A-America

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. and BLACKSBURG, Va., March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Apprise Software, Inc., a leading provider of integrated ERP and supply chain management solutions for consumer goods distributors, and Internet Databases, a leading internet software provider focused on developing custom solutions for the home furnishings industry that enhance customer relationships through business-to-business transactions, sales force automation, online catalogs and order processing, announced today that A-America, Inc. has integrated its ERP application - Apprise(R) Distribution - with Internet Databases' FurnishWEB application to achieve improved sales efficiencies and enhanced customer service levels.

Headquartered in Seattle, WA, A-America is a leading importer and distributor of home furnishings for the bedroom, dining room, and home office. For over 30 years, A-America has had a history of profitable growth providing quality home furnishings, at competitive prices, to specialty and large chain furniture retailers throughout the United States and Canada. In a highly competitive market, A-America has been able to reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and deliver improved service to customers by consistently focusing on operational improvements.

A-America faced the challenge of needing to empower its representatives with improved access to real-time information on dealers, inventories, and pricing so they could sell more efficiently and provide better service to customers, without risking the security of its data that could come from providing representatives with access to its core ERP application. "A new representative told us about FurnishWEB, and we were excited to learn how easily it could be integrated with Apprise Distribution," said Kurtis Beach, information systems manager for A-America. A-America utilizes an automated daily update to share data between Apprise Distribution and FurnishWEB, giving representatives secure, real-time access to only the relevant information they need. "Our data remains secure, and we have a way to communicate real-time, accurate information to our representatives," continued Beach. "As a result, since its launch at the Las Vegas Market in January 2007, we've seen improved sales efficiencies, increased sales, and higher levels of customer service."

Apprise Distribution utilizes Web services to expose data elements for interoperability with external systems. Customers can easily integrate it with other applications utilizing Web services, ODBC connections, and/or an EDI interface. In addition to inventory and pricing information, Apprise Distribution and FurnishWEB can be further integrated to share additional data for extended application use, including order entry, order tracking, and invoice reporting. Extensive standard and customizable reports are available through both Apprise Distribution and FurnishWEB in a variety of formats and outputs.

"We are pleased to be working with Apprise Software to jointly provide tightly integrated solutions that meet the needs of the home furnishings industry," said Barry Welch, president of Internet Databases. "Together, we can offer customers a true beginning-to-end solution that will help them improve operating efficiencies and increase profitability."

"Through the integration with FurnishWEB, we are able to help our customers extend the value of their Apprise Distribution application to their representatives, without risking their data security," said Jeff Broadhurst, president of Apprise Software, Inc. "We look forward to continuing to work with Internet Databases to provide customers with leading industry-tailored solutions that deliver business performance improvements and a quick return on investment."

About A-America, Inc.

Headquartered in Seattle, WA, A-America is a leading importer and distributor of home furnishings for the bedroom, dining room and home office. For over 30 years, A-America has had a history of profitable growth providing quality home furnishings, at competitive prices, to specialty and large chain furniture retailers throughout the United States and Canada. In a highly competitive market, A-America has been able to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and deliver improved service to customers by consistently focusing on operational improvements. For more information about A-America, Inc. please visit http://www.a-america.com.

About Apprise Software, Inc.

Founded in 1984, and with offices in North America and China, Apprise Software, Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise-wide software solutions for mid-sized consumer goods distributors. Leveraging the latest technologies - such as Microsoft(R) .NET, wireless warehouse solutions, and RFID - along with industry best-practices, Apprise Software provides consumer goods distributors with global solutions that meet their unique business requirements while delivering reduced costs, improved efficiencies, enhanced revenues and profitability, and a quick return on investment. For more information about Apprise Software, Inc. please visit http://www.apprise.com.

RiversEdge

RiversEdge Implements Online FurnishWEB Application

Lynchburg, VA Manufacturer Subscribes To Order Management Extranet

Lynchburg, Va, March 21, 2007 – RiversEdge is proud to introduce their association with a state of the art web service application called FurnishWEB. The system pushes the manufacturer’s critical order and product information to the internet making it available to password protected users online. Providing product and order information, stock availability and other reports to sales reps and RiversEdge dealers allows them to proactively answer their own inquiries on orders and inventory, improving response time and accuracy.

“FurnishWEB will take us to the leading edge with the state of the art format that displays live accurate data with only the touch of a button,” says Wayne Willis, Systems manager for RiversEdge Furniture. By logging into a secure account from the RiversEdge website, sales reps and dealers can explore a wide variety of information that until now could only be accessed by the corporate office. Linked to RiversEdge’s current enterprise software system, FurnishWEB imports the required dealer, order and inventory data at scheduled times during the day, and has the ability to export new customer orders back into the main RiversEdge database. This allows dealers and reps to view information such as inventory and order status directly, providing better customer support.

“We are very excited to add RiversEdge to our growing list of clients, “ says Barry Welch, President of Internet Databases Corporation and creator of FurnishWEB. “The furniture industry has made rapid changes from a primarily manufacturing environment to a more distribution-oriented model. FurnishWEB is proving to be a fabulous tool for manufacturers looking for ways to work more effectively in this new environment.”

ABOUT INTERNET DATABASES - Internet Databases of Blacksburg Virginia is a custom web development company that has been serving the furniture industry since 1999. The internet software provider develops custom solutions that enhance customer relationships through business-to-business transactions, sales force automation, online catalogs, and online order processing. FurnishWEB is an order management extranet targeted at domestic furniture manufacturers and importers. The subscription-based application has features that include online order entry and status; product information and inventory status; photo library and sales and management reporting.

For more information visit www.furnishweb.com or contact a representative at info@furnishweb.com.

What's the Downloads Section

Here at FurnishWEB we believe in sharing. The Downloads feature is a great way to share relevant information with your Staff, Dealers, and Sales representatives.

What is the downloads feature?

It's a separate tab on the website (http://my.furnishweb.com/index.cfm?go=downloads.show_list) that is viewable by all users and allows you to share any type of file. The individual files can be anything, Word Documents, PDFs, Excel, Images, etc. Each of these files has it's own permission based on the types of users invited to FurnishWEB.

How do I upload files?

If you are a staff user you click on the Downloads Tab and then on the Add Download link at the top of the screen. You'll see a form like this one appear :

The File box let's you browse for a file on your local computer to upload to the website.

The Category options let you either select a existing category or add a new one.

The Title let's you enter a friendly name for the file you are uploading.

The Remark box lets you add a description.

The Seen by options lets you control who can see the file on the website and download it. If Dealers is selected all users can see the files. If Reps is selected then Staff and Reps can see and download the file, and if Staff is selected only Staff can see and download the files.

How can I use the Downloads feature?

You can upload any useful information you have that you would like to share with your users, for example:

• high quality logos for printed ads (Helps reduce mailing costs and phones calls.)
• Special Sale/Promotional Price Sheets (Make sure you add a Starting and End Date)
• Market Information
• Color PDF versions of Collection Brochures
• Print Quality ads for your dealers to use

The possibilities are endless. So what are you waiting for?

Go upload some information for your users. Share already!

Furnishweb Turns 1

Furniture Industry Extranet Gains Eight Manufacturing Clients In One Year.

BLACKSBURG, VA (PRWEB) March 9, 2007 -- FurnishWEB, an order management extranet, finished its first year with a total of eight manufacturing clients including Bassett Mirror, RiversEdge, Pulaski Furniture and AAmerica. These clients represent over 900 users and more than 600 furniture retailers who search for product and order information 21,000 times a month and download over 16,000 photographs. FurnishWEB is an internet application that allows manufacturers, sales representatives and furniture retailers to share relevant product and order information via password protected access to the website.

"We are very encouraged by the success of our first year," said Barry Welch, president of Internet Databases, the parent company of FurnishWEB. "We attribute our growth to several things. The furniture industry is a rapidly changing environment and manufacturers are looking for ways to manage these changes. The old business model is no longer effective and technology provides the solution. Our employees love technology, but what distinguishes us is our thorough understanding of the furniture business. This has allowed us to create an incredibly powerful tool, in a deceptively simple package. The result is a product that our users are selling for us," he said, explaining that nearly all of their clients are the result of referrals.

FurnishWEB has plans to build on these early gains by extending the feature set and has recently launched a new release. FurnishWEB 3.0 added accounts receivable functionality as well as enhancements to the photo library. "Our goal is to provide manufacturers with a system that allows them to more effectively manage the sales cycle."

About FurnishWEB and Internet Databases
Internet Databases of Blacksburg Virginia is a custom web development company that has been serving the furniture industry since 1999. After creating several large, custom dealer extranets and recognizing the demand for common business requirements, they developed FurnishWEB, an off-the-shelf product. FurnishWEB is a subscription-based application targeted at domestic furniture manufacturers and importers, and has features that include online order entry and status; product information and inventory status; photo library and sales and management reporting.

To learn more, please visit www.furnishweb.com or call 540.443.9250.

3.0 Launched

We are pleased to announce the new release of FurnishWEB. FurnishWEB 3.0 is now live! The major additions in this release are Invoice support and Product Spec Sheet. We're very excited about this new release as it positions us for many new features and reports in the future.

Here are some of the new features available in this release:

Invoices: FurnishWEB now supports invoices as well as orders. There is a new Tab for searching and filtering invoices online. There are also new invoice reports and invoice summaries that have been added to the Overview tab.

Product Spec Sheet: For our customers that keep hi-res and/or print-version photos in FurnishWEB, we have a 'Print' option on the Product Detail page. This option will print a 1 page spec sheet of that product with a large photo, specs, and inventory.

Customer Service Rep: Many FurnishWEB companies have customer service reps using the system. Now Customer Service users can be associated with a Territory/Rep code. When a dealer user enters messages on an order, their CSR will be at the at top of the list to receive that message. Also, the Overview page for CSRs will default to their Territory/Rep code.

Photo Library upgrade: We changed the labels on the photo library links from 'Add to Cart' to 'Download Now/Download Later' to make this process more user-friendly.

Order Status/Shipment Tracking: We added FedEx & UPS tracking.

Order Entry Drop Ship: We added a drop-down list of states on the Drop-Ship addresses to include USA, Canada, Australia.

Order List: The order total now includes miscellaneous charges in the total.

Products: We've added a new status, 'Pending', to be used for those products that are pre-market and yet to be built. These 'Pending' products are only seen by Staff users.

Overview: Changed the Activity Log to group up shipments so more Dealer summary can be viewed. We also added quick links to the most popular reports so dealers and reps can quickly obtain a PDF or Excel version of these reports.

Reports: We changed the Report Options/Criteria from pop-up to normal web pages. Several users reported that they could not see the report options because they had their pop-up blocker turned on in their browser.

Security: We closed a loop-hole that allowed users to invite themselves and, in some cases, altering their permissions.

Enjoy FurnishWEB 3.0 and please let us know if you have any questions.