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Member Spotlight
DMSi
DMSi SOFTWARE FOR HARDWOOD LUMBER
Many remarkable things call Omaha, Nebraska home: the College World Series, Warren Buffett, and the Reuben Sandwich being some of the most famous. It is also the birthplace of DMSi, born in Omaha in 1976. DMSi began as a software pioneer that made the challenges of running a distribution business easier. Later, DMSi narrowed their focus. They began helping companies specifically in the lumber and building materials industry to better serve their customers.
Today, DMSi continues to provide business software for the lumber and building materials industry. Their software allows customers to manage their entire business in real time with integrated sales, accounting, operations, and inventory management solutions. Among their different programs are Agility ERP and TallyExpress. They recently expanded their offering by buying the software company eLIMBS. Henry German, Product Manager for TallyExpress and the son of DMSi CEO Cal German, spoke on how buying eLIMBS would affect their other programs, especially TallyExpress. “The cool thing about the acquisition of eLIMBS is that it’s already part of the market that DMSi specializes in. It’s just further up the supply chain,” said German. “It’s not like it’s a completely foreign
market to us. We bought eLIMBS because it expanded our service chain. Most of our Agility customers are at the distribution end of the supply chain. TallyExpress serves customers further up the same supply chain, in places like concentration yards and mills. With its inventory abilities, we now service the whole hardwood lumber supply chain with software for timber to logs, through sawmills and concentration yards, and finally through distribution facilities and retail. We can do it all.”
eLIMBS also has a handheld, real-time data entry system for warehouse management that ties directly to the desktop inventory system. It can be used in the forest, in the yard when the logger shows up, or on site when the green lumber is ready.
For German, NHLA plays an essential role for DMSi. “Being a member of NHLA means that we’re at the heart of the hardwood industry. Every time I visit a customer or a potential prospect, I see Hardwood Matters lying on the table. The annual convention brings all our customers to the same spot. We may meet with 20 or 30 companies. It’s such an important event for us and well worth the investment.”
With all the success DMSi has experienced, Henry is proud to be an independent company, “I think the biggest thing that separates us from our competition is that we are still independently owned and operated. We are in control of our future. We can plan for the long term rather than focusing on short-term profits. This is good for our customers and our employees. We like the hardwood industry because there are a lot of multi-generational, family-owned businesses like us.”
When it comes to the future, Henry is bullish. “We expect to see the same level of success from eLIMBS that we do from TallyExpress. A key to the success of TallyExpress has been the ability for companies to reduce the amount of time spent on tallying. It’s important. The employee that does the tallying is handling the company’s money. If they miss a row, they lose $60, or whatever that row costs. If they overdo it, customers can demand their money back, which tarnishes a company’s reputation. The person tallying needs to be competent and honest because as they measure the product, they count the money. It isn’t unusual to have a company’s highest-valued employees do the tallying. The TallyExpress app allows the employee to tally in a quarter of the time and then move on to other high-value tasks. TallyExpress also gives companies measurement consistency because computers don’t get tired or sick.”
So, what are some long-term plans for DMSi? “We have a lot to look forward to,” said German. “We are advancing our technologies, incorporating AI machine learning, web dynamics, and e-commerce. We want to continue growing, advancing, and enhancing our software to make our customers’ lives easier. That is what we do. We make our customers’ lives easier through software.”
To get in touch with DMSi, visit www.dmsi.com or give them a call at 402-330-6620.
