Should You Stay with Your DMS Provider … Or Is It Time to Walk?

Jan 02, 2025

Every 3-5 years, you should sit down and evaluate your DMS. Based on this evaluation, you will either decide to stick with your provider, or you will start laying down the building blocks to make a necessary change.

After all, depending on the size of your business, it can take 3 years to get all the pieces in place to switch to a new system. Whether or not to switch systems is not an easy decision to make. That’s why you should come to your meetings with DMS providers equipped with these key questions to help you determine who the right fit is.

1. Is your DMS provider in it for the long haul?

You want your business system provider to be stable and reliable. But in a market where consolidation keeps changing the landscape, that isn’t always a guarantee.

There’s a tendency these days to bring in venture capitalists, investment funds, and publicly traded companies. With the growing size and footprint required by a DMS dealer to serve its customers, you need to ask yourself: is the DMS provider just somebody's investment, or is it their commitment?

Click here to see more...

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.