BTA member Total Document Solutions Inc. (TDSiT) has announced it has successfully acquired BTA member Business World Inc. (BWI). TDSiT has been growing rapidly over the past several years and its growth can best be explained by its deep commitment to exceeding customer expectations and earning trust through relationship-building instead of focusing on transactions alone. Through this customer-centric approach, TDSiT has earned the trust of many small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that have been searching for productivity-enhancing IT and imaging solutions. Its consistent commitment to underpromising, but overdelivering is largely why TDSiT was in a strategic position to make such an acquisition.

While this acquisition was formally announced on July 14, these two organizations have been in close collaboration for many years. In fact, the principals of both organizations, Tim Stanley, owner of TDSiT, and Jerry Carlisle, the former CEO of BWI Inc., enjoyed a decade-long personal friendship whereby they learned that the other shared the same core values on which they built their respective organizations. Before his passing, Carlisle handpicked Stanley as a buyer for BWI because he did not want the company to be acquired by a VC or competitor that did not share his personal values. Stanley is deeply honored to have the Carlisle family's blessing to continue to honor Carlisle's legacy by serving BWI's customers, employees and management at the same high-caliber level that Carlisle established. TDSiT is keeping the vast majority of the staff on the team and, most notably, will be keeping Carlisle's eldest son, Stephen, as the acting president of BWI in order to preserve the institutional memory of such an esteemed business professional.

"This is such a privilege for us," Stanley said. "We're very honored to be working with such an impressive team and to equip them with more sophisticated IT tools with which they can continue serving customers. Our product and services portfolio is a natural fit for the existing customer base and we're excited to leverage our IT expertise to help business owners position themselves for even more success. Our intention with this acquisition is to add services, products and expertise to everything that's already working for BWI customers, so that employees can continue to delight customers by providing them with technology that makes their lives easier and more profitable. It's our job to monitor the horizon of emerging technologies and to simplify them so business owners can be educated on which technologies they need to be paying attention to and which ones aren't essential. We aim to become a trusted advisor for businesses that need IT expertise."

Cybersecurity/cybersecurity insurance is one IT topic that's been making major news headlines lately and TDSiT is looking forward to solving this problem for many BWI customers. 

"One strange way that cybercriminals can infiltrate a network is through lackluster IT security on copiers and printers," Stanley said. "However, by and large, most copier companies' core competency is to provide efficient, affordable document imaging solutions, not to handle their cybersecurity. We can leverage our expertise to solve problems like this for clients and is one way we will be adding value. This type of problem would typically require a business owner to hire two separate companies to resolve, however, we can handle both problems at the same time because we have the in-house expertise necessary to address this. This is one simple example, but there are so many similar situations by which our contribution can be greater than the sum of its parts."

TDSiT is excited to introduce its suite of IT imaging solutions, office products, managed print services and document management solutions to customers in need, while preserving everything that has made BWI such a beloved organization.