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!
