Tribute Customer of the Quarter: Colliflower, Inc.

Headquartered in Baltimore, Colliflower, Inc. is named after the founder, Les Colliflower, who started the company in 1951 in Ellicott City, Maryland. The company originally designed and built hydraulic power units, some of which are still in use today.

Colliflower is a full line stocking distributor of Parker Fluid Connectors. Supplying a full line of hydraulic & pneumatic hoses, hose fittings, flanges, metric fittings & adapters, tube fittings, brass fittings, quick couplings, Colliflower has 19 stores located throughout Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

The company became a full line Parker Fluid Connector Group Distributor in 1987, relocating the headquarters and opening its first store selling Parker fluid connectors in Rosedale, Maryland, just NE of Baltimore City. In 1998, Jim Beachley joined Colliflower as Chief Operating Officer to oversee the operations of the company, add structure, and help take the company to the next level.

Jim Beachley also currently serves as President of the Parker Hannifin FCG Distributor Advisory Council, which strives to develop strategic and tactical solutions to promote profitable growth and reduce transactional cost between the Parker Fluid Connectors Group and the FCG distribution channel.

In 1999, Colliflower left their aptly named Yellow Brick Road headquarters for a newly constructed facility on Pulaski Highway. The new facility encompassed a store, large warehouse and expanded headquarter offices to house the growing team.

This set the stage for further expansion and, by 2007, Colliflower added nine more stores in VA, GA and PA, including Parker Hannifin’s 200th ParkerStore in the U.S. Acquisitions in 2010 and 2011 added to the store count and today Colliflower is one of the largest FCG Parker distributors with 19 ParkerStores and growing!

A Tribute customer since 1999, the goal of the staff at Colliflower is to exceed customer expectations by being a total hose and fitting solution, making hose assemblies quickly, and providing 24/7 service. Every employee has the same objective each and every day. From the team member that pulls and ships your order to the president of the company, their goal is to do everything they can to exceed customer expectations.

Colliflower, Inc.
GA, MD, PA & VA
http://www.colliflower.com/

The annual TribNet meeting is coming up soon on June 12-14, 2013 in downtown Denver, CO!

As we continue to prepare our agenda, we just wanted to give a sample of some of the Tribute Software breakout sessions we are tentatively planning this year:

• Accounting Tips & Tricks
• Inventory Tools: Bin Management, Lot Control and Serial Numbers
• Report Generator Editing
• Hardware Tips & Tricks
• Financial Reports - Review/Audit/Maintain
• Automated Credit Cards - Processing and Troubleshooting
• Warehouse Layout / Management (Bar Coding, Cycle Counting)
• And more!

The official conference registration packet will be available soon.

The meeting will take place at the Denver Marriott City Center, within easy walking distance from fantastic shopping, dining, and entertainment in LoDo, Larimer Square and the 16th Street Mall. We'll enjoy remodeled meeting spaces with new technology, and a spacious common area for networking, vendor booths, and relaxing during breaks.

For more information, go to the member's area of the website. You may make your reservations online via the Marriott City Center website by clicking the reservations link and changing the check-in and check-out dates on the left as necessary.

Keep in mind, the Program Review Committee will be meeting on Tuesday, June 11th, and the general meeting will run from 1:00 PM Wednesday June 12th through 5:00 PM Friday, June 14th.

This is a great opportunity to take in some great sessions along with networking with Tribute staff and your peers. We look forward to seeing you in June!
 

The 2012 joint TrulinX™ and Tribute® user's group meeting was held June 11-14 at the Renaissance Cleveland hotel in Cleveland, OH. The meeting brought in 124 attendees from 62 companies. We are happy that so many of you find value in attending the annual meeting.

The week began with a day of intense work by the TrulinX PPAB and the Tribute Program Review Committee. Members review and rank the TrulinX and Tribute open project lists, which helps determine the direction for future software development.

We officially began the User's Group meeting on Tuesday with a welcome from Tim Reynolds, a recap of personnel changes and programming updates from Tribute and TrulinX, and new features to be completed in the upcoming year. Mark Tomalonis of WarehouseTWO followed with a talk on effective business communication. Mark's common-sense tips included: leave focused voice mail messages, go talk to your coworker a few steps away face-to-face instead of sending an email, and never begin an email message with "Hey". Mark then wrapped up our general session with a speech on "Excess Inventory: How to Prevent, Identify and Reduce It".

On Tuesday evening, Tribute and TrulinX customers were welcomed with a reception in the elegant Ambassador Room at the hotel.

Our breakout sessions were held on Wednesday and Thursday. TrulinX and Tribute had some separate breakouts, while others were combined and relevant to all users. These included presentations on bill of materials processing, accounting, credit card processing, report writing, customer consignment, importing/exporting data, EDI, social media, new features, and "tips and tricks". Users also participated in roundtable discussions on subjects such as cycle counting, rebates, and best practices for "going live". We hope our attendees left with new knowledge about Tribute and TrulinX to take home to their businesses and put into action.

We also send a big "thank you" to Rubber Tree Systems as our Platinum Sponsor and generous sponsor of our teambuilding event (otherwise known as "beer pong tournament"). We also send huge thanks to WarehouseTWO, Tour de Force CRM, Enlighten.Net, 3Delta Systems (3DSI) and Parker Hannifin Corporation who also attended the meeting. All of these vendors provide very important products and services and we hope to see them at the 2013 meeting.

Naturally we had to interject some fun into our conference as well. On Wednesday evening we enjoyed the President's Dinner, which was held at Pickwick and Frolic restaurant and comedy club. Everyone savored the great food and three funny comedians, all with their own style. (Please send us a photo if you try those red tinted contact lenses!) It was a great opportunity to have fun and network as a large combined group.

Coincidentally, our conference was held at the same time as Marine Week in Cleveland. Many folks stepped outside the hotel to Public Square and enjoyed a fine display of helicopters, artillery, a tank, Humvees, and other equipment, along with concerts and demonstrations by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Several new officers and committee members were also elected at the meeting. We decided to hold one business meeting and elect a single combined slate of officers representing both Tribute and TrulinX, while keeping separate priority-setting committees. The current members are:

Officers:

• President: Sybille Hamilton (Seals Unlimited)
• Vice-President: Emily Thompson (Hose\Conveyors, Inc.)
• Secretary: Brian Teddlie (Wilson Company)
• Membership Chairperson: Delilah Wirtjes (Monarch Automation, Inc.)

Tribute Program Review Members:

• Kirk Downey (Hyspeco)
• Janie Vasu (IMS Company)
• Tim Pritchard (Zemarc Corporation)
• Terry Montefusco (Epperson & Co.)
• John Dewey (Brennan Industries)
• Maria Panza (Progressive Hydraulics)
• Ed Murphy (The Hope Group)

TrulinX Program Priority Assignment Board (PPAB) members:

• Bryan Green (George E. Booth Company) – Class of 2014
• Samantha Berndt (Hart Industries) – Class of 2014 (Term 2)
• Betsy Hansen (R J Vedovell Company) – Class of 2014
• Teresa Freeman (Indiana Fluid Power) – Class of 2014
• Kevin Cutts (Hydraulic and Pneumatic Sales) - Class of 2013 (Term 2)
• Walt Rodgers (Cline Hose and Hydraulics) – Class of 2013 (Term 2)
• Kevin Martin (S. G. Morris Company) – Class of 2013
• Rod Illanes (Hayes Pump) – Class of 2013

We especially appreciate the efforts of last year's presidents, Sybille Hamilton and Eric Bourg (Connector Specialists, Inc.) with all their assistance in the business meeting.

Next year's conference will take place in Denver, with the date yet to be determined. We look forward to another great meeting in 2013!

We are excited to announce the addition of John Teahan to the Tribute staff! John comes to us from fluid power distributor and manufacturer S.G. Morris and will be taking on the mantle of Manager of Onsite Customer Service and Implementations. John will be leading our customer implementation, training and consulting services team.

A graduate of Villanova University, John has spent 31 years in the fluid power distribution industry holding a variety of positions. Starting his career in inside sales at Ritter Engineering, a change in family status had him moving to Oklahoma where he worked for Aberdeen Dynamics Supply, a fluid power and motion control distributor, in inside sales and as materials manager for the next 18 years. Moving back to the northeast in 2000, John lent his expertise to S.G. Morris as Materials Manager and has been integral in their transition from The Tribute® Software System to TrulinX™.

John is dedicated to organizational management and the principles of Lean Six Sigma, seeking to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. He has received certificates of achievement from Villanova's continuing education program on Lean Six Sigma, Human Resources Management, Mastering Organizational Effectiveness, Strategic Organizational Leadership and is a Six Sigma Green Belt.

His years of experience in the industry in a variety of positions, his dedication to organizational management and lean processes, and his knowledge of Tribute and TrulinX software make him the ideal leader of our onsite customer service and implementation team. Please join us in welcoming him to the Tribute family!

Release 11.2 Now Available

Release 11.2 was shipped the week before Thanksgiving and it contains a few features for all Tribute users.

For the Belting users – we’ve updated IBSMA to the newer style screens so it closely resembles the IBSM changes from Rel 10.2. The new screen continues to allow you to select the type of maintenance: adding a slab, maintaining a slab, deleting a slab, or deleting and re-adding a slab. You can then enter the slab to be worked on, or use the button to view the slabs. The screen is now wider to allow a better slab picture. Also, the work order print in IBSM has been enlarged to take an entire page when printing the map.

Order Shipping (OS) has also changed for the belting users. We revamped and changed the wording on some of the screens to make it easier to determine what to do at each belt step along the way.

For Customer Consignment users, we have added the pricing Contract number field to the CONSM first screen. This is to allow the customer consignment to price based on a contract price you have set up in IPDM.

Lastly, we have made enhancements to N1099. Last year there was huge concern about the number of 1099 statements you would be required to produce, and while we understand that that concern has been reduced, there were still issues with the N1099 program. With the government requirement of a red ink form as the 1099 ‘A’ and 1096 forms we were a little concerned about creating a laser form print from our standard N1099 program. We left the old N1099 print as it was – it will print on tractor feed forms as it always has, OR you now have the ability to generate an export file in a .CSV format. The format we create is available for everyone, but we made sure it will work with a 3rd party package called W2 Mate. The package will allow you to import with an additional module or manually enter the information for 1099. That package is available from the www.realtaxtools.com web site. The site also has a module to allow you to electronically submit the 1099s or you can purchase the forms through them to print the government requirements.

Stay tuned to the monthly updates for more Customer Consignment changes along with several projects from the Project List.

3Delta Systems Delivers Enterprise-Wide Tokenization Security to Tribute Software Customers

3DSI’s CardVault to Reduce PCI Audit Scope, Lower Data Breach Risk and Cut Costs

CHANTILLY, Va. – December 13, 2010 – 3Delta Systems, Inc.® (3DSI), a leader in online credit card payment and business-to-business (B2B) data tokenization solutions, announced today that Ohio-based industrial software vendor Tribute Inc. will integrate 3DSI’s CardVault® tokenization service into its enterprise software applications. As a result, Tribute’s customers will be able to reduce their cost and scope of complying with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) security requirements and better protect their credit card data from a possible breach. The company provides enterprise-wide software to distributors and fabricators in the fluid power, fluid handling, hose, sealing, belting, automation, motion control and related industries at more than 600 locations throughout North America.

Under the agreement, CardVault will be embedded into Tribute’s Windows-based TrulinX™ distribution software and its Unix-based Tribute® software systems. With CardVault, Tribute’s customers will be able to exchange real credit card numbers with reference values called tokens, a process that renders card data useless to criminals in the event of a breach. CardVault will also store Tribute customers’ sensitive credit card and payment data off-site at 3DSI’s secure, PCI-certified processing centers.

Tribute’s customers have been using 3Delta Systems’ EC-Linx real-time, Level-3 payment processing interface since 2005 to capture and pass through detailed, invoice-like purchase information with their credit card transactions. Merchants who include Level-3 data, ranging from unit price to item description when processing B2B purchase card transactions, can realize significant card interchange fee savings.

“CardVault was the clear choice for delivering world-class card security to our industrial distributors and complements 3Delta Systems’ EC-Linx capabilities beautifully,” said Susie Hopper, vice president at Tribute Inc. “3DSI provides the most sophisticated tokenization and payment processing solutions on the market today, coupled with state-of-the-art ‘Software as a Service’ technologies, flexible network platform, industry expertise and extensive customer support.”

“Enterprises that share business-critical credit card data across applications and face PCI compliance mandates often find that outsourcing payment acceptance, storage and tokenization to 3Delta Systems significantly decreases their customers’ PCI audit scope while protecting sensitive information from cybercriminals,” said Aaron Bills, chief operating officer and founder of 3Delta Systems.

In addition to secure card data storage, CardVault also features real-time and file-based Level-3 transaction processing with every major U.S. card processor. Real-time transactions support e-commerce and customer service systems in which a customer waits for their card to be authorized, while file-based processing supports invoicing systems and circumstances where real-time authorization is not critical.

3Delta Systems’ suite of services and technologies meet the most rigorous PCI DSS requirements for safeguarding cardholder data against fraud and data security breaches. The PCI DSS standards are the payment industry’s foremost benchmark for cardholder account security. 3Delta Systems has maintained third-party PCI DSS certification since 2004 and is a participating organization in the PCI Security Standards Council.

Top 10 Best Practices for Fighting Credit Card Theft and Fraud: Click to read a report by 3DSI with tips to protect your credit card data. (PDF document)

About 3Delta Systems

3Delta Systems, Inc. [http://www.3dsi.com] is a payment solutions company that delivers the power of secure, Internet-based purchase and credit card processing solutions to enterprise, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) customers. 3DSI’s complete suite of payment solutions – each designed from the ground up to be scalable, easy to implement and conform with PCI Data Security Standard best practices – enables merchants and buyers to manage, authorize and settle payment transactions in real-time. As a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider, 3DSI has processed more than 41 million payment transactions worth over $36 billion dollars for over 6,000 corporations and government agencies since the company was founded in 1999.

Tim Reynolds on Running a Business in a Recession

Tribute President Tim Reynolds shares his thoughts on running a business in turbulent times:

"Clear thinking and an open mind are critical to small-business success. Take a hard look at your business processes and compare them to the best standards in distribution. Trade organizations can help you determine how you stack up against the competition and offer excellent networking and training opportunities. Take the "blinders" off and streamline your business so you can be ready for the good times to come."

You can read the full article in the March 2009 issue of Industrial Distribution.

WarehouseTWO is an easy-to-deploy, easy-to-use and cost effective inventory-sharing tool created exclusively for manufacturers and their franchised distributor communities. WarehouseTWO has partnered with Tribute to make the inventory-sharing process as seamless as possible. Benefits include:

• Compatibility with Tribute Software
• Ability to fill back-orders faster - improving customer service
• Sales outlet for unwanted inventory - for better asset management
• Opportunity for incremental revenue - for greater overall profitability

Tribute support can assist with a report generator for the correct file layout needed by WarehouseTWO. They can also assist with set-up to automate the process of sending your inventory information to the WarehouseTWO website. For more information contact WarehouseTWO at www.warehousetwo.com.

Tribute, Inc. has partnered with Rubber Tree Systems to offer the latest in sales mobilization and push technology. Investing in a Blackberry or Smartphone solution for your sales force can be a major decision. E-mail, calendar, and contacts are all important information for your sales people to have at their fingertips and with Tribute Mobile, you can now have access to your Tribute data as well. The latest activity on orders, quotes, and invoices are the lifeline to a successful salesperson.

Tribute Mobile is a business intelligence and sales force mobilization system that extracts the data from your Tribute system and shares it with any mobile device. Not only can your sales people retrieve the data when they need it, but it is also pushed to them when predetermined criteria are matched based on customer, dollar amounts, margins, and other changes in your Tribute system. For more information regarding Tribute Mobile, contact Rubber Tree Systems at http://www.rubbertreesystems.net/TributeMobile.aspx.

Previous Customers of the Quarter
Click a link to read about a recent Customer of the Quarter:

THG Corporation

North Coast Seal, Inc.

Hyspeco

Brennan Industries

Draco Mechanical Supply

TCH Industries

Nashville Rubber and Gasket Co., Inc.

Jerry Brothers Industries, Inc.

Kraft Fluid Systems, Inc.

Dale Prentice Co.

Transmission & Fluid Equipment, Inc.

Hydraulic Controls, Inc.

Goldstein-Schwartz, Inc.

Estabrook Corp.

Rubber & Accessories, Inc.

Success Stories

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White Papers

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Trade Show Schedule

We demonstrate our industry-leading solutions at trade shows throughout the year. See our trade show schedule here.