can match up any available prepayments with open invoices for a range of customers.

a. Click here to view the “Pre-payments and Invoices Utility” document for details.

Introducing EQ Link: Streamlining Your eCommerce and DB Distributor Back Office Integration

We are thrilled to announce the launch of EQ Link, a cutting-edge technology solution that seamlessly connects your DB Distributor back-office system with our EQ Commerce storefront platform. With EQ Link, you can now experience enhanced efficiency and productivity in managing your online business.

Key Features:

Simplified Integration: EQ Link acts as the bridge between your DB/d back office and EQ Commerce, enabling smooth and seamless communication between the two platforms.
Automated Data Import: Client information, shipping locations, item details, and inventory data from your DB/d back-office system are automatically imported into EQ Commerce, eliminating the need for manual data entry, and reducing the risk of errors.
Easy Editing and Updates: Easily edit and update eCommerce details, images, and descriptions directly within the EQ Commerce platform, providing you with full control over your online storefront's appearance and content.
Unified Order Processing: EQ Link enables the synchronization of EQ Commerce orders with DB/d back-office processing, ensuring a streamlined workflow from order placement to fulfillment.

Benefits:

Expanded eCommerce Options: EQ Link offers you an additional eCommerce option while supporting the functionality of your trusted DB/d back-office system, giving you the flexibility to choose the platform that best suits your business needs.
Enhanced Administrative Control: EQ Link provides administrators with easy access to update permissions and make necessary adjustments, granting you full control over your eCommerce operations.
Improved Workflow Efficiency: By integrating your back office and eCommerce platforms, EQ Link streamlines the entire process, eliminating redundant tasks and reducing manual effort. This leads to improved productivity and a more efficient workflow.
Seamless Configuration: Set up items in DB/d for inventory and accounting purposes, and effortlessly configure them within EQ Link to deliver a seamless and personalized EQ Commerce storefront experience for your customers.

EQ Link is the ultimate solution for businesses seeking a seamless integration between their DB Distributor back office and eCommerce platforms. Discover the power of this revolutionary technology and unlock new levels of productivity and efficiency in managing your online business.

Contact productinquiries@demandbridge.com to get started!

Haven't seen EQ Commerce yet? Let us show you!

With EQ Commerce, you can deliver a clean, functional, and branded site to your customers with an improved site design and streamlined workflow. Through dynamically generated login pages, universal site customization, and more, EQ Commerce is a reliable online shopping cart tool, now integrated with DB Distributor.

Contact productinquiries@demandbridge.com to get setup and activate EQ Commerce! Your customers will thank you!

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q1 2023

February 15, 2023

In this quarterly review, we'll feature highlights from DB Commerce and DB Sourcing:

What's New with Checkout in DB Commerce - DB Commerce administrators have long been able to maintain a variety of settings related to checkout options. We've recently added the ability for customers to now check out with Distributed Checkout. Distributed Checkout allows the user to maintain one cart but indicate multiple shipping destinations for that singular cart.
Real Time Freight with Additional Carriers in DB Commerce - DB Commerce has integrated with a third-party API to offer real time freight calculations at checkout for carriers such as FedEx, USPS, and DHL. These are in addition to UPS, which has been available for several years now. This capability is especially important on sites offering credit card checkout, where the user's card is charged at checkout for the order amount including freight charges.
Simplifying the Quote-to-Order Workflow for Promotional Products with DB Sourcing and SAGE - DemandBridge is proud to partner with SAGE to offer a host of capabilities within the DB Sourcing product to enhance our web-based procurement solution. DB Sourcing is popular amongst customers due to its ease of use, job status dashboard, and quick and seamless quote-to-order workflow.

What's New with Checkout

DB Commerce administrators have long been able to maintain a variety of settings related to checkout options. We’ve recently added the ability for customers to now checkout with Distributed Checkout. Distributed Checkout allows the user to maintain one cart but indicate multiple shipping destinations for that singular cart. The cart contents are sent only once to the allocated ship to locations and billed to an individual cost center, credit card, or additional option to bill to the selected shipping locations. Each shipping location receives it own order number and is sent to the back office.

Distributed Shipping does not support:

Approvals
Custom Ship To Locations
Shipping Attention To Field
Shipping Misc Fields
Shipping Delivery Instructions
Coupons
Spending Accounts
Split Billing (Single select only credit card or cost center)
Customizable Items

This feature will be available on February 16th and can be enabled under the New Distributor Admin > Checkout > Permissions.

Real Time Freight with Additional Carriers

DB Commerce has integrated with a third party API to offer real time freight calculations at checkout for carriers such as FedEx, USPS and DHL. These are in addition to UPS, which has been available for several years now. This capability is especially important on sites offering credit card checkout, where the user’s card is charged at checkout for the order amount including freight charges.

Details are gathered for the order (item weights, ship from and ship to data), then communicated via the API to obtain the freight amount for the order. This ensures a level of accuracy above and beyond freight estimators or matrices. While this was possible for UPS already, we are pleased to answer the request for FedEx with a solution that may be used for multiple carriers without further development.

The DB Commerce team is ready to assist customers who would like to enable this capability. Team members will work with you to configure this for the each of the shipping methods you would like to offer. You may include a mix of carriers, as well as real time freight or estimated options.

Simplifying the Quote-to-Order Workflow for Promotional Products with DB Sourcing and SAGE

With the increased significance of Promotional Products in our industry, it is imperative to have an efficient and streamlined workflow to enable your business to make the biggest impact. Our integration with SAGE will allow just that. The SAGE Connect API offers a host of services to facilitate the transfer of product, category, vendor, and order information.

With these tools, users can continue to utilize SAGE as they do today to execute product searches, create presentations, and more, but cut down on the eventual re-keying of pricing and spec information into the DemandBridge products they ultimately use to manage projects, propose pricing, and place orders. With this latest integration, we leverage real-time product information coming directly from SAGE, including imagery, pricing, and specifications.

From the promo project creation page, users can render out specifications and product data directly from SAGE. Users can then employ DB Sourcing to send that proposal to their customer before going on to submit a purchase order to awarded suppliers. Along the way, users can monitor the progress of these jobs and actions taken alongside their “print” projects from their job status dashboard, manage attachments, and interact with their colleagues within the context of their electronic file jacket.

Perhaps most notably, DB Sourcing facilitates the hand-off of the order to the user’s ERP system to handle the downstream processing and accounting functions like customer and vendor invoicing – thus eliminating any manual intervention.

For more information, please visit our website at https://www.demandbridge.com/sageintegration.

To sign-up for the DB Sourcing SAGE integration, please email productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

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DemandBridge Partners with SAGE for Latest Integration in DB Sourcing to Power Quote-to-Order Workflow for Promotional Products

January 5, 2023

DemandBridge, LLC, (DB) a dominant Marketing Automation Platform provider to approximately 500 Marketing/Print Services firms, announces their latest integration with SAGE to power the quote-to-order workflow for promotional products.

Distributors, Suppliers, and Agencies have long relied on DemandBridge software to power their businesses – often alongside solutions from other mission-critical technology partners. With the increased significance of Promotional Products in our customers’ growth strategies, DemandBridge is proud to partner with SAGE to offer a host of capabilities within the DB Sourcing product. The SAGE Connect API offers many services to facilitate the transfer of product, category, vendor, and order information to and from applications like ours.

The DB Sourcing solution was the logical first candidate for bringing SAGE data directly to the DemandBridge product suite. Customers utilize this web-based procurement solution for its ease of use, job status dashboard, and other features aimed at slashing the time it takes to get from quote to order. With this latest integration, we leverage real-time product information coming directly from SAGE, including imagery, pricing, and specifications to populate customer proposal documents. Users can then employ DB Sourcing to send that proposal to their customer before submitting a purchase order to awarded suppliers.

“This latest integration with SAGE is truly exciting,” said David Rich, Chairman and CEO at DemandBridge. “Our relationship with SAGE has always been strong, and this was the next logical step in enhancing our customers’ User Experience. We are eager for our customers to take advantage of these added capabilities which are sure to make their use of DemandBridge technology more seamless and efficient than ever before. As always, our goal at DemandBridge is to provide the most cutting-edge technology to our customers, and this is an exciting milestone in that journey.”

“We are thrilled to be integrating with DemandBridge to help improve efficiencies for print and promo distributors,” said Jarod Thorndike, Vice President of Business Development. “We continuously strive to improve our relationships and build on the comprehensive services we can offer our integrated partners.”

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q4 2022

November 3, 2022

DemandBridge is excited to report a new development we have been working on this past quarter, related to product enhancements and new integrations. We strive to provide constant improvements to products, services, and customer support.

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

Prepayments & Invoice Utility in DB Distributor - A new utility program is available in the Accounts Receivable module of DB Distributor that allows existing AR invoices to be matched up with qualifying prepayment entries, and at the same time, allows these invoices to be paid off with these matching prepayments at the user’s discretion. The cash receipts gateway has also been enhanced with the ability to import prepayments.
New EQ Commerce Customization Options - EQ Commerce customization was just made easier with the latest enhancements added to the site customization options. We have expanded the use of Primary and Secondary colors in EQ Commerce Setup throughout the site to allow for a uniquely branded look to match your company’s brand standards.
DB Reporting: Core DB Distributor Operational Reports Have Been Redesigned Using Power BI, Are Now Available Via DB Sourcing - This latest development effort was aimed at reimagining some of the most sought-after and commonly used DB Distributor reports…and making them accessible from anywhere on the web, right from within our DB Sourcing product. Beyond just simply replicating the existing row-and-column-based reports, we took this opportunity to design the reports in such a way that key metrics are called out, and data is visualized using interactive widgets that help to inspire new insights.
Global Manufacturing Solutions - DemandBridge is excited to share that we have partnered with a leading global print/fulfillment provider to enable clients to think globally about their print logistics. Because of this partnership, clients and customers will soon be able to run their global print needs through a single DB Commerce site.

Prepayments and Invoices Utility

A new utility program is available in the Accounts Receivable module of DB Distributor that allows existing AR invoices to be matched up with qualifying prepayment entries, and at the same time, allows these invoices to be paid off with these matching prepayments at the user’s discretion.

The Cash Receipts Gateway has also been enhanced with the ability to import prepayments. This is especially useful to record payments for customers when the corresponding orders and invoices are not yet present in DB Distributor. This is often the case when distributors use external eCommerce systems that allow credit card orders. The “Prepayments and Invoices Utility” is available under the Accounts Receivable > Cash Receipts section of the DB Distributor application menu.

When the utility is selected, the user is presented with a selection screen where the range of customers and invoices can be specified. The utility will limit the search to within the specified range of customers and invoices. To include the entire set of open AR invoices across all customers, use [FIRST – LAST] as the desired range for both customers and invoice numbers.

The Fiscal Year, Accounting Period, Bank Code, and Deposit Number are required to be able to initiate the search for invoices. If the search does find matches in the next screen, these values are used for creating a Cash Receipts entry batch where the prepayments can be applied to the matching invoices.

The criteria used to match prepayments and invoices are:

The prepayment must not have any “Cash In Progress” and must have a non-zero open balance.
The invoice must also not have any “Cash In Progress” and must have a non-zero open balance.
The value in the Cust PO field of the prepayment entry matches one of the following: -The DB/d order number of the invoice entry -The Cust PO number of the invoice entry

The user can select and de-select matches from the list to control which prepayments should be applied to the corresponding invoices.

Clicking “Apply Payments” will result in a Cash Receipts Entry batch containing the selected prepayments applied to the matching AR invoices. The user will be expected to review the Cash Receipts journal and update the batch as per usual.

The “Prepayments and Invoices Utility” can be used in combination with the Cash Receipts Gateway to import prepayments in bulk and then apply the prepayments to the matching invoices later in a convenient manner.

Before applying prepayments:

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After applying prepayments:

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New EQ Commerce Customization Options

EQ Commerce customization was just made easier with the latest enhancements added to the site customization options. Take advantage of these new options to deliver a completely branded site to your customers. Continue reading to learn how recent improvements have advanced the customization options for our EQ Commerce users.

We have expanded the use of Primary and Secondary colors in EQ Commerce Setup throughout the site to allow for a uniquely branded look to match your company’s brand standards.

Start customizing your site with these new customization options:

Select a primary and secondary color to update the entire site in seconds
Choose from three different color display options for the header navigation bar

If you are currently using the EQ Commerce platform, you can take advantage of these new customization settings now by logging into Distributor Admin.

If you do not have EQ Commerce and are interested in these features, please reach out to productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

DB Reporting: Core DB Distributor Operational Reports Have Been Redesigned Using Power BI, Are Now Available via DB Sourcing

We’re pleased to announce an expansion of our DB Reporting offering, powered by Microsoft Power BI data visualizations. At DemandBridge, we’ve been touting our decision to convert many of our reporting solutions using various underlying technologies to Power BI reports for some time now. From the ability to export report contents to Excel, a common means of warehousing data, modern dashboarding techniques, the potential to take advantage of other Microsoft capabilities (e.g. Machine Learning), and more, the benefits of building our reports using Power BI are endless. Not to mention, we’ve opened the door to new partnerships with Power BI experts in our industry whom we can entrust to execute customer requests and build new reports, thus freeing up our in-house engineers to focus on developing our core products.

This latest development effort was aimed at reimagining some of the most sought-after and commonly used DB Distributor reports… and making them accessible from anywhere on the web, right from within our DB Sourcing product. Beyond just simply replicating the existing row-and-column-based reports, we took this opportunity to design the reports in such a way that key metrics are called out, and data is visualized using interactive widgets that help to inspire new insights.

We’re continually looking for ways to strengthen the integration between the DemandBridge products to bring as many critical functions under one roof as possible. To that end, DB Sourcing emerged as a logical home for these new and improved DB/d reports given its ability to display embedded Power BI content, but also because of an increasing share of our customers’ order volume flows through that product.

Additionally, DB Sourcing offers the ability to place users into “groups”, and now, the ability to restrict certain reports to select groups. These security features help to ensure that potentially sensitive data is only exposed to the intended audience.

See below for a list of reports (grouped by their respective DB/d modules) that are now available within DB Sourcing:

Accounts Receivable

Open/Aged Invoice Report

Sales Tax Payable Report

Commissions Payable Report

Accounts Payable

Open/Aged Invoice Report

Order Processing

Order History Report

Open Orders Report

Open Purchase Order Report

Print Management

Customer Summary Bill

Warehouse Release Report

Inventory Control

Stock Status Report

Valued Inventory Report

General Ledger

Balance Sheet

Income Statement

Trial Balance Report

To learn more or to see these reports in action, please contact productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

Global Manufacturing Solutions

DemandBridge is excited to share that we have partnered with a leading global print/fulfillment provider to enable clients to think globally about their print logistics. Through providing an integrated eCommerce and global print network, DemandBridge will offer localized printing, procurement, and local tax compliance for international orders. Because of this, clients and customers will soon be able to run their global print needs through a single DB Commerce site.

Distributor Benefits at-a-glance

You will not have to establish Nexus in every country
Experience the ease of currency conversion through the joint integration
Eliminates dealing with VAT and other international taxing issues
Opens international markets that are deterred by the above
Reduces shipping and logistics issues due to international shipping within the origin of production
Reduces time spent on customer service issues regarding border logistics
You will capture a larger share of clientele's (international) business while protecting against losing additional share to other vendors who may enter through supplying unmet dead spots in coverage
Get outsourced global procurement power for setting up new offerings and developing new markets
Access to centralized global vendor management, contracts, billing, SLA's, and POC with a single organization

Customer Benefits at-a-glance

Experience a more predictable cost structure
Have a greater possibility of a single storefront for all print needs
With more predictable delivery or supply chain times
Eliminate customs risks
The products being ordered are produced in the country or region close to demand
There will be less order follow-up time for customer service

For further information on our developing global manufacturing solutions, please reach out to service@demandbridge.com. More information about this new feature will follow in upcoming promotions.

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DemandBridge Joins PPAI!

September 6, 2022

DemandBridge has some exciting news!

We are now members of PPAI! As a member of the PPAI community, we are looking forward to growth and connection with other industry leaders. Keep reading to learn more about this exciting opportunity for DemandBridge and what’s to come!

What is PPAI?

PPAI is the Promotional Products Association International, the trusted leader in the promotional products industry, delivering essential knowledge, resources, and community to ensure the success of its members.

Why did DemandBridge join?

As a member of PPAI, DemandBridge now has access to fellow print-and-promo industry leaders. Promotional products are an integral component of the print services industry and even more important is the technology solutions available to offer and promote such a mix. Companies need promotional items to help reach out to potential customers and clients -it’s just a fact. This is a very low-cost marketing method to drive growth and allow people to see your brand and remember you.

DemandBridge, as a technology provider, must keep constant tabs on industry changes and requests which is why we’re excited to show our DB Commerce Promotional Products Workflow to this vertical. We are looking forward to expanding our network in the promotional products industry by attending PPAI annual events. PPAI events are a great opportunity to share the benefits of DemandBridge technology while ensuring we continue delivering advanced and modern solutions to our customers.

What’s next for DemandBridge as a member of PPAI?

We are thrilled to be members of PPAI and plan to take full advantage of all member opportunities, including events. Last month Glenn, President, Distributor Management Solutions and Tony, President, Enterprise Marketing Solutions attended the North American Leadership Conference. At this conference, they delved into the most relevant business issues and ideas impacting the promotional products industry with an emphasis on emerging business issues, trends, and best practices. We are looking forward to many other events, including The PPAI Expo, the industry’s largest trade show next year.

As always, DemandBridge is committed to providing the best-in-class technology paired with exemplary customer service. We are confident our membership with PPAI will enable us to keep exceeding our clients’ expectations. Thank you for being a loyal DemandBridge customer, we look forward to working together for many years to come!

If you are interested in a demo on our DB Commerce Promo Product Workflow, please contact service@demandbridge.com.

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August 31, 2022

Our team at DemandBridge hopes that you are enjoying our Technology Release Series, delivering relevant highlights from software updates and improvements related to our various products. Periodically, we’ll send notifications of new and notable DemandBridge features that are available to you - our valued customers.

In today's Feature Flash, we highlight the release of the New EQ Commerce Customization Options.

New EQ Commerce Customization Options

We have expanded the use of Primary and Secondary colors in EQ Commerce Setup throughout the site to allow for a uniquely branded look to match your company’s brand standards.

Start customizing your site with these new customization options:

Select a primary and secondary color to update the entire site in seconds
Choose from three different color display options for the header navigation bar

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If you are currently using the EQ Commerce platform, you can take advantage of these new customization settings now by logging into Distributor Admin.

If you do not have EQ Commerce and are interested in these features, please reach out to service@demandbridge.com.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q3 2022

July 27, 2022

In this quarterly review, we'll feature a highlight from EQ Commerce:

Introducing EQ Link - the bridge between EQ Commerce online ordering and DB Distributor order processing. This new integration will connect EQ Commerce storefronts with DB Distributor back office.

EQ Link (NEW integration connecting EQ Commerce storefronts with DB Distributor)

We are excited to introduce EQ Link, a bridge between EQ Commerce on-line ordering and DB Distributor order processing! With EQ Commerce, you can deliver a clean, functional, and branded site to your customers with an improved site design and streamlined workflow. Through dynamically generated login pages, universal site customization, and more, EQ Commerce is a reliable online shopping cart tool, now integrated with DB Distributor.

Notable EQ Link Features:

Client’s, Ship-to’s, and items are sent from DB Distributor to EQ Link.
Once in EQ Link, the items are configured for online ordering by setting permissions, adding categories, images, and descriptions.
User Groups, Manager Approvals, Templates, and Budgets are available for setup.
Coupons can be easily setup in EQ Link.
Through EQ Link, inventory levels are sent from DB Distributor to EQ Commerce.

When using EQ Link, orders are placed in EQ Commerce and downloaded into DB Distributor, where they are processed and invoiced. The shipping and order information is then relayed back to the eCommerce site by importing from DB Distributor and exporting to EQ Commerce. Simplify the process even more by taking advantage of the auto-schedule capability. All imports and exports can be auto-scheduled! The EQ Link home menu is updated, so standard options are accessible. Stay tuned for more information as we look forward to a general release very soon!

If you have any questions about this new integration, please email productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q2 2022

April 25, 2022

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

Simplifying the Quote-to-Order Workflow for Promotional Products using DB Sourcing - With this latest integration, we leverage real-time product information coming directly from SAGE, including imagery, pricing, and specifications to populate customer proposal documents. Users can then employ DB Sourcing to send that proposal to their customer before going on to submit a purchase order to awarded suppliers.
Next Generation Q-Design Template Editor - With a brand new re-designed interface that is functional on modern browsers, template creators will love the familiar functionality with a fresh look and feel that will cut down on template creation time. Currently in Beta with an official release coming soon!
Introducing Promo Personalization Dropdown Variable in DB Commerce - The ability to incorporate a list variable with the use of company profiles has been added.

Simplifying the Quote-to-Order Workflow for Promotional Products

Distributors, Suppliers, and Agencies have long relied on DemandBridge software to power their businesses—often alongside solutions from other mission-critical technology partners. While we at DemandBridge are pleased to offer a comprehensive, fully integrated platform complete with eCommerce, ERP, Sourcing, and Reporting capabilities, we realize that our customers lean on other trusted suppliers for their operations. Opportunities often arise for us to work together with those providers and our mutual customers on points of synergy to provide an added layer of integration, and sometimes the end results of those collaborations become the most valuable and highly utilized tools on users’ workbenches…and we think our latest such example fits that bill!

Over the past several years, we’ve heard from our customers about the increased significance of Promotional Products to their growth strategies. And we’ve been happy to deliver improved eCommerce features regarding the administration and end-user display of these very dynamic types of items. However, potential still exists to add efficiency for our customers—from site builders to “order takers”—to reduce redundant data entry across systems and streamline the process of sourcing these products, and eventually getting them into customers’ hands.

That’s where our latest integration with SAGE comes into play. The SAGE® Connect API™ offers a host of services to facilitate the transfer of product, category, vendor, and order information to and from applications like ours. With these tools, users can continue to utilize SAGE as they do today to execute product searches, create presentations, and more, but cut down on the eventual re-keying of pricing and spec information into the DemandBridge products they ultimately use to manage projects, propose pricing, and place orders.

We felt that our DB Sourcing solution was the logical first candidate for bringing SAGE data directly into the DemandBridge product suite. Customers love our web-based procurement solution for its ease of use, job status dashboard, and other features aimed at slashing the time it takes to get from quote to order. DB Sourcing has been put to the test for years by users at some of the highest volume distributors in our industry, largely (though not exclusively) for printed products. It has been especially useful in reducing touchpoints and consolidating project-related correspondence into a single channel, especially for ad hoc, custom projects in need of quotes and input from many suppliers. DB Sourcing also shines as a remote order entry mechanism through which users can quickly submit orders for contracted or repeat business into their back-office accounting and inventory management system, such as our popular DB Distributor and EQ Distributor products.

With this latest integration, we leverage real-time product information coming directly from SAGE, including imagery, pricing, and specifications to populate customer proposal documents. Users can then employ DB Sourcing to send that proposal to their customer before going on to submit a purchase order to awarded suppliers. Along the way, users can monitor the progress of these jobs and actions taken alongside their “print” projects from their job status dashboard, manage attachments, and interact with their colleagues within the context of their electronic file jacket. And perhaps most notably, DB Sourcing facilitates the handoff of the order to the user’s ERP system to handle the downstream processing and accounting functions like customer and vendor invoicing—thus eliminating any copying and pasting or reentering of this data.

We’re excited to share more information and to demonstrate this new solution in the weeks and months ahead, and look forward to additional opportunities to add value and efficiencies for our customers alongside SAGE and other technology peers in the industry. In fact, our development roadmap includes a similar integration to offer this workflow to our customers using ASI’s ESP® software as well, in addition to exploring ways to make use of this real-time data transfer within our eCommerce products. Stay tuned for more to come on this and other exciting efforts in our Technology Release series, and of course, don’t hesitate to contact our team at productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

We are excited to announce the release of the much-anticipated next-generation Q-Design template editor!

With a brand new re-designed interface that is functional on modern browsers, template creators will love the familiar functionality with a fresh look and feel that will cut down on template creation time.

Features include:

Internet Explorer is no longer required! Completely new interface featuring cross-browser compatibility
Pre-existing templates are immediately editable in the new program; no conversion required
Configure Distributor Setup Users for each user accessing the editor to ensure session security and retain customized user settings
Editor tools such as font and color profile setup, variable creation, history configuration, page editing, and test template are now all accessed from the same screen. No need to navigate in and out of the page editor to make changes
Improved page navigation and editor display preferences, including page zoom, the ability to adjust display coordinates, and customizable user display settings

Our team has been dedicated to this exciting project over the last many months and is pleased to move this project into Beta with select EQ/c customers in the coming weeks. We cannot wait to share this with our users in the field!

Introducing Promo Personalization Dropdown Variable

DB Commerce users have been able to add text-based personalization to their promotional items, but we’ve recently made improvements to streamline the process for the administrator, their setup, and performance.

The ability to incorporate a list variable with the use of company profiles has been added. This change helps resolve issues around long lists of logo options presented to the end-user. This update will help decrease the load time of the Item Summary tab by no longer including this as a variant option, as well as having Chili do the work of creating a preview, rather than creating individual media files for each variation. With the use of company profiles the administrator now will only need to update and/make changes in one area, rather than on each promo personalization item when using a variant.

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April 13, 2022

In today's Feature Flash, we highlight the release of the New Mobile Responsive version of DB Commerce as previewed in a recent Quarterly Technology Release.

DB Commerce is now Mobile Responsive

Over the past several months we’ve been working hard to deliver some of the most transformative enhancements to our flagship eCommerce solution in years, and we’re excited to share these improvements with our customers. While these improvements are specific to DB Commerce, this site design and functionality will be the basis of a new Mobile Responsive version of EQ Commerce, coming soon!

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This first iteration of a Mobile Responsive eCommerce interface was designed with the critical user path and most commonly used features in mind, though we fully expect to continue adding new improvements and functionality as adoption increases. The key areas developed during this initial pass at a mobile workflow include: Login, Homepage, Catalog access, Search, Item Detail & Customization pages, Cart, Checkout, Order Confirmation, and Order History.

These improvements will be live and available for use after our April 20 software release, beginning on April 21. Configuration may be required with your payment services provider and domain registrar to support these features, so customers interested in taking advantage of this suite of features are encouraged to reach out to DemandBridge Support as soon as possible for information on next steps.

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Simplifying the Quote-to-Order Workflow for Promotional Products

April 5, 2022

DemandBridge is excited to be part of the 2022 Brand Chain Technology Showcase! Check out our feature article on how DemandBridge technology can help you simplify the quote-to-order workflow for your promotional products. Read the full article below.

Distributors, suppliers and agencies have long relied on DemandBridge software to power their businesses — often alongside solutions from other mission critical technology partners. While we at DemandBridge are pleased to offer a comprehensive, fully integrated platform complete with eCommerce, ERP, sourcing and reporting capabilities, we realize that our customers lean on other trusted suppliers for their operations.

Opportunities often arise for us to work together with those providers and our mutual customers on points of synergy to provide an added layer of integration. Sometimes the end results of those collaborations become the most valuable and highly utilized tools on users’ workbenches — and we think our latest such example fits that bill!

Over the past several years, we’ve heard from our customers about the increased significance of promotional products to their growth strategies. We’ve been happy to deliver improved eCommerce features regarding the administration and end-user display of these very dynamic types of items. However, potential still exists to add efficiency for our customers — from site builders to “order takers” — to reduce redundant data entry across systems and streamline the process of sourcing these products, and eventually getting them into customers’ hands.

That’s where our latest integration with SAGE comes into play. The SAGE® Connect API™ offers a host of services to facilitate the transfer of product, category, vendor and order information to and from applications like ours. With these tools, users can continue to utilize SAGE as they do today to execute product searches, create presentations and more, but cut down on the eventual rekeying of pricing and spec information into the DemandBridge products they ultimately use to manage projects, propose pricing and place orders.

DB Sourcing has been put to the test for years by users at some of the highest volume distributors in our industry, largely (though not exclusively) for printed products. It has been especially useful in reducing touchpoints and consolidating project-related correspondence into a single channel, especially for ad hoc, custom projects in need of quotes and input from many suppliers.

DB Sourcing also shines as a remote order entry mechanism through which users can quickly submit orders for contracted or repeat business into their back-office accounting and inventory management system, such as our popular DB Distributor and EQ Distributor products.

With this latest integration, we leverage real-time product information coming directly from SAGE, including imagery, pricing and specifications to populate customer proposal documents. Users can then employ DB Sourcing to send that proposal to their customer before going on to submit a purchase order to awarded suppliers. Along the way, users can monitor the progress of these jobs and actions taken alongside their “print” projects from their job status dashboard, manage attachments and interact with their colleagues within the context of their electronic file jacket. Perhaps most notably, DB Sourcing facilitates the handoff of the order to the user’s ERP system to handle the downstream processing and accounting functions like customer and vendor invoicing — eliminating any copying and pasting or reentering of this data.

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We’re excited to share more information and to demonstrate this new solution in the weeks and months ahead, and look forward to additional opportunities to add value and efficiencies for our customers alongside SAGE and other technology peers in the industry. In fact, our development roadmap includes a similar integration to offer this workflow to our customers using ASI’s ESP® software, in addition to exploring ways to make use of this real-time data transfer within our eCommerce products.

Stay tuned for more to come on this and other exciting efforts in our Technology Release series, and of course, don’t hesitate to contact our team at productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

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February 21, 2022

Michelle has helped guide DemandBridge's product development for 21 years and has filled key roles in engineering, product development, and most recently served as the Chief Customer Officer. With Ryan Smith, the new Director of Customer Success, tending to those initiatives, Michelle is energized to refocus and ensure the smooth development of great products that deliver value to our customers. Along with our new Director of Customer Success, Erika Mason has been promoted to Implementation Services Manager to ensure delivery of a quality experience during the implementation process as well as maintaining and growing the client relationship and customer success initiatives.

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As Michelle takes on the role of Chief Product Officer, she will be responsible for DemandBridge's product management, product marketing, and market research. Michelle brings a unique perspective having spent time working directly in and with cross-functional teams and interacting with clients. Her technical understanding of DemandBridge's development processes creates a unique partnership with engineering which integrates advocating for customer needs and complex technical decisions. As Chief Product Officer, Michelle will remain a valued member of our executive leadership team.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q1 2022

January 24, 2022

In this quarterly review, we'll feature highlights from DB Commerce:

DB Commerce Mobile Responsive Capability - A long standing wish list item now comes to fruition with the introduction of a mobile interface for DB Commerce that is responsive. Currently in Beta with official release coming soon!
Simplified Styling Administration - This is a site administrator's dream come true! Our new distributor admin interface has simplified so many of our frequently used functions, and this is no exception. Simply select your primary/secondary colors and font and your site is transformed!
DB Commerce Offers Order Routing to FedEx Facilities - Recent development now offers an option to work together with DB Integrator to take the DB Commerce order data and transform/pass to FedEx. The FedEx process determines which facility to route the order to based on the shipping location.

DB Commerce Mobile Responsive Capability

A long-standing wish list item now comes to fruition with the introduction of a mobile interface for DB Commerce. While the site has operated on mobile devices, it has not been truly responsive until now. Our team has been dedicated to this exciting project over the last many months and is pleased to move this project into Beta with select DB/c customers in the coming weeks. This iteration will address all core areas of the system from the homepage to browsing the catalog, item customization, checkout, and account history. We cannot wait to share this with our users in the field!

With more exciting news, we are happy to report that programming efforts are now focused on adding the same mobile responsive technology to our EQ Commerce storefront offering.

DB Commerce Simplified Styling Administration

This is a site administrator's dream come true! If you have customized a client's DB Commerce site in the past, you did so through the use of custom style sheets, perhaps a few HTML theme component values, and maybe even a custom HTML splash page. Maybe you leaned on DB Support or sample files to copy/paste from. While that supported the need to represent a client brand on their DB Commerce storefront, it was time-consuming to implement and maintain. Our new distributor admin interface has simplified so many of our frequently used functions, and this is no exception. Simply select your primary/secondary colors and font and your site is transformed!

But wait, there's more! Your home page can now be created from a template with WYSIWYG editing, complete with quick links and preview capability. Branding your customer site has never been easier! Run, don't walk to your DB Support team to learn more today!

DB Commerce offers order routing to FedEx facilities

Orders placed on DB Commerce may be routed to the distributor warehouse for fulfillment from inventory, or they may be sent as print on demand from a supplier. Site administrators control many suppliers and their routing rules for FTP or email of print ready PDFs and associated order information. Recent development now offers an option to work together with DB Integrator to take the DB Commerce order data and transform/pass to FedEx. The FedEx process determines which facility to route the order to based on the shipping location. This dynamic process allows for quick, local order processing, fulfillment and saves on shipping costs. A next phase is in research and development to offer end user store selection as well as pickup vs delivery.

We'd love to hear from you and schedule a demo on any of these exciting new features. Contact us today at productinquiries@demandbridge.com!

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January 18, 2022

Glenn has over 35 years of experience in the Print + Promotional Products Distribution and Technology sectors, most recently as VP of Operations and VP of Business Solutions at American Solutions for Business (ASB). In his new position, Glenn is responsible for the implementation and support of the complete product suite for the DMS Division. Most notable among them being the ERP/Reporting solutions and associated basic Ordering/Storefront software. Glenn and his team will advocate for our ERP users by understanding the unique requirements of the Print and Promotional Products distributor industry. The goal is to bring strategic direction and associated products and operations to market in order to drive division growth and policy deployment/governance. These efforts will focus on associated pricing, budgets, personnel development, and enhanced product vision to ensure long-term DemandBridge relevance and viability.

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In other developments, DemandBridge announced that with Glenn's addition, Tony Abunssar has assumed a new position as President, Enterprise Marketing Solutions (EMS). This is in addition to his role as Chief Product Officer. Tony will focus more of his energies on our largest existing customers as well as developing new business with targets of similar size/complexity. Either by selling Direct-to-Enterprise and calling on CMO's/Brand Marketing Teams or promoting our complete Enterprise Marketing Solutions Suite to other large Marketing Services firms. Most notable among them being our end-to-end Marketing Hub/Commerce Cloud and associated Marketing Logistics Management Solutions.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q4 2021

October 14, 2021

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

Simplified Promo Item Creation in DB Commerce - This new feature allows administrators the ability to exclude certain variants (and their related options) from being factored into the item creation process in DB Commerce.
Templated items can now be managed from a new Distributor Admin Interface - As part of our ongoing efforts to streamline and consolidate DB Commerce site building functions under one roof, we're now offering the option to manage customizable (AKA "Templated") items within the New Distributor Admin interface.

Simplified Promo Item Creation

Our site administrators enjoy the convenience of setting up many items at once using our "promo" workflow. However, in certain instances, the dynamic item creation process yields an unnecessary number of unique item codes for each potential variation. For example, with an apparel item offered with 20 Logo options, 8 Sizes, and 10 Colors, there are 1600 possible variant combinations (20 x 8 x 10). DB Commerce would represent each of those 1600 combinations with its own unique item code, and a corresponding record would be created in the distributor's back-office system as the item is transmitted or ordered. Many customers find this level of granularity helpful, while others prefer fewer item codes based solely on size and color varieties, regardless of the logo selection. To accommodate the latter scenario, we recently added an enhancement to allow administrators to exclude certain variants (and their related options) from being factored into the item creation process. Key aspects of this enhancement include:

All variants will have the permission "Include Options in Item Creation" enabled by default, but this can be optionally disabled
No impact to end-user display of promo item and variant selections, regardless of this new setting
Order confirmation and vendor transmission notifications still reflect all variant selections, regardless of this new setting
Item Master List generated during promo item setup will contain far fewer item codes to be created/transmitted. In the above example of the apparel item, if an admin excludes the Logo variant from contributing to item creation, only 80 item codes would be generated for the Size/Color combinations, as opposed to 1600 for each potential Logo/Size/Color permutation.
System generated item codes will not reflect SKUs of variant options of variants where the permission to "Include Options in Item Creation" is disabled
System generated item descriptions will not reflect names of variant options of variants where the permission to "Include Options in Item Creation" is disabled

Templated items can now be managed from a new Distributor Admin Interface

As part of our ongoing efforts to streamline and consolidate DB Commerce site building functions under one roof, we're now offering the option to manage customizable (AKA "Templated") items within the New Distributor Admin interface. Some noteworthy changes between Legacy Distributor Admin and New Distributor Admin include:

New "Template" tab for Chili maintenance
New permission under Item Setup to configure Output Type
New logic that will show only the applicable fields related to the Output Type
Additional verification and notification errors
Chili Configuration Distributor/Company defaults are displayed per item
Chili Variables are reordered based on the order set up in Chili back-office
Descriptors are set according to the display order of the variables
Bulk assignment of Tabs
Pre-populated script parameters

We'd love to hear from you and schedule a demo on any of these exciting new features. Contact us today at productinquiries@demandbridge.com!

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q3 2021

July 13, 2021

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

Introducing Direct Mail in DB Commerce - DB Commerce users have been able to add attachments to each item at checkout, but we’ve recently made improvements to streamline the process giving users the ability to attach a list(s) of recipients to their item during the customization workflow.
New Reporting Features in DB Sourcing - DB Reporting has made its way into DB Sourcing! We’re pleased to announce our improved report offering, powered by Microsoft Power BI data visualizations. The new DB Sourcing “Production Report” and “Job Analysis Report” offer robust visualizations aimed at providing more insights into how and what your organization is purchasing through our procurement solution, so you can leverage your spending power more strategically.

Introducing Direct Mail

DB Commerce users have been able to add attachments to each item at checkout, but we’ve recently made improvements to streamline the process giving users the ability to attach a list(s) of recipients to their item during the customization workflow.

During customization, once the user selects “Views Proof”, they now have the option to add a list(s) of recipients. This area supports a maximum of 2 files that include .csv / .xls / .xlsx file types. The number of recipients is counted within the file and becomes the order quantity for that item. Once the user adds the item to the cart, these list(s) will send to the vendor in order to produce the direct mail piece.

DB Sourcing: New Reporting Features

DB Reporting has made its way into DB Sourcing! We’re pleased to announce our improved report offering, powered by Microsoft Power BI data visualizations. At DemandBridge, we’ve been touting our decision to convert many of our reporting solutions using various underlying technologies to Power BI reports for some time now, and DB Sourcing reports are the latest—and certainly not the last—to make that jump. From a common means of warehousing data, modern dashboarding techniques, the potential to take advantage of other Microsoft capabilities (e.g. Machine Learning), and more, the benefits of building our reports using Power BI are endless. Not to mention, we’ve opened the door to new partnerships with Power BI experts in our industry whom we can entrust to execute customer requests and build new reports, thus freeing up our in-house engineers to focus on developing our core products.

One of the primary reasons we targeted DB Sourcing reports was to improve our overall application performance. This new approach to reporting is more efficient because complex queries aren't happening against our database directly, but rather a replicated view of data, which takes load off our servers. Beyond those performance implications, the new DB Sourcing “Production Report” and “Job Analysis Report” offer robust visualizations aimed at providing more insights into how and what your organization is purchasing through our procurement solution, so you can leverage your spending power more strategically. Furthermore, these reports shed light on buying practices (e.g. number of suppliers solicited, whether work was quoted or contracted), and help administrators measure cost savings—both for their own organizations as well as for end customers.

Contact our support team to learn more about how you can use your DB Sourcing data to drive decisions and increase profitability within your organization!

We'd love to hear from you and schedule a demo on any of these exciting new features. Contact us today at productinquiries@demandbridge.com!

DemandBridge Clients are Top Distributors

June 8, 2021

Included in the May/June 2021 issue of Print Solutions Magazine is PSDA’s annual article showcasing PSDA member companies with the highest 2020 fiscal year sales and the top 10 fastest growing distributors. DemandBridge is proud to note that 74% of the top 39 highest performing distributors and 60% of the top 10 fastest growing distributors are members of our wonderful DemandBridge client family. We are extremely proud of their accomplishments, and proud of our opportunity to play a role, however small, in their outstanding success. They exemplify industry leadership at its finest.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q2 2021

April 29, 2021

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

The ability to combine A/P checks into a single PDF per batch has been added to DB Distributor.
ACH Payments Added to EQ Distributor – The ability to pay vendors via ACH (Automated Clearing House) is now available in EQ Distributor. This function utilizes the US standard ACH format specifications and allows the EQD user to configure the vendor's invoice payment type to generate an ACH file which can then be imported into the distributor's banking software to make payments.
Successful EQ Commerce Migration and New Security Improvements—As part of our continuing efforts to improve our services, we successfully completed migration of the Q-Net/EQC servers to the Microsoft Azure public cloud. Additionally, our team has released multiple measures to strengthen security and compliance compatibility in the Q-Net/EQC programs.
New in DB Sourcing - Some of our recent improvements were aimed at streamlining our distributor users’ workflows when customer needs warrant modifications to existing jobs. Making changes to item quantities and specifications, and tracking revision history over the life of a job are a breeze!
DB Commerce Vendor Management -DB Commerce administrators have long been able to maintain a variety of settings related to the vendors that produce items on their sites—from print-on-demand printed goods to promotional items such as apparel products. We’ve recently made several improvements to the way in which vendors are administered, as well as to the communications sent to those vendors as products are ordered.

A/P PDF check files in DB Distributor can now be combined into a single PDF per batch and stored for future reference.

If this feature is enabled for a specific Bank Code, A/P issued checks from that Bank Code profile are printed or imaged to the Image Library as usual. In addition, all the A/P check PDFs from that Bank Code in the current batch will be combined into a single PDF.

Note, this feature depends on the Image Library module and the Electronic Forms module to achieve the intended result.

EQ Distributor - ACH Payments

The ability to pay vendors via ACH (Automated Clearing House) is now available in EQ Distributor. This function utilizes the US standard ACH format specifications and allows the EQD user to configure the vendor's invoice payment type to generate an ACH file which can then be imported into the distributor's banking software to make payments. Some benefits of this feature are:

The ACH file can be generated while printing checks and credit card payments, allowing three payment methods at once
New "Preferred" and "Allowed" payment methods provide additional controls
"Selected Invoices Listing" can now be run by "Pay Via"
A "Pay Via" selection was added to the Vendor filter in A/P and O/E reports, enabling additional reporting functionality

This feature is available for a one-time setup fee of $250. For more information about enabling this feature, please contact productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

EQ Commerce – Migration and Security Improvements

In March 2021, as part of our continuing efforts to improve our services, we successfully completed migration of the Q-Net/EQC servers to the Microsoft Azure public cloud. This allows us to further leverage Azure's infrastructure for increased security, resiliency, and disaster recovery. The new structure also greatly increases our flexibility and scalability to better meet the dynamic needs of our eCommerce customer base.

In addition to the migration, our team is currently in the process of implementing multiple measures to strengthen security and compliance compatibility in the Q-Net/EQC programs. Some of the measures we have already released are limiting access to passwords and sensitive user information, implementing user password reset functionality, adding retail user access to distributor administration, and enhancing administrator password creation and access. Users can look forward to continued improvements, some of which will be entirely behind the scenes, and many of which will be noteworthy enhancements, such as improved login pages and procedures, workflow improvements, password policy and session timeout controls. Our team will continue to update you on the release of these improvements as they become available!

Keeping up with change requests can be difficult, but not with DB Sourcing!

Some of our recent improvements were aimed at streamlining our distributor users’ workflows when customer needs warrant modifications to existing jobs. Making changes to item quantities and specifications, and tracking revision history over the life of a job are a breeze!

Adding Items to Existing Jobs

Users may now add items to a RFQ while the job is in the Open status. Adding an item will temporarily transition the job into the "Re-quote" status, where the user can enter specifications and select suppliers for the newly added item, as well as add further items, or modify/re-quote existing items. Relevant suppliers will be notified regarding newly added items in need of estimates or production. The option to add items will not be available for jobs in the Awarded, PO Sent, or Cancelled statuses.

Re-Quote Improvements

When adding an item to a RFQ or re-quoting an existing item, upon landing back at the RFQ Draft page, the newly added or re-quoted item will be selected by default, and focus will be on the Product Specs tab so the user may immediately edit the desired item. When a job is in the Re-quote status, either as a result of re-quoting an individual item, or adding an item to the RFQ after it was initially created, users will now see a button entitled "Cancel Re-Quote". Clicking this button will revert the job to the Open status and direct the user back to the project detail page. Any items added to the RFQ during the Re-quote status will be removed, and any existing items will be restored back to their latest revision.

Coming Soon: DB Reporting is Making its Way into DB Sourcing!

Stay tuned for some exciting updates we’ve been working on related to our enhanced reporting offering, powered by Microsoft Power BI visualizations, to better understand your DB Sourcing data.

What’s New with Vendor Management

DB Commerce administrators have long been able to maintain a variety of settings related to the vendors that produce items on their sites—from print-on-demand printed goods to promotional items such as apparel products. We’ve recently made several improvements to the way in which vendors are administered, as well as to the communications sent to those vendors as products are ordered. Most notably, we’ve enhanced the workflow when “service vendors” are utilized…that is, when multiple vendors have a role in the production of an item, such as a t-shirt in which one vendor produces the “blank” or “shell” (hard good), and another vendor provides a service such as screen printing or embroidery. In these cases, each vendor needs to receive a unique set of instructions, attachments, and a different shipping destination. (e.g. The primary vendor needs to know the address of the service vendor to ship the blanks to for decoration, and the service vendor needs to see the address selected by the end customer.)

See below for a summary of the latest features aimed at tightening the integration between our front-end eCommerce platform and our user's back-office systems, and allowing our site administrators to leverage additional information such as vendor address data for the purposes of various DBC features and communications, as well as a glimpse into additional updates coming soon:

The process of editing Vendor Codes and Plant Codes on the New Distributor Admin Vendor maintenance page has been streamlined into a less error-prone user experience, as administrators must now configure their DB Commerce vendors using validated back-office data as opposed to manual entry of Vendor and Plant Code information. If available, address data will be displayed alongside the selected Vendor Codes and Plant Codes. Distributors must be replicating vendor and plant data from their back-office system to take full advantage of the latest vendor maintenance features.
When assigning a primary vendor and a service vendor to a promo item, it is now possible to configure separate instructions, attachments, and specs to be sent to each vendor in the order request.
If a plant code has been assigned to a vendor that contains a valid address, and that vendor has been assigned to a promo item as a service vendor, the plant address will be used as the ship-to destination on the primary vendor's order request email and XML notifications.

Coming Soon:

Administrators will soon be able to override the service vendor address that will appear on the primary vendor’s order request with one of the service vendor’s plants.
When configuring promo items, administrators will have the option to link charges that represent services, and attribute those charges to different vendors, so that as items are ordered, each vendor’s contribution can be easily identified as orders reach the distributor’s back-office system.

We'd love to hear from you and schedule a demo on any of these exciting new features. Contact us today at productinquiries@demandbridge.com!

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Forrester Features DemandBridge as Technology Leader in 2021 Channel Software Tech Stack

March 8, 2021

The channel software tech stack is made up of 183 companies that fall into 7 technology categories. In 2020, these companies drove over $2.8 billion in software revenue with most companies using the software-as-a-service model. See the technology category descriptions recognizing DemandBridge below.

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Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA)

Enables partners to engage their customers with a consistent vendor brand experience to create awareness and generate demand. It helps organize and disseminate content. It supports the execution of marketing programs, campaigns, and co-branded collateral that drive partner-led demand and accelerate channel lead and pipeline volume and velocity. It includes through-, to-, for-, and with-channel marketing automation.

Channel Marketplaces, Financials, Pricing, and Inventory

Manages indirect-sales-related revenue and costs, determines the correct value of transactions, automates key financial reporting processes and prevents errors in payment, commission, and rebates. It addresses pricing, inventory planning, gross-to-nets, discounts, compliance, tracking inventory levels, and price protection. Marketplaces are starting to make their mark here.

DemandBridge's through-channel marketing automation capacity is based on our eCommerce product suite which includes a toolset that offers core functions for brand management, customization, and distribution of marketing content across all channels. Resulting in a full suite of digital offerings that empower users to maintain brand standards. Our back-office capabilities and distributor technologies position us as a leader in channel marketplaces, financials, pricing, and inventory.

With benefits like our Saas model approach, data management, sourcing capabilities, enhanced reporting, and cloud-based services, DemandBridge continues to be a leading integrated business platform, delivering technology solutions that solve unique business challenges. As a result, customers are able to accomplish their marketing and business goals.

To learn more about our product suite, email productinquiries@demandbridge.com.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q1 2021

January 19, 2021

Welcome, 2021! It’s a new year and DemandBridge is excited to report some of the many developments we have been working on this past quarter, related to product enhancements and new integrations. We strive to provide constant improvements to products, services, and customer support.

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

DB Sourcing Development Efforts – We’ve released a number of performance and quality of life improvements/bug fixes, UX updates, and have tightened our integrations into the various DemandBridge back-office products. In this technology release, we’ll summarize notable enhancements to DB Sourcing.
EQ Commerce Custom Domain Feature – The long-awaited ability to utilize a custom domain for your EQ Commerce sites has arrived! You and your customers will be able to apply your domain to your EQC site in place of the default e-quantum2k.com or orders-online.biz web addresses.
New Default Catalog Style Available with DB Commerce – A new catalog type, “Default Catalog Style,” has been added to the current list of catalog display types. This catalog style offers a more simplistic view of a customer’s items, showing the item code, full item name, and price.
DB Commerce Enhanced Ariba Punchout – Offering direct item level integration with Ariba.
DB Commerce Browse Only Items – This feature was created to address the occasional need to arrive at an item from the shop area and show an item detail view with basic information only (image, item code, description) with no add to cart/customize call to action.

DB Sourcing Development Efforts

Since our last communication regarding recent DB Sourcing development efforts, we’ve released a number of performance and quality of life improvements/bug fixes, UX updates, and have tightened our integrations into the various DemandBridge back-office products.

See the below summary of notable enhancements to DB Sourcing:

Distributor User Improvements

Supplier Search Updates

Made improvements to the way in which supplier searches are executed, resulting in performance optimization and increased efficiency/load times for end-users.
Searches for suppliers will now return matches based on all "Equipment" fields (Name, Type, and Description).
When accessing a supplier's complete profile from the Grid and Map views within the context of a RFQ, the profile no longer opens in a new tab, but rather, overlays the RFQ.
Fixed a bug in which the message conveying which area of a supplier's profile contained matches on search results was being displayed multiple times when users executed searches in rapid succession.
Decreased the amount of time it took to load the Alphabet widget within the "List View," used to locate suppliers by the first letter of their company name, when there were a high number of suppliers.

RFQ Updates

In addition to the supplier’s company name, the contact information (First Name, Last Name, Email, Title, Phone 1, Phone 2) of the individual who responds to a RFQ will now appear in the RFQ Response notification to distributor users and will be displayed alongside their quote in the Vendor Bids table on the job detail page.

Purchase Order Updates

When a user needs to modify a purchase order that contains multiple items that were awarded to different vendors, the user may now select which vendor(s) receive a notification alerting them to the fact that modifications were made.

Back-Office Communication Updates

Users may now optionally specify a "CSR" code within a job for the purposes of attributing an order to a CSR other than that which is assigned to the account in their back-office system. If the value entered into this field matches an existing CSR code, it will override the CSR code used for the order. If the value entered exceeds the number of characters permitted for the CSR field, everything up to the supported number of characters will be used to populate the field. (For DB Distributor customers, CSR is a 4-character field. For EQ Distributor customers, CSR is a 3-character field.) An additional column has been added to the distributor dashboard to display the CSR assigned to an order. This new column is hidden by default, but can be shown if desired.

Supplier UX Enhancements

Improved display of filters/keyword searches on the supplier user dashboard to make it more apparent that the display of jobs is being limited based upon applied criteria. (The dropdown used to filter jobs based on CSR/requestor has been moved into the Advanced Search area, and as with other advanced search categories, selections will no longer be retained across user sessions.)

Internal Improvements

Reduced dependency on engineering resources required for certain configuration and customization tasks in order to speed up our customer onboarding processes.

If you have any questions regarding the above information, feel free to contact our team through the DemandBridge Service Desk, or via support@demandbridge.com.

The long-awaited ability to utilize a custom domain for your EQ Commerce sites has arrived!

You and your customers will be able to apply your domain to your EQC site in place of the default e-quantum2k.com or orders-online.biz web addresses.

Below are some important notes regarding this feature:

Custom domains may only be applied to sites using the updated EQ Commerce interface. This service will not be available for legacy Q-Net sites. Please contact productinquiries@demandbridge.com to upgrade today.
You or your customer will be responsible for purchasing the domain and SSL certificate (wildcard, if applicable) through the registrar of your choice and renewing/maintaining both.
Using a custom domain for your entire distributor will be included with EQ Commerce. Each customer site may be set up with a unique subdomain (example: customershop1.distributor.com, customershop2.distributor.com). If your customer prefers to configure their own unique vanity URL (example: customershop.com), this service will be available for an additional fee.
Documentation will be provided to guide you through the process.

If you are interested in using this feature, please click here to complete the interest form. Your request will be added to the queue and you will hear from us as we begin rolling out the feature incrementally on a first-come-first-serve basis.

New Default Catalog Style Available With DB Commerce

A new catalog type, “Default Catalog Style,” has been added to the current list of catalog display types. This catalog style offers a more simplistic view of a customer’s items, showing the item code, full item name, and price.

This new “Default Catalog Style” still uses the same basic information during the catalog set up; however the presentation and options to the end-user profile offer a more contemporary shopping experience. The end-user view now has larger thumbnail images that display four across, with the option to select a page or View All items.

Users now have the option to sort by Item Number or Item Name. If Sub-Catalogs are used, they are now displayed larger than the item images showing differentiation between a sub-catalog and items.

At the bottom of the catalog when viewing as pages, the number of pages appear allowing the user to sort by page. There is also a count of the number of items that appear within the catalog.

Make sure to provide your users with the best shopping experience by enabling this new catalog style!

PunchOut enables e-procurement buyers to shop on a supplier website...

Such as DB Commerce, while completing their checkout and approval process in their company's native procurement applications. DB Commerce has supported a number of punchouts since its early days. DB Commerce supports receipt of PunchOutSetupRequest and OrderMessage. DB Commerce can also send InvoiceDetail documents.

A recent enhancement has added deep linking of items as part of the PunchOutSetupRequest. An item can be specified in the e-procurement system and send a buyer directly to the detail page for that item. This is a step toward Level 2 PunchOut, which enables buying organizations to search for and find PunchOut items within their procurement application, instead of having to search each suppliers’ site directly.

This DB Commerce feature was created to address...

The occasional need to arrive at an item from the shop area and show an item detail view with basic information only (image, item code, description) with no add to cart/customize call to action.

This “browse only” style is enabled via a simple checkbox. In some cases, the item is for display only, and in others, the HTML storefront description contains a digital download link (tracked via usage statistics).

Historically, such items may have been assigned within an e-library catalog or may be placed within the asset library. This task seeks to achieve a more direct solution alongside other shopping items.

We'd love to hear from you and schedule a demo on any of these exciting new features. Contact us today at productinquiries@demandbridge.com!

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q3 & Q4 2020

October 22, 2020

DemandBridge is excited to report some of the many developments we have been working on in third and fourth quarters of 2020, related to product enhancements and new integrations. We strive to provide constant improvements to products, services, and customer support.

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

What’s new in Chili Publish – The Chili Publish tool available with DB Commerce has been upgraded and now includes dynamic layouts. It is now possible for object properties to calculate their value using a formula.
EQ Distributor has added an enhanced barcoding feature for warehouse releases - This functionality changes data on a release into a barcode format.
New features added to our web-based procurement solution, DB Sourcing – Historically, distributors only had visibility into the profiles of suppliers in their approved network. Now, buyers have insight into all the DB Alliance profiles of suppliers that serve their peers in the industry, and distributor administrators can connect to those companies directly within their sourcing solution!
DB Distributor Credit Card Vault and Authorize.Net - Announcing the availability of Authorize.Net as a service provider for Credit Card Vault in DB Distributor.

What's New in Chili

Dynamic Layouts

It is now possible for object properties to calculate their value using a formula. When using a combination of alternate layouts, object anchoring and the new property formulas, completely dynamic layouts are now possible!

Using this new technique, you can easily calculate frame position, dimension and more, without using complicated actions or complex logic. When creating formulas, you can reference any frame in the template by its tag, ID or reference itself.

Based on the user’s entry the template will resize accordingly with the new property formulas that have been set.

The following elements can be referenced when creating formulas:

Page coordinates (top, bottom, left, right)
Page dimensions (width, height)
Frame position, dimensions and rotation
Tagged paragraph position

Other Chili Updates Include

Leading and tracking controls for copy fitting
Selectable reference points for transformations
Custom path editor
Font subsets for PDF output
Improved frame behavior

EQ Distributor has added an enhanced barcoding feature for warehouse releases.

This functionality changes data on a release into a barcode format. The barcode information can then be scanned into other software for ease of data entry. Different templates can be created that identify different combinations of fields to print in barcode format. This feature works with every non-custom release format.

The following fields can be included:

Release – Release Number

Client ID – 6-digit Client ID

Ship-To ID – 15-digit (up to) Ship-To ID number

Item ID – Item ID Number (SKU)

A/R/B – Aisle / Row / Bin

Total Qty Shipped – Total of this item shipped

Lot Ship Qty – used if total shipped from multiple inventory lots.

Release Sell – Per unit price

Client PO Header – from the Summary Screen Client PO field

Client PO–Line – from the line item Client PO field

eComm Order # - eCommerce order number (Q-Net, EQC, DBC)

Email productinquiries@demandbridge.com for more information about adding this barcode enhancement to your EQ Distributor system.

We are excited to announce some exciting new features to our web-based procurement solution, DB Sourcing.

This enhancement is aimed at helping our distributor customers find the best partner for each job—within their existing network of long-time partners—as well as within the broader DB Alliance network of with whom they may not be doing business. Historically, distributors only had visibility into the profiles of suppliers in their approved network.

Now, buyers have insight into all the DB Alliance profiles of suppliers that serve their peers in the industry, and distributor administrators can connect to those companies directly within their sourcing solution!

We’re confident that these enhanced networking capabilities will translate into more opportunities for our distributor users as they identify new strategic partners in different locales or with expanded capabilities, as well as for suppliers who are eager to serve new customers.

Supplier Search and Profile Enhancements

Users can now choose between Simple Search, which looks across the entirety of a supplier’s profile (including distributor-specific content), or Advanced Search to look within and across certain categories. Filters have been added to quickly pinpoint suppliers alphabetically or by Regions Served.
Suppliers may now add their logos to their DB Alliance profile to better convey their brands.
Improved the way in which supplier profile data is displayed through multiple visualizations of distributors’ existing suppliers, as well as potential connections. Our List, Grid, and Map representations each offer unique features to better assist our customers as they determine which vendors to invite to participate in RFQs and orders.
Restructured the distributor view of the supplier profile in order to more easily view data at a glance, and to reduce the need for a separate Admin page to manage distributor-specific content.
Streamlined the Supplier Selection tab of RFQ Draft page to reduce scrolling and make it easier to invite suppliers to bid—from either the Grid or Map views of a distributor’s existing connections.

Supplier Invitation Improvements

Administrators can now send invitations to suppliers in the DB Alliance Network, and suppliers can respond to those invitations right through DB Sourcing. DemandBridge Support no longer needs to intervene when two existing parties connect to each other!
If a supplier does not have a presence in the platform, administrators may invite them to join. As invitations are accepted, DemandBridge Support will review the requests and create new profiles.
Improved UI, notifications, and status indicators to convey actions taken and required throughout the invitation process.

Announcing the availability of Authorize.Net as a service provider for Credit Card Vault in DB Distributor.

The Credit Card Vault module in DB Distributor can be used by the distributor to handle and process tokenized credit cards. This functionality is achieved through integrations with service providers and their product APIs. Historically, CyberSource has been the primary service provider for credit card tokenization in the CC Vault module. The CC Vault module can now additionally support Authorize.Net as a service provider for credit card tokenization and processing.

Sign up for an Authorize.Net account

The distributor must sign up for an Authorize.Net account. The API Login ID and Transaction Key for this account must be entered into DB/d.

New Merchant Account Profile

Setup a new merchant account profile within the CC Vault module of type “Authorize.Net”.

Enter the API Login ID and Transaction Key. If the account is not yet live and the intent is to place test transactions, then specify “SANDBOX” for the Environment, otherwise specify “PRODUCTION”.

Authorize.Net “Customer Information Manager”

Customer profiles and credit card profiles are maintained in the Authorize.Net account portal. The Customer Profile ID and the Payment Profile ID values together form the tokenized reference to a customer credit card.

Storing tokenized credit cards in CC Vault

The Customer Profile ID and the Payment Profile ID pair for a credit card must be recorded within DB/d for processing payment transactions using that credit card.

We'd love to hear from you and schedule a demo on any of these exciting new features. Contact us today at productinquiries@demandbridge.com!

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July 23, 2020

In today's Feature Flash, we highlight the New Internationalization Features Within DB Sourcing and DB Commerce as touched on in the latest Quarterly Technology Release distributed in mid-July.

New Internationalization Features Within DB Sourcing and DB Commerce

In our January Technology Release, we announced some exciting Internationalization features within DB Distributor. A noteworthy enhancement was support for a country to be specified in the address for vendor and location records. Since then we’ve been hard at work to bring our front-end applications, DB Commerce and DB Sourcing, in line with our back-office products in terms of their support for international addresses. This included making DB Commerce and DB Sourcing aware of country data that had been defined for a given vendor or location via data replication and sync processes, as well as updates to our front-end applications—both for administrators and end users—to facilitate international shipping, and improvements to our communication to the back-office products.

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DB Sourcing International Improvements

We’ve added a distributor level-permission that can be enabled by DB Support on your behalf to allow shipping to countries outside of the US. (US is the system default country.) If this is enabled, users will be able to choose from among the ISO list of recognized countries when doing a Manual Address Override at PO prep. The State dropdown will behave dependently of the selected country and contain its ISO subdivisions.
If a user has done a Manual Address Override and specified a custom shipping address, the ISO code corresponding to the selected state will be displayed following the city, and the two-character ISO code of the selected country will be displayed at the end of the address block following the postal code wherever the address is referenced (e.g. Supplier PO email/previews, shipping location selection popup during PO prep, Shipping Info tab on PO prep page). When users select existing ship-to locations at PO prep, state and country information will display as they are defined for those locations in the distributor’s back-office system.
As orders are placed, the ISO state and country codes corresponding to the values specified for each custom location will be sent within the context of their respective order lines to the user’s back-office system. State and country values that have synced to DB Sourcing for existing locations will be referenced in order requests as users ship to those locations.
Updated administration of Supplier locations to utilize ISO recognized countries and states/subdivisions.

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DB Commerce International Improvements

We’ve added a distributor level-permission that can be enabled by DB Support on your behalf to allow shipping to countries outside of the US. (US is the system default country.) If this is enabled, distributor and company defaults can be managed from within the DB Commerce New Distributor Admin interface. Administrators can choose their distributor-specific "Default Country" from among the ISO list of recognized countries (this will be auto-selected for users on the checkout page) as well as any “Eligible Countries” (additional ISO countries users may select at checkout) that they wish to support. They can even go a step further and override these settings for a specific company to be more or less restrictive as needed.
All users will now see a Country dropdown on the checkout page when specifying a custom location. The "Default Country" specified at the distributor-level, or the company-specific default if overridden, will be pre-selected for users. The dropdown will also contain any “Eligible Countries” selected by the administrator. The State dropdown will behave dependently of the selected country and contain its ISO subdivisions.
Once a user has specified a custom shipping address, the ISO code corresponding to the selected state will be displayed following the city, and the two-character ISO code of the selected country will be displayed at the end of the address block following the postal code wherever the address is referenced (e.g. Order confirmation popup and email, vendor print request notifications, Order History, Approval Center and notifications). When users select existing ship-to locations on the checkout page, state and country information will display as they are defined for those locations in the distributor’s back-office system.
As orders are placed, the ISO state and country codes corresponding to the values specified for each custom location will be sent within the context of their respective order lines to the back-office system. State and country values that have synced to DB Commerce for existing locations will be referenced in order requests as users ship to those locations.

Customers interested in taking advantage of this suite of features should coordinate enabling them with DemandBridge Support. This functionality requires any DB Distributor customers to be on a current release and to implement a country code conversion process on their instance of DB Distributor. EQ Distributor customers should configure any countries they wish to ship to under Company Maintenance.

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q1 & Q2 2020

July 16, 2020

DemandBridge is excited to report some of the many developments we have been working on in first and second quarters of 2020, related to product enhancements and new integrations. We strive to provide constant improvements to products, services, and customer support.

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

New DB Commerce Authorize.net Integration – DB Commerce supports credit cards as a method of payment and is now pleased to integrate with Authorize.net as a processor in addition to CyberSource for credit card transactions.
New EQ Commerce Retail - We introduced the EQ Commerce user interface, featuring improved site design and a streamlined workflow, to a wonderfully positive reception. We know you will be equally excited about the follow-up, EQ Commerce Retail!
Introducing White Label Demo Sites Offering Personal Protective Equipment Catalogs – Help your customers flatten the curve with online catalogs that display a series of PPE products with specific messaging related to COVID-19 using the DB Commerce & EQ Commerce platforms.
Improved Communication of Specifications from DB Sourcing to DemandBridge Back-Office Products – Users of our web-based procurement solution, DB Sourcing, love the efficiency and ease of order entry that are offered as a result of its tight-knit integration with our back-office products including DB Distributor and EQ Distributor. In an effort to enhance this communication, specifications from DB Sourcing are now sent to the back-office systems via URLs.
A brief look into the new internationalization features within DB Sourcing and DB Commerce

DB Commerce Authorize.Net Integration

DB Commerce supports credit cards as a method of payment and is now pleased to integrate with Authorize .net as a processor in addition to CyberSource for credit card transactions. Authorize .net concentrates on small to medium sized businesses which is more cost effective to our customers. DB Commerce makes use of the API to offer a simple and secure tokenized checkout experience from authorization through to settlement.

Please contact us for more information or to get started with Authorize .net on DB Commerce, as the configuration is simple and requires only two pieces of information from your Authorize .net Merchant Interface Portal.

EQ Commerce

We introduced the EQ Commerce user interface, featuring improved site design and a streamlined workflow, to a wonderfully positive reception. We know you will be equally excited about the follow-up, EQ Commerce Retail! The brand-new eCommerce interface can now be utilized on Q-Net retail (previously called Q-Store) sites, where any existing or new retail site can be converted to the new experience with literally a single click.

Notable features include:

Customize the site with your client’s logo – one setting changes the entire site
All pages have been updated with a modern, uncluttered design
Improved workflow for user registration and sign-on, including new icons indicating whether a user is currently logged into the site
Items currently in the shopping cart are retained for each user
New measures to prevent user account duplication for existing users
Activate the new interface by individual client

DB Commerce & EQ Commerce White Label Demo Sites Offer Personal Protective Equipment Catalogs

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) has become a critical demand with the spread of Coronavirus and many distributors have pivoted to Healthcare supplies to fill the void with a decline in Print, Promotion and Office Product sectors.

To assist you with these efforts, DemandBridge has utilized our technology to create a PPE catalog on our white label demo sites for both DB Commerce and EQ Commerce. This catalog displays a series of PPE products with specific messaging related to COVID-19.

We encourage you to utilize this tool to assist in the promotion of selling PPE to your customers and use this site in your next prospective or existing client interactions. You can view the catalog by visiting https://generic.dbenterprise.com. To create an account, just click the self-setup link on the login page and enter the password "db2020", at which point you'll be able to specify your login credentials.

Please email productinquiries@demandbridge.com with any questions or to get started on a branded version of the PPE catalog using DB Commerce or EQ Commerce.

Improved Communication of Specifications from DB Sourcing to DemandBridge Back-Office Products

Users of our web-based procurement solution, DB Sourcing, love the efficiency and ease of order entry that are offered as a result of its tight-knit integration with the DemandBridge back-office products. As orders are placed through DB Sourcing, critical details about those jobs and the items within them such as cost, sell, vendor, and more are seamlessly communicated to their accounting and inventory management systems where they are referenced for downstream billing purposes or repeat orders. This has served customers well for many years, but as more distributors have adopted our sourcing tool, we’ve gotten feedback that having consistent visibility into more granular item-level specifications across systems would be of value. This request posed a challenge as DB Sourcing’s product “spec templates” are structured and formatted differently from their counterparts in DB Distributor and EQ Distributor, so our approach to communicating robust item specifications for many different types of products needed to be flexible and back-office agnostic. Not to mention, for items that had been ordered for years and had legacy specs defined in the back-office, specs were being maintained in multiple places and often conflicted.

To this end, we implemented an improvement to communicate specifications defined within DB Sourcing to the back-office systems via URLs. For each item that is ordered, two URLs are generated; an order-line-specific URL that will show a snapshot of the specs as they were within the context of the given DB Sourcing order line, and an item-code-specific URL that will show specs the specs as they were defined for that item code the most recent time it was ordered via DB Sourcing. When users click these URLs from within their view of a purchase order in their back-office system (and in the case of DB Distributor, the item master as well), their web browser will display the specifications in HTML format as they appear in DB Sourcing. While the links default to HTML format, users can append “/json” or “/xml” onto the end of the URL strings to view specs in those formats. In the case of DB Distributor users that wish to treat DB Sourcing as the system of record for specifications, they may configure their back-office print output settings to suppress legacy spec data when a spec URL exists for an item in order to prevent outdated specifications from appearing on purchase order documents

New Internationalization Features Within DB Sourcing and DB Commerce

Look for more detailed information in our upcoming Feature Flash.

We'd love to hear from you and schedule a demo on any of these exciting new features. Contact us today at productinquiries@demandbridge.com!

DemandBridge Clients are Top Distributors

July 15, 2020

The June/July 2020 issue of Print Solutions Magazine features PSDA's annual article showcasing PSDA member companies with the highest 2019 fiscal year sales. DemandBridge is proud to note that over 80% of the top 40 highest performing distributors are members of our wonderful DemandBridge client family. We are extremely proud of their accomplishments, and proud of our opportunity to play a role, however small, in their outstanding success. They exemplify Industry leadership at its finest.

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DB Commerce & EQ Commerce Demo Sites Offer PPE Catalogs

June 25, 2020

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White label demo sites offer Personal Protective Equipment Catalogs

It's easy to get started selling PPE to your customers. Here's how:

1. Get access to browse the PPE demo site.

Visit https://generic.dbenterprise.com/. Click the self-startup link on the login page and enter the password "db2020", at which point you'll be able to specify your login credentials.

2. Show your customers & get them set up.

Email us at productinquiries@demandbridge.com to get started on a branded version of the PPE catalog using DB Commerce or EQ Commerce.

3. Impress your prospects & clients by supplying the PPE they need!

Please email productinquiries@demandbridge.com to get started. Our representatives are ready to assist and eager to help you.

Challenges Provide New Opportunities

April 23, 2020

Greetings,

Thank you for taking a few minutes to watch this video and read the attached bulletin. As a follow up to my last address, many thanks to those of you who commented you found it useful. Some of you have already inquired about our offer to help. A huge “shout out” to those who have pivoted to providing healthcare supplies to your customers. We were glad to be of assistance. In the end, the core competence of this Industry is technology-enabled sourcing and logistics management. Whether Office Products, Print, Promotional goods, Digital Advertising or Personal Protection Equipment (PPE).

All-to-say, one idea I mentioned previously is using more of our Technology to innovate. For example, our popular Sourcing tool can better enable your Sales Reps and CSR’s to work from home. Not-to-mention, it might come in handy as your traditional supply chains and sourcing options begin to narrow. Certainly, if you want to offer new products to your customers. Our tool might improve your ability to quickly find alternatives (i.e. vendors others have certified). In addition, the tool allows your customers a browser-driven way to automate requests for your team to your preferred partners.

Another example to consider is to up your eCommerce game so as to make it easier for your customers to find you and/or be compelled to order more from your storefronts. Now would be a good time to invest in your future and be better prepared for the market run up that inevitably happens on the other side of a recession.

Lastly, for those of you reluctant to move from on-premise ERP solutions to our Cloud-based offering, now would be a good time to save IT infrastructure cost. In the past, it has been mostly due to the hassle of data conversion/learning a new tool when you’re busy. We have a proven process for making this transition.

To make it easier on you until financial relief from the federal stimulus package arrives and/or business begins to return—we are offering a free trial on several of our new software platforms until September. All that we ask is for a set-up fee to cover our on-boarding costs. If you like the tools, then you can enroll in an annual subscription September 1. If you don’t realize the expected value, there’s no obligation to continue past August. Should you be interested to learn more, please join us for our Town Hall calls that are scheduled for May 5th & May 6th (meeting details in your email inbox).

We appreciate your continued support. Thank you for your patience and commitment as we respond to this evolving situation together. As always, if there is anything DemandBridge can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask.

Please email productinquiries@demandbridge.com to get started. Our representatives are ready to assist and eager to help you.

Sincerely,

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David B. Rich

CEO & Chairman

DemandBridge CEO Update

April 9, 2020

Greetings,

Thank you for taking a few minutes to watch this video and read the attached bulletin. I'm reaching out today in hopes that this finds you well, considering the circumstances. Also that you and your family, as well as your co-workers and their families, are safe. As I reflect on these unprecedented times, I am as hopeful as anyone that the actions we take now will assist in ending this pandemic sooner rather than later and we can all begin to put back together the pieces of our personal and professional lives.

That said, like many of you, we are making the best of the situation and learning how to work and collaborate virtually from home. To that end, I wanted to provide a brief update on what we’re doing at DemandBridge during these challenging times.

First, we concentrated initially on getting all of our staff home, safe and as productive as possible. I would say, "mission accomplished". Now, we are focused on being there for all of our customers, in whatever capacity that requires. Next, we are wasting no time trying to envision the “new normal” coming out of this so as to better position our solutions to help you thrive, not just survive, on the other side of this crisis.Together, we will get through this.

How do I know? In my 40 years in the workplace, I’ve lived through a few of these crises in my career. In fact, this is the third time in 20 years that I’ve been at the helm of a technology business in the face of a global crisis. So fortunately, I can imagine most of the challenges that likely lie ahead. I also know, based on prior experience, that with ingenuity and innovation, those who embrace change and adapt will prevail.

All-to-say, I think we’ll see permanent affects to the Print, Promotion & Office Product sectors. Some of you are already pivoting to Healthcare supplies to fill the void. Perhaps that and other innovations will become a permanent change, no different than morphing from Office Products to Print in the past, more recently to Promotional products and Marketing Services, and now to on-line Digital Services. Overnight, we have seen our entire society more apt to embrace virtual technologies and methods where the adoption has otherwise been “low and slow”.

Now, more than ever, I believe that the status quo for how we work, live, learn, collaborate, train, and gather is going to be challenged. Some of which forever changed. Certainly, that will be true in the world of eCommerce. So as mentioned before, adapting and thriving is what we intend to do at DemandBridge. Moreover, we are even more committed to helping every one of you do the same. Again, together, we can get through this!

To that end, please know we’re here to help in any way we can. In the short-term, perhaps that means providing more of the necessary technology, training, and support your teams need to effectively work remotely and service customers as you always have. For example, those of you who don’t currently license our popular Sourcing tool—which enables your Sales Reps and CSR’s to work from home—we are willing to temporarily furlough the subscription fees until September 1, 2020. All that we ask is for a nominal setup fee to cover our costs should we need extra labor to load your vendors, train, and get you started. As your traditional supply chains and sourcing options narrow it could be a big help to you finding alternatives. Again, our simple hope being that this results in a more positive outcome to your business in the short term, without having to worry about the upfront license fee, until help arrives in the form of the Federal Government’s stimulus package.

Additionally, as you may or may not know, DemandBridge has a Learning Center which is home to our “Training Webinar Series”. These training webinars are free and designed to educate users of the software on best practices, platform navigation, workflow efficiency, setup, configurations, new releases and much more! Again, easily done in the comfort of their homes. You should already receive a monthly webinar schedule with the April distribution just sent last week, but please let us know if you need to be added to the distribution. We encourage you and your teams to register and take advantage of free learning.

Last, stay tuned for more information as we offer further assistance. We are in the midst of finalizing a series of “Town Hall” calls—as well as—virtual Product Advisory “Chat Groups” aimed at sharing best practices and gathering new market requirements in the face of this downturn. Our hope is that these suggestions, and others to follow, will allow our valued customers to continue to move forward during this difficult time. Also, perhaps more important, that together we can move the Industry forward.

Please email productinquiries@demandbridge.com to get started. Our representatives are ready to assist and eager to help you.

Sincerely,

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David B. Rich

CEO & Chairman

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April 6, 2020

In today's Feature Flash, we highlight several DB Sourcing enhancements, the new Fast Sales Tax functionality with EQ Distributor and DB Distributor, a look into the DB Commerce built-in feature for digital asset management and more.

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DB Sourcing – Distributor Navigation and UX Enhancements

Available as of March 2020

We have some exciting initiatives on our roadmap, and with our latest release, we took initial steps toward a more modern and user-friendly distributor interface that will serve as the foundation for some of those future improvements, most notably:

The previous text-based navigation links have been relocated into a graphical menu on the left side of the page for easier access as users move about the platform. Less commonly used navigation options (Help, Settings) have moved into an auxiliary menu in the page footer. The Recent Jobs menu has been restyled and will remain at the top of the page for convenience.
The styling of the former red and green progress bars on the distributor user dashboard has been updated. The green indicator conveying completion will now be styled according to the distributor's primary brand color, while the red indicator showing lack of progress has been updated to a more neutral gray. As actions are taken, the grey progress bars will be filled in with the distributor's accent color.

Updated styling of various buttons, icons, and UI elements.

DB Sourcing – Improved Supplier Management

Available as of January 2020

Distributor administrators may now supplement a supplier's profile with links and attachments specific to their organization's relationship with that company. This may include links to external databases and CRM tools, price lists, certifications, or documents that users need to be aware of when considering a partner for a job. (Content added in this manner is visible only to users from within the administrator's organization.) Users can now come to one place to see everything they need to know about their suppliers!

To manage this content, “admin” users may navigate to Administration > Suppliers > Internal Content. While the ability to enter an alias and “notes” fields is not new, the “Notes” text area now supports links that will direct users to the destination in a new tab. A file attachment tool was added to this area that supports uploading of one or many files via browse or “drag and drop”.

When users view a supplier’s profile, either within the context of a RFQ or via the “Suppliers” navigation link, the content entered by administrators is visible and available for download in a read-only fashion under the “Notes/Files” tab.

DB Sourcing – PO Processing Improvements

Available as of November 2019

We’ve recently completed a large-scale effort to refactor our item creation, purchase order submission, and vendor transmission processes, which was aimed at improving the speed and reliability of our communication to and from the DemandBridge back-office systems, as well as to awarded suppliers.

The latest deliverables from this effort include:

Creation of dedicated “micro-services” and queueing mechanisms responsible for each of the components of the PO submission process; PO preparation/status updates, item creation, order transmission to back-office systems, and vendor notifications. With these in place, we’re better equipped to scale the product as more customers adopt DB Sourcing as their procurement solution, handle a higher volume of concurrent order transmissions, and reduce potential delays between order submission and notifications to vendors.
Streamlined suppliers' Notification Routing Rule setup to only capture FTP information when desired/applicable. Furthermore, when managing their notification routing rules, suppliers will now receive feedback upon entering FTP credentials as to whether they are valid or not, and a button has been added to test the connection to the specified FTP URI. Invalid credentials will not be saved to a routing rule in order to prevent unsuccessful transmissions.
Additional logging for support troubleshooting

Support for a distributor’s logo in the header of their instance of the Supplier PO email notification.

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EQ Distributor - Ability to Search by Filter in Void Checks in EQ Distributor (e-Quantum)

Available as of February 18, 2020

We have added the ability to search void checks by vendor, check number, and/or check date. This was a popular enhancement request from our customers. We received this happy testimonial from a user shortly after the update:

EQ Distributor - New Month Format Setting in EQ Distributor (e-Quantum)

Available as of February 18, 2020

Due to security concerns regarding financial and official documents being dated with just two digits for the year (ex. 20 instead of 2020), we have added a new “Month Format” setting for many documents. This option is available in OE Configuration for Invoices and Quotes; in AP Configuration for Checks. All dates will now print the full 4-digit year.

The month format options are:

Numeric – 03/17/2020
Short Name - Mar 17,2020
Long Name - March 17,2020

EQ Distributor - New Fast Sales Tax Functionality in EQ Distributor (e-Quantum)

Available as of January 27, 2020

DemandBridge has implemented the availability of the new tax offering for Fast Sales Tax which replaces TDS (Tax Data Systems) files within the e-Quantum software. The sunset date for TDS is March 31, 2020.

You will need to contact Thomson Reuters to set up a new subscription for Fast Sales Tax. You may choose either the Complete Subscription or the Premium Subscription.

To accommodate this change, we have added functionality in e-Quantum to import either the Fast Sales Tax Complete file or the Fast Sales Tax Premium file. This new functionality is accessible in QSend > Import Sales Tax Data > TDS/Fast Sales Tax > Continue as normal.

For more information about this change or assistance in setting up a subscription, please contact Jenny L. Galan with Thomson Reuters at jenny.galan@tr.com.

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DB Distributor Sales Tax Interface – Fast Sales Tax

Available April 1, 2020

Thomson Reuters (formerly TDS) is a sales tax rates provider used by many of our customers. They are going to discontinue support by end of March 2020 for some of their existing products, including the “BasicII” sales tax rates file, used by many DB Distributor customers.

To allow customers to continue using the DBD Sales Tax Interface module seamlessly, we have worked with Thomson Reuters and implemented enhancements to DBD’s Sales Tax Interface module to allow it to work with the new Fast Sales Tax program.

The Fast Tax “Complete” (All States) file can now be imported into DBD so distributors can continue using the sales tax interface module. This product line, and the Fast Tax “Complete” file, will be provided by Thomson Reuters beginning on April 1, 2020. This new sales tax rate file has multiple zip codes and support for additional unincorporated taxing jurisdictions. The cut-over between the old and new file formats will be seamless in DB Distributor.

Fast Sales Tax plans and pricing can be reviewed here: https://fastsalestax.com/subscription

DemandBridge has worked out an arrangement with Thomson Reuters to allow DBD customers with pre-existing ONESOURCE subscriptions to easily sign-up for the Fast Sales Tax product and allow them to switch to using the “Complete” (All States) file. Customers will need to activate their new subscription by clicking on a link in an email sent by the provider. Upon activation, customers will be able to download the “Complete” (All States) file.

The process of importing the Sales Tax rates into DBD will continue to work the same as it has once the customer downloads the new rates file onto the DBD server.

Please refer to the documentation for this enhancement that has been provided by DB Support for more detailed information!

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DB Commerce - Digital Assets

Available Now

Did you know that DB Commerce offers a built-in feature for digital asset management? That’s right! An administrator may create/edit assets directly from the control panel – assets of any type. Just like shopping catalogs, the assets are categorized and granted to user groups.

Create a company repository of brand materials, sales aids, marketing collateral, etc. Users may search, view, and download assets. Better yet – allow your users to customize your marketing collateral with pre-approved image selections from your DB Commerce asset library.

Want to learn more? Contact us to see how to get started or visit generic.dbenterprise.com.

Please contact us with any questions at our DB Service Desk via service@demandbridge.com.

Important COVID-19 Update to All DemandBridge Customers

March 13, 2020

This update is for all DemandBridge customers regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19). We are continuing to follow all recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local authorities. Our expectation is that the situation will continue to evolve and we will adapt our plans as new developments occur.

Effective on March 12, 2020, we are encouraging employees to work from home until further notice. We are implementing the following procedures to ensure the safety of our customers, partners, and staff. Rest assured, we will continue to be available to support you via the means outlined below.

Travel and Meetings

We are limiting all business travel via planes, trains, subways and other methods of public transportation. We ask that all business travel via vehicles be limited to essential trips. This policy is effective immediately and will remain in place until otherwise stated.
We are suspending visits to/from Client sites/locations/offices until further notice. Please will meet virtually using Zoom conferencing instead.
Vendor and client visitations in any DemandBridge office should be avoided.
We encourage our teams to coordinate and attend virtual meetings via Zoom and eliminate group face-to-face meetings.

We are equipped to serve you remotely

DemandBridge has already taken steps to ensure our employees can work efficiently from home or another remote location, beginning with laptop computers.
We communicated just last month about our new phone system. This includes a “soft phone” capability which allows us to monitor and answer calls via a web-based application. We will continue to answer phones as if we were in the office. Please note, if you do need to leave a message, that will create a ticket in our DB Service Desk and your message will be returned by a member of the customer success team.
Employees have been provided with the tools and services needed to work remotely.
We will use Zoom, Jira, Slack, and phone to maintain communication with Team members and Clients.
This policy will remain in effect until notified otherwise.

You may continue to reach us via phone at 800.448.1484, via email at support@demandbridge.com, or on DB Service Desk: http://service.demandbridge.com/servicedesk

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Quarterly Technology Release - Q4 2019

January 16, 2020

DemandBridge is excited to report some of the many developments we have been working on in fourth quarter of 2019, related to product enhancements and new integrations. We strive to provide constant improvements to products, services, and customer support.

In this quarterly review, we'll highlight the following:

The New DB Sourcing Client User Experience allows end-customers to initiate a request through their distributor partner’s branded instance of DB Sourcing, tell their account representative about their product needs (including detailed specifications), and upload supporting files.
The New EQ Commerce (Q-Net) user interface design will feature the EQC functionality that is already known and loved, but with an improved site design and a streamlined workflow.
Personalization takes our newly released promotional products workflow to the next level. Our team carefully retained the user experience for basic promo variant selections and extended that with the addition of personalization fields.
The DB Commerce Flipbook Upgrade includes a new tool for PDF to flipbook conversion with enhanced features.
The New DB Distributor Internationalization feature allows for a Country field in shipping addresses. The Country can be specified using standard ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes.

DB Sourcing - New Client User Experience

DB Sourcing has been in use for many years by distributors and suppliers to facilitate quoting, proposals, and orders on behalf of the brands they service today. Customer service representatives and sales executives have used DB Sourcing to create jobs, input item specifications based on their clients’ needs, and request bids from their vendor partners in hopes that those RFQs will be converted into orders. While DB Sourcing brings efficiency and automation to the buying process, CSRs can still spend a lot of time qualifying opportunities only for them to never come to fruition. In an attempt to further improve bottom lines, we’ve introduced a new “client” user type that allows those end-customers to initiate a request through their distributor partner’s branded instance of DB Sourcing, tell their account representative about their product needs (including detailed specifications), and upload supporting files.

Administrators can identify which of their clients it makes sense to allow to access DB Sourcing and create requests in this manner. When establishing a client user account, administrators can associate that user to one or more “customers” from their back-office system for which they may initiate requests, in addition to one account representative who will serve as the client’s point of contact and recipient of request notifications.

By giving clients access to technology they can use to initiate their own requests, distributors no longer have to rely on external communication such as phone calls or emails to capture important job information, only to spend time entering this data into a RFQ on a client’s behalf to be sent to suppliers. With these time savings, account representatives can refocus their attention from administrative activities to servicing and collaborating with their customers.

Once a client submits a request, a notification is sent to the account representative, and the RFQ will show on the distributor’s job status dashboard. From here, a CSR can review the client’s input, make any necessary modifications, and proceed to solicit vendors for quotes, prepare a proposal, and eventually a purchase order.

Meanwhile, the client user can monitor the status of jobs created by themselves and others within their organization from their own dashboard display, offering transparency into the life cycle of their requests, and the ability to measure compliance to service level agreements. Not to mention, distributors gain further efficiencies by reducing the need for project status updates!

The New EQ Commerce

The new EQ Commerce user interface design will feature the EQC functionality that is already known and loved, but with an improved site design and a streamlined workflow. Any existing or new client commerce site can be converted to the new experience with literally a single click, and by touching just a handful of settings you can deliver a clean, functional, and branded site to your customer in minutes. This new user interface is currently in beta with several customers and will be released to all in the coming months. We cannot wait for you to see it!

Notable features include:

Dynamically generated login page – no need to request a custom login page for individual clients
Customize the site with your client’s logo and key brand colors – one setting changes the entire site
Updated, more intuitive checkout workflow – users are conveyed seamlessly from the shopping cart to payment and order confirmation
All pages have been updated with a modern, uncluttered design
Activate the new interface by individual client

Promo Workflow Personalization

Personalization takes our newly released promotional products workflow to the next level. Our team carefully retained the user experience for basic promo variant selections and extended that with the addition of personalization fields. While we anticipate most items may have one or two areas for fields like name, the system supports more. Fields may share a preview on a common area of the piece or have a unique preview as needed. The personalized preview is made possible through the use of our Chili Publish technology – already in use for our customizable print items and familiar to our administrators.

New DB Commerce - FlipBook Feature

DB Commerce Flipbook Upgrade

DB Commerce introduced flipbook output into our digital solutions in mid-2016. The process has been improved along the way, first to utilize our Chili publish customization engine, then to add approvals, and finally a simplified step to bypass checkout. All of this led to increased adoption of the product as customers wanted to take advantage of a templated approach with customization of the flipbook. However, our initial iteration did not support some requests such as the ability to customize the viewer, or the desire to remove the “powered by” icon or links to share other unrelated items.

We embarked on a search and have integrated with a new tool which meets these needs and much more. Users still enjoy the typical “e-flip” experience, but may also search, print, download, clip, browse a library and more. Previously created flipbooks will continue to load in the original style, and newly created flipbooks will be created using the new tool.

New DB Distributor - Internationalization

DB Distributor can now support a Country field in the shipping addresses. The Country can be specified using standard ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes (for example: “US” for United States, “CA” for Canada).

ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. In addition to the alpha-2 codes, there are other popular variations like alpha-3 codes or numeric country codes which are two of the most popular forms of country code usage.

A country code can be specified during DB Distributor order entry in the form of an alpha-2 country code, either manually, or by selecting one of the following forms of ship-to addresses that already have a Country code present:

a customer ship-to location
vendor plant
warehouse

Support for a Country is available for manually entered orders as well as for eCommerce orders.

The electronic forms output for an order (packing lists, purchase orders) can now display the Country as part of the shipping address.

The interface between DB Distributor and shipping systems has been enhanced so that the Country code is available via ODBC and can be mapped to the relevant Country elements in the shipping system software.

To begin using this enhancement, customers MUST be on a current release of DB Distributor and MUST implement a Country Code conversion process on their instance of DB Distributor.

We'd love to hear from you and schedule a demo on any of these exciting new features. Contact us today at productinquiries@demandbridge.com!

VISIT THE ARCHIVES

We have big ideas for the future direction of DemandBridge and here’s the thing...

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