A Best Place to Work

Where You CAN Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

In August of 2015, I walked into a reception that I never expected to be invited to. Nine other Demand Chain team members and I strolled through a set of glass doors into a large private airplane hangar roaring with energy. The overwhelming din of hundreds of attendee voices combined with the clinking of glass bottles and booming music made the hanger, which would have otherwise seemed cavernous, feel like an intimate party room created just for us.

We were welcomed as honorees to the “Best Places to Work” awards banquet, put on by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal! (MSPBJ) Demand Chain has since been honored MSPBJ 8x in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, & 2022 as a Best Place to Work. The event was the culmination of an employee-driven review process that started with a nomination, followed up by surveys, scoring, interviews, and completed with an impressive reception at Holman Field overlooking downtown St. Paul, MN.

Our entire team (excluding our founders to eliminate bias) participated in private interviews on a variety of topics; business practices, work environment, personal development and team engagement. The team submitted their results and Demand Chain was ranked against other businesses our size. On a 100 point scale, Demand Chain scored better than 96, landing us in the top ten Minnesota businesses in our category.

Top ten? Us?! Awesome!

This honor is extremely humbling. In typical Midwest fashion, we are not boastful or schooled in the art of swagger. So for our team to nominate Demand Chain as a top place to work and consequently earning this recognition is beyond amazing – like reaching the summit of a mountain, suddenly making all the planning, struggle and loss to get there seem worthwhile.

The competition for employees is fierce in our industry and we can’t always compete on every front. Our team is contacted constantly by other organizations with offers of something “shiny”. Yet, it turns out that what gets deposited a couple times a month isn’t the only thing our team values.

Do team parties matter? How about work environment? Is flexibility important? What about thoughtful insurance options? Good food, plenty of beverages? How about an office dog?

Surely, all these things matter, plus more. However, there’s something else and I like to think of it as magic, a sort of business umami. Something that you know is there when you feel it. A rare mix of engagement, trust, autonomy, mastery and purpose with a dose of fun and humility.

And cake, especially Bundt cake – surely having more cake is good?

So as we celebrated in that airplane hangar overlooking St. Paul, sharing the success of the teams that filled the space, discussing ideas that made each of our workplaces something special, it reminded me once again of how lucky we are to work with such an outstanding team. And how happy I am that we’re in complete agreement on at least one thing, that Demand Chain is a best place to work!

Written by Chris Dahlberg

Chris Dahlberg has over 20 years of experience building CRM systems and managing CRM practices. While at 3M early in his career, he implemented the company’s first-generation SFA system in several departments. Later, as a senior consultant at GE Capital Consulting (Ambient Consulting), he was one of the firm’s most highly utilized resources, implementing SFA and CRM solutions for hundreds of clients in the financial, transportation, manufacturing and healthcare markets. He also served as the firm’s CRM practice manager.

Demand Chain is a Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal – 9x Best Places to Work in 2023!

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