- Describe your company – a high level description of what your business does.
ACDI is a technology solutions and services partner dedicated to helping the office technology channel grow, compete, and succeed. Since 1994, we’ve built our business around a simple philosophy: our success is measured by the success of our partners.
While we’re widely recognized for our leadership in print management as the world’s largest PaperCut Authorized Solution Center, our business extends well beyond any single product or technology. Our portfolio includes print management, document capture and workflow automation, fleet management, business analytics, access control, and emerging opportunities such as EV charging infrastructure through ACDI Energy Services.
What truly differentiates ACDI isn’t simply the products we represent, but the expertise, services, and relationships behind them. From sales enablement and technical training to professional services, implementation, and ongoing support, we serve as an extension of our partners’ businesses.
Our philosophy is simple: We meet you where you are. Whether a dealer is building its first software practice, expanding managed services, or entering entirely new markets, our role is to help make those opportunities achievable and profitable.
- How does your organization generally support the managed print services (MPS) landscape, and what has been your relationship or involvement with the MPSA local and or global community?
Managed Print Services has been at the foundation of ACDI’s business for decades. Through relationships with PaperCut, OEMs, and our extensive dealer network, we’ve helped organizations secure, manage, and optimize their print environments.
Our involvement goes well beyond providing technology. We deliver technical expertise, training, professional services, and ongoing support that allow dealers to confidently deliver solutions to their customers. A successful MPS program requires more than software and hardware as we believe it requires knowledgeable people, trusted partnerships, and a commitment to the customer experience.
We’ve been fortunate to have that commitment recognized by the independent dealer community, earning a Frank Award for “The Best Solutions and Services Provider” from The Cannata Report for many years now. That consistent recognition is meaningful because it reflects the trust of the dealers we serve.
Personally, I’ve had the privilege of serving on the MPSA Executive Board since 2019, and it’s an organization I believe strongly in. Our commitment extends beyond my involvement, with members of ACDI’s marketing team actively serving on the MPSA Marketing Committee to help advance association initiatives and promote the industry.
The opportunity to collaborate with dealers, OEMs, software providers, and other industry leaders has been invaluable. The MPSA gives us a place to put individual company interests aside, share ideas, and collectively strengthen the channel.
- From your perspective, what is the most significant way your organization, or businesses is making (or can make) in terms of a positive impact to the broader MPSA community?
I believe ACDI’s greatest opportunity to make an impact is helping channel partners expand their definition of managed services.
For years, our industry has done an exceptional job managing printed pages. We’ve developed sophisticated systems for tracking usage, controlling costs, securing documents, and delivering consistent service. Those capabilities remain critically important, and we have no intention of moving away from them. But what if we applied that same managed services mindset to other business processes?
That’s part of what we’re doing with Scanshare and our consumption based approach to document workflows. Rather than viewing capture and automation strictly as traditional software sales, we’re creating opportunities for dealers to build recurring revenue around the services and workflows customers actually use.
The philosophy extends into ACDI Energy Services, where charging infrastructure, software, monitoring, and ongoing services create additional opportunities for channel partners.
Our role is to help dealers protect the business they’ve built while giving them the tools, knowledge, and confidence to pursue the business of tomorrow. If we help our partners become more valuable to their customers, we strengthen the entire MPS community.
- Can you describe a time when your organization had to adapt to a major shift in the MPS or production print industry? What did you learn, and how did that experience shape the way you support your customers today?
One significant shift we’ve experienced has been the evolution from traditional print management toward a broader focus on business processes, workflow automation, and recurring services.
Historically, much of the industry’s value proposition revolved around managing printed pages. That remains important, but as customers digitize more processes, the expectations and opportunities have changed.
We’ve challenged ourselves to rethink how we deliver value. Scanshare is a good example. Workflow automation has often been sold through traditional licensing models requiring an upfront commitment. With our newer consumption-based approach, we’re working to make the technology more accessible while creating recurring revenue opportunities for dealer partners.
That shift is about more than pricing. It means helping sales teams have different conversations, adapting operational processes to support recurring services, and demonstrating value beyond cost per page.
One lesson we’ve learned is that innovation doesn’t always require inventing a new technology. Sometimes the greatest opportunity comes from changing how a technology is delivered, supported, and consumed. Today, that lesson shapes how we evaluate our portfolio and help partners adapt at their own pace.
- Reflecting on our conversation, what do you see as the biggest opportunity for innovation and collaboration within the managed print community?
I believe the biggest opportunity is recognizing that our industry already has the foundation to become a much broader managed services community.
Our dealers have trusted customer relationships, established service organizations, recurring billing relationships, and the ability to manage complex technology environments. That’s an incredible advantage. The next question is: What else can we manage for those customers?
Print management isn’t going away. We continue to see growth opportunities in certain verticals. But our industry’s future shouldn’t be measured solely by device placements or the number of pages printed.
Whether it’s document workflow automation, analytics, security, IT services, or new categories of managed solutions, we can expand our relevance to customers. And collaboration is essential: OEMs, software developers, service providers, and dealers need to work together to reduce complexity and make new services easier to sell, implement, and support.
The next chapter of MPS isn’t about replacing print. It’s about building on everything we’ve learned from print to manage more of the customer’s business.
- How have you benefited from the MPSA community? What are the biggest attributes? What improvements are needed?
I’ve spent much of my career working alongside the dealers, manufacturers, software developers, and service providers who make up this community. Those relationships have shaped both my career and ACDI’s direction.
One of the MPSA’s greatest strengths is bringing competitors and partners together around a common objective….improving our industry. Since joining the Executive Board in 2019, I’ve learned an enormous amount from the people involved. Our marketing team’s participation on the MPSA Marketing Committee is another way we try to contribute, not simply benefit. A rising tide lifts all boats, and sharing ideas and challenging each other makes the channel stronger.
Looking ahead, I believe we can broaden the conversation about what it means to be a managed services provider. Hardware placements, print volumes, and cost-per-page agreements still matter, but they can’t be our only measures of success.
We should encourage dealers to look at the total value they deliver: additional recurring revenue, stronger customer retention, and new services that generate sustainable profitability. The MPSA is well positioned to lead that conversation through education, collaboration, and real world success stories helping bridge the gap between the managed print industry we’ve known and the broader managed services industry we’re becoming.
- What is the one or key two messages (take-aways, insights) that you would leave the audience today – so they resonate in the minds of our audience (locally and globally).
First, don’t lose sight of what made this industry successful. We’ve spent decades building customer relationships, service expertise, and recurring revenue models that many other industries would love to have. Print remains an important part of that foundation, and we should continue investing in it. But we must also be willing to evolve.
At ACDI, we often say, “We meet you where you are.” That means understanding where our partners are today and helping them find a practical path to where they want to be tomorrow. For some, it means strengthening their print management business. For others, it means expanding into workflows, managed IT, energy services, or opportunities we haven’t identified yet.
Second, I’d challenge everyone in our community to think beyond what we’ve always sold and focus on what customers actually need. If we spend all our time protecting yesterday’s business, we risk missing tomorrow’s opportunities.
Our future isn’t defined by how many pages we manage. It’s defined by how much value we bring to the customer. If we continue to innovate, collaborate, and invest in one another, this industry has an incredibly bright future.
