As we look back in 2018 at everything that has been added to your technology toolkit, it is inspiring to reflect on all the progress that was made. To remind you of just a few of the innovations that are available to you, we have created a summary of the Year in Review.
The culmination of all the work that we have done in the past few years resulted in winning the DSA Partnership Award. It means so much to us to have received nominations from so many of you, sharing your experiences of success. It is an honor for us to have been selected as the only back-office provider to win this prestigious award in more than 21 years. Thank you for making this dream come true for our entire team!
Our overarching goal for 2018 was to create great experiences for our clients — delivering solutions that enable and empower you to run your business more effectively. New team members were added in the areas of Field Adoption, Relationship Management, and Client Support to provide more resources to assist you.
- During the year, we finished migrations of the majority of clients to Shopping Cart 2.0 and we continue to innovate — adding more functionality and features that will deliver the best possible shopping experience to your customers.
- We completed the migration of all Revolution clients to Revolution Responsive as part of our Free Upgrade process. This provides everyone that was on Revolution a completely responsive mobile first experience.
- We launched a brand new Mobile App which has gone live for many clients and we’re continuing to work with clients to launch their own branded apps.
- To better share what is happening in the industry, we launched a new blog to provide you with relevant information from the leading experts; sharing trends, tips, and insights into where our industry is going.
- We also began sharing some of the Success Stories of our clients, to provide inspiration on new ways you can think about growing your business by leveraging more of the features in your Freedom Cloud Solution.
We made a significant investment in the product over the last year. During 2018, we released more than 800 updates as part of the free monthly releases. We invested thousands of hours of ByDesign funded R&D to make the product better, to make your experience better, and to stay on the forefront of where technology is headed. A few of the product enhancements that were added are detailed below:
Shopping Cart 2.0 Delivers “Amazon-Like” Experience
Multiple images for Shopping Cart 2.0 relationships allows for multiple colors and multiple sizes. When you change the product options it automatically changes the image that is displayed to the shopper.
We launched Mobile Checkout to make it mobile responsive from start to finish. From the address input all the way through to the checkout page is now optimized for shopping from your phone.
We made a number of updates related to incentives:
- Promotion Code Support allows you to configure promotions to activate based on a promotion code. This enhancement is now part of promotions.
- Gift Certificates were also enhanced to support limiting redemption to specific collections. This allows you to create a sales aid collection or a product collection with the ability to restrict gift certificates to be used only for those collections.
The Benefits of Revolution Expanded Exponentially
Graphical Commissions Display
We launched dashboard graphs, which allows you to take any of the commissions data that is currently captured, such as volumes, recruiting, or qualifications, and create graphs. We have ~30 different types of graphs, and from that you can create unlimited variations, from simple to complex — they are completely configuration based.
Commissions Reporting
When a Representative wants to know if they are active, the enhanced drill down allows them to have graphical gauges to quickly see where they are at, and what they need to do to get to the next level.
The downline commission report has been upgraded to see levels, and change the view from sponsorship to downline — making it easier for Representatives to see their team and coach them.
Contact card reports can now be limited based on rank, making is simple and easy for Representatives to manage their business and not be overwhelmed with more data then they need.
Journey Based Alerts
We’ve made enhancements to Alerts that enable delivering content and notifications based on a Representative’s journey. From being able to deliver Alerts based on their 1st day, 5th day, or 10th day in the business; through to delivering Alerts based on their 1st order, or 5th order – the options are limitless to enable more efficient onboarding.
To simplify the setup of Journey Based Alerts, we have built a “60 Day Onboarding Program” based on industry best practices that has been pre-loaded into the system. This “60 Day Onboarding Program” includes unbranded resources that can be leveraged to optimize onboarding for new Representatives.
Customer Manager
The Customer Manager has been upgraded, making it easier for your Representatives to engage their customers and find the customers they are looking for — based on when they purchased, whether or not they’re on AutoShip, which products they ordered, along with many other filter options.
BackOffice 2.0
Several important updates have been made to the Corporate Back Office. We have been focused on releasing the most commonly used and important pages over the past year. A few examples are below:
New Home Screen
The experience for finding existing representatives, orders, and customers has been simplified. ByDesign content has also been added to make it even easier to see what’s new and learn more about how you can take advantage of the breadth of your Freedom Cloud solution.
Representative Dashboard
The recently launched new Representative screen has been designed for ease of use. For example, we saw that users were frequently going from the Rep screen to AutoShip, so we moved AutoShip information directly to the Rep screen to simplify their experience.
The Inventory Dashboard was also updated to make it easier to do a quick search and find information — recently modified items, recently modified categories, along with other widgets to simplify making the changes you’re looking for.
REST APIs – Inventory & Order Creation
We continue to add more REST and this year we released a number of significant upgrades that make it even easier to build custom applications on top of the Freedom Platform.
- Inventory Management APIs allow you to create inventory modified categories, and modified pricing directly through our new REST services.
- New Warehouse APIs allow you to programmatically adjust stock levels and item availability through the REST services.
- We also created the ability to import orders directly through REST services — being able to override pricing and making it even easier to do anything you want on top of the Freedom Platform.
Planning for Your Success
As this year comes to a close, our focus is on preparing on every level for your success in 2019. We are very grateful for the confidence and trust that you have placed in ByDesign, and we will continue to strive to exceed your expectations in the coming year.
In closing, all of us at ByDesign Technologies wish you a very Happy Holiday and a Prosperous 2019.