2015 Tribute & TrulinX User's Conference Successful!
The 2015 TrulinX and Tribute user's group meeting (TribNet) was a great success for customers, vendors, and Tribute staff!
Held last week at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel in downtown Cleveland, the meeting brought in 145 attendees from 81 companies, joined by eight preferred solution partners.
We had 26 first time attendees and are pleased that so many of you continue to find value in attending and networking at the annual meeting.
The week began with a day of intense work by the TrulinX PPAB and the Tribute Program Review Committees. Members review and rank the TrulinX and Tribute open project lists, which helps determine the direction for future software development.
We officially kicked off the User's Group meeting on Tuesday with a welcome from Tribute president Tim Reynolds and a review of Tribute’s strategic initiatives. We were honored to have Frank Hurtte of River Heights Consulting as our keynote speaker this year addressing Nine Things Distributors Should be Thinking About...And Some Ideas on How to Deal with Them.
As always we enjoyed some informative breakout sessions. TrulinX and Tribute had some separate breakouts, while others were combined and relevant to all users. These included presentations on inventory management, tips for data management, vendor pricing, accounting tips, ACH and credit card processing, the benefits of EDI processing, work orders and cost finalization, SQL database management, BOM setup tips, and many round table and Q&A sessions.
These sessions were well attended and customers left with new knowledge about Tribute and TrulinX to take home to their businesses.
We also extend a huge thanks to our sponsors for exhibiting and presenting breakout sessions. Our Gold Sponsors: MITS and Harland Technology Services, and our Bronze Sponsors: 3Delta Systems, Rubber Tree Systems, Tour de Force, and WarehouseTWO.
We also introduced our newest vendor partner, Datto, Inc., an innovative provider of comprehensive backup, recovery and business continuity solutions who will be our partner in offering total data protection to our customers.
We were also pleased to welcome representatives from Qantel Technologies, Aitek Consulting, Thrive Technology Solutions, and Parker Hannifin Corporation, who also attended the meeting. All of these vendors provide very important products and services that can be found listed on the Tribute website.
Our annual meeting is a great way to network with other customers and we try to do that in a casual and fun setting. Tuesday evening we had an pleasant opening reception at the Renaissance and Wednesday evening we enjoyed an evening of dining and dancing at The Music Box Supper Club along the Cuyahoga River in the flats.
It was a wonderful opportunity to have fun and network as a big combined group. Many attendees also enjoyed marvelous dining and sightseeing in and around our hometown city of Cleveland.
Several new officers and committee members were also elected at the meeting. We now hold one business meeting where we elect a single combined executive board representing both Tribute and TrulinX, while keeping separate priority-setting committees. The current members are:
TribNet Executive Board members:
- President: John Dewey (Brennan Industries)
- Vice-President: Kevin Michell (Behco-MRM, Inc.)
- Secretary: Brian Teddlie (Wilson Company)
- Membership Chairperson: Delilah Wirtjes (Monarch Automation, Inc.)
Tribute Program Review members:
- Ed Murphy (The Hope Group)
- Janie Vasu (IMS Company)
- Lee Helfer (Specialty Hose Corp)
- Dave Hajciar (Morrell, Inc.)
- Terry Montefusco (Epperson & Co.)
- Chuck Hranac (Hydraulic Controls, Inc.)
- Meggan Sutherland (Linde Hydraulics)
TrulinX Program Priority Assignment Board (PPAB) members:
- Walt Rodgers (Cline Hose & Hydraulics)
- Emily Thompson (Hose/Conveyors)
- Phil Vice (Controlled Motion Solutions)
- Teresa Freeman (Indiana Fluid Power)
- Albin Dearing (Dearing Compressor)
- Samantha Berndt (Hart Industries)
- Katie Smith (S. G. Morris Company)
- Rod Illanes (Hayes Pump)
We appreciate the time our executive board and committee members give to the promotion of our meeting and development of the software. We especially thank Membership Chair Delilah Wirtjes with her help in encouraging customers to join TribNet and our new member's forum on Basecamp.
We look forward to another great meeting in 2016 – make plans to join us!
Related articles
