- Describe your company – a high-level description of what your business does.
Distribution Management, or DM, is a privately held national wholesaler distributor specializing in print and imaging products. We support the imaging channel with a broad portfolio of hardware, supplies and related products, while also providing the infrastructure and services that help our customers efficiently manage and distribute those products.
A significant part of our business is supporting Managed Print Services. We understand that MPS is about much more than selling a device or a cartridge. It is about managing the entire lifecycle of print — from equipment and supplies to inventory, replenishment, logistics, reporting and ultimately the customer experience.
That combination of product expertise, distribution capabilities, technology and fulfillment is really where DM differentiates itself. We have built our business around helping our customers operate more efficiently, allowing them to focus on their relationships and their end customers while we help manage the supply-chain side of the equation.
- How does your organization generally support the MPS landscape, and what has been your relationship with MPSA?
DM supports the MPS landscape as a distribution and infrastructure partner, helping dealers and MPS providers get the products they need, when they need them, while giving them the operational support to manage customer print environments efficiently.
Through product availability, inventory management, fulfillment, replenishment and technology connections, DM helps simplify the complex behind-the-scenes work that makes MPS programs successful. Our role across the print and imaging channel gives us practical insight into the challenges providers face and how programs operate in the real world.
Our MPSA membership is important for collaboration in our industry. The MPSA brings together all the MPS players, from manufacturers and providers to consultants and other participants, in a vendor-neutral environment to focus on education, research, best practices, and sharing ideas. For DM, being part of that community gives us an opportunity not only to learn from others in the industry, but also to contribute our perspective as a distributor.
- What is the most significant way your organization can make a positive impact on the broader MPSA community?
Our biggest opportunity is helping the MPSA community solve the operational side of the business.
MPS providers can have a great technology platform, a great sales organization, and a great customer strategy, but ultimately they must deliver the right products to the right place at the right time. That’s where distribution and supply-chain execution become critical.
DM’s mpsSelect program was built with the understanding that MPS providers are managing more than products — they are managing service expectations, cost pressures, visibility, and customer experience. Through tools like our supply management system, supply routing labels, service capabilities, and MyPrinterManager.com portal, we aim to help manufacturers and partners address some of those broader challenges in practical ways, whether that means improving efficiency, reducing freight and supply costs, expanding service reach, or giving both partners and end users better visibility into their print environments.
The goal for all of us is to ensure MPS remains viable by delivering meaningful efficiency, measurable value, and a customer experience that encourages retention. If there’s no MPS, there’s no MPSA.
- Describe a time when your organization had to adapt to a major shift in the MPS or production print industry.
One of the biggest shifts we’ve experienced has been the industry’s movement from a transactional print business toward recurring, service-based models such as Managed Print Services.
That change fundamentally altered what customers needed from a distributor. It was no longer enough to simply have a product available and ship an order. MPS created an expectation of consistency — the right supplies had to be available when the customer needed them, inventory had to be managed intelligently, and the entire process had to become more predictable and measurable.
We responded by investing in the infrastructure around the products. That meant developing stronger inventory-management capabilities, improving our technology and integrations, and building fulfillment processes that could support recurring demand rather than simply transactional orders.
One of the biggest lessons we learned was that you can’t treat an industry transition as simply a change in what you sell. You have to change how you operate.
COVID reinforced that lesson. Supply-chain disruptions made it very clear how vulnerable an MPS program can become when availability and logistics aren’t treated as strategic components of the business. Our customers needed visibility, communication, and flexibility. We had to be proactive rather than reactive.
Today, that experience shapes the way we support our customers. We try to anticipate what they will need rather than simply respond to an order. We invest in technology and processes that give our customers better visibility and flexibility, and we recognize that the distributor’s job is not just moving boxes. It’s helping our partners deliver a consistent customer experience despite a constantly changing marketplace.
Adaptability has to be built into the business model, not just the response to a crisis.
- Biggest opportunity for innovation and collaboration within the managed print community?
There are manufacturers, dealers, distributors, software providers, service organizations and end users — and each of those groups has information that can make the overall MPS ecosystem better. The opportunity is to connect that information so that better decisions can be made.
There is opportunity for the industry to broaden the conversation about what MPS means. Print remains important, but businesses are increasingly managing broader document and information workflows. The MPS community has an opportunity to help customers think about print as part of a larger business process rather than as an isolated device or supply.
That kind of innovation requires collaboration. No single company owns the entire solution, which is exactly why an organization like MPSA is so valuable.
- How have you benefited from the MPSA community? What are its biggest attributes, and what improvements are needed?
The biggest benefit of MPSA is the community itself.
MPS is an ecosystem business. No one company sees everything that’s happening across the industry, so having a forum where manufacturers, dealers, software providers, consultants and other participants can exchange ideas is extremely valuable.
For DM specifically, the community gives us a better understanding of where the industry is heading and what challenges our partners are facing. It also gives us an opportunity to share what we’re seeing from the distribution and supply-chain perspective.
As for improvement, the opportunity is to continue making the MPSA even more interactive and practical. The industry is changing quickly, and members want actionable information — real-world case studies, benchmarks, emerging technology discussions and examples of what is actually working for dealers and providers.
The more perspectives MPSA can bring together — especially across different regions and different parts of the ecosystem — the more valuable the community becomes.
- What are the one or two key messages you would leave with the audience?
First, MPS is bigger than print.
It’s really about managing a business process and delivering a better experience for the end customer. The companies that will succeed are the ones that continue to look beyond the device and think about the entire ecosystem — technology, supplies, data, logistics, workflow, and service.
Second, collaboration is not optional.
The MPS industry is too interconnected for any one company to solve everything on its own. Manufacturers, dealers, distributors, software providers and service organizations all have a piece of the puzzle.
The more effectively we share information, connect our technology and learn from one another, the stronger the entire channel becomes in moving MPS forward.
