Allied Business Solutions
Everyone likes a little rest and relaxation, and Tom Beeles is no exception. The president and CEO of Allied Business Solutions, a $21 million mixed-line dealer in the heart of Boise, Idaho, was in the process of enjoying his president’s club excursion to Cancun but nonetheless carved out some time to relate his success story.
When Beeles started his dealership in 2003, the thought of reaching Allied’s current scale—which includes 60-plus team members—wasn’t initially factored into his business blueprint. Now, at age 54, he’s still young from an executive standpoint, but he’s hashing out a 10-year plan that will see him ultimately dial back to a couple days per week. He’s looking to spend more time with his family, but…there’s only so much hunting and fishing one can do. Plus, Beeles admittedly isn’t much of a golfer. He’s hoping to strike a balance.
“I want to enjoy life,” he noted. “But I don’t want to ever stop learning.”
One thing he’s discovered in the past couple years is that AI is poised to impact not only the office dealer space but the entire business landscape in ways we can’t begin to understand. Beeles is soaking up every bit of knowledge he can acquire, and he’s already implementing it in many aspects of the company’s operations (more on this shortly). It’s the thought of possibilities that has him excited for Allied’s future, but it isn’t Copilot, Claude or ChatGPT that’s enabled the dealer to thrive in the great northwest.
Allied sports a wide OEM catalog that features Kyocera, Xerox, Toshiba, Lexmark, Brother, HP, Epson and Canon on the office MFP and light production front, which is a big market for the dealer. Clients also enjoy ancillary printing options from wide-format (courtesy of Canon) to thermal and receipt printing (Toshiba), finishing equipment (Formax, Duplo), unified communications (Crexendo) and mailing systems (FP Mailing).
In terms of geography, Allied has six offices in Idaho, Utah and Oregon, but its coverage area is way more expansive, from New York to Connecticut and Florida and beyond the lower 48 to include Alaska and Hawaii. Client types are equally varied, from larger enterprise to up-and-down-the-street business in addition to popular verticals such as education, healthcare, legal, manufacturing and finance, among others.
“Being diverse and not relying on one particular vertical has been really beneficial,” Beeles said. “It’s good not to have them clustered in one spot. We grew by about 20% during the pandemic, and that diversity of clients had a lot to do with it. The idea of having 25% of your business in one vertical would be, in my mind, a cause for concern.”
In the Beginning
An upstate New York native, Beeles initially partnered in a copier dealership in San Diego. After selling the business, he wanted to find the perfect place to take root and raise a family. He kicked around a few options that included Austin, Texas and Denver before deciding on Boise. That was challenging in itself. Beeles needed immediate success but had no prior Boise connections and was competing against long-established businesses with deep ties in the community. Despite the challenge, Allied’s growth was steady during those early years.
The turning point came about a dozen years ago when Allied captured a bid for enterprise content management software. It was an $800,000 deal with the Idaho Department of Lands, and it forced Beeles and Co. to become proficient at project management and integrations. It was, as he observed, time to step up.
“We integrated four different systems with just about every technology we had at the time, from capture to digital signatures,” he said. “We had no choice but to get really good at it. And they’re still a customer, still use the technology and get support from us. We’ve expanded into other areas with them as well.”
Better Days
The 2025 campaign left much to be desired, according to Beeles. The dealer endured supply chain issues on the copier end. Shipping costs were brutal, and import tariffs sent OEM prices soaring. As a result, margins took a beating.
Fortunately, Allied has enjoyed a much stronger start to 2026, with solid profits and growth, a healthy dose of net-new clients and strong customer retention. All the key process indicators are pointing skyward, and Beeles has made some significant investments. Perhaps the most notable outlay is the construction of a 43,000-square-foot building just off a major freeway.
The new headquarters will enable the dealer to consolidate its three offices in Boise into a single, state-of-the-art facility complete with a network operations center. Bringing all the HQ team members under one roof will provide a boost to morale and remove the negatives that accompany being spread across locations. A ground-breaking is scheduled for this month, and Beeles estimates the project will be completed by June or July 2027.
One of the saving graces to 2025 was the success Allied enjoyed on the managed network services side, which reaped 18% growth with an assist from cybersecurity solutions and AI consulting. Beeles credits much of the success to having good processes, documenting them and holding people accountable.
“If you’re off in any areas such as onboarding/offboarding employees, managing projects, triaging tickets and managing updates, the customer really sees and feels the pain,” he added. “You must have processes documented, and your people must follow them. Plus, you need to have the right clients that are willing to invest in technology, too.”
The dealer touts a “5 for 5 Service Guarantee” that consists of a 63-minute response time for initial responses, a 98% uptime guarantee over the life of the service contract, life of lease protection with equal or greater replacement machines for non-serviceable equipment, free loaners for downtimes exceeding eight hours and a three-year performance guarantee.
Keeping it Real
The more compelling value proposition in Beeles’ eyes is responsiveness, particularly having real people and not chatbots greeting customers in their time of need. “We could automate a lot of that, but we’re not going to because it’s important to have great communication with your customers,” he remarked. “No one wants to be stuck in a huge phone tree.”
In a region that’s littered with $100 million-plus dealers, Allied leans on its ability to leverage the benefits of local ownership—decision-making, access to leadership and doing business with a company that’s able to pivot quicker. The Allied team is also quite conspicuous within the communities it serves and supports, including participating in civic and charitable organizations and events and patronizing businesses.
That same philosophy applies to Allied team members. Beeles is keen on investing in his people, ensuring they have not only the tools they need to best serve clients but also the skillsets that enable them to grow personally and professionally. Knowing there’s upward mobility and the opportunity to be heard and valued goes a long way toward locking down quality individuals.
“If you have people who are lifelong learners and you invest in them, then
they’ll feel like they’re going somewhere,” Beeles said. “Everyone wants a career path, and they want to know what direction they’re going. They don’t want it sugar-coated.”
High Visibility
One of the greatest strengths driving Allied’s success is the relationships it’s forged with sports organizations. From minor league baseball (Boise Hawks) to college football (Boise State), minor league hockey (Idaho Steelheads) and even professional rodeo (Snake River Stampede), the dealer benefits from brand recognition and the ability to host employees and clients at various stadiums and arenas.
“It’s one of the best investments we’ve made,” Beeles said. “The facilities, the corporate boxes and the Ford Idaho Center. And when there are 140 events a year, there are plenty of opportunities to be face-to-face with current clients and prospects. It’s quality time and goes a long way toward keeping clients happy.”
One door tends to open another. A wetlands conservation organization that Allied has worked with over the years reached out to Beeles about a private party it was hosting with country music star Garth Brooks, and it asked if he’d like to get involved. As a result, the dealer was able to hold a drawing for a Las Vegas gift package that included tickets to Brooks’ concert, an overnight hotel stay and $500 spending money. A lucky Allied employee was also treated to the Vegas experience.
Beeles credits Lisa Mesenko, who quarterbacks the marketing department, with driving creative ideas to strengthen existing bonds and forge new ones. Between the clients and the Allied team members, these partnerships more than justify the financial outlay.
“It’s a huge plus for employees to go to hockey and baseball games, see comedians and attend concerts,” he said. “I’m absolutely long-term invested. It’s very expensive, but I don’t mind because I see the value in being face to face and filling those luxury boxes.”
The AI Wave
Allied’s foray into artificial intelligence traces back to an event Beeles attended about four years ago where noted industry consultant Mike Stramaglio was chatting with several people regarding a new AI-driven vehicle called ChatGPT. That caught the dealer exec’s attention, and he immediately set out to learn as much as possible. While ChatGPT and other platforms were going through growing pains in the initial years, Beeles stuck with it and became an early adopter.
Allied incorporates AI into various departments on an internal basis. On the IT end, it triages all service tickets, from job assessment to scheduling for resolution. Whether it’s a bot or agent, the technology can handle mundane/routine requests such as meter reads. “Allix” will handle email correspondence without a human interceding except to ensure Allix is running properly. Equally as impressive, Allied has trained its AI to help reduce the time it takes to generate month’s-end KPIs, whittling a seven-hour process down to 10 minutes. And when it comes to e-automate, Allied created a knowledge bot that it trained to answer questions about RMAs, RTVs and really anything under that umbrella, alleviating the need to have backup platform experts.
“We continue to train it, make it better,” Beeles added. “We’re also using it for some sales and dispatch automation. All our people are on [Microsoft] Copilot, and about 35% are using Claude. It’s shaving time off. We just need to have the right structure, the right security. I believe in investing in it heavily. The thing is, AI isn’t a miracle solution you can just give to people and it works. But what a small team can accomplish with the help of AI is extremely powerful.
“When it comes to security and guardrails, you absolutely have to narrow the scope on what you allow an AI agent to do, especially when they’re decision-making or doing tasks. You wouldn’t give an intern access to everything, and you shouldn’t do it with an AI agent, either.”
The dealer now offers it as a service, initially aimed at enhancing customer workflows. Beeles anticipates expanding the ways in which AI can make life easier on clients, and he sees it providing even more internal benefits, particularly when it comes to administrative outlays.
“We’re in a really good spot because we can move quickly. Bigger dealers with 1,000-plus employees will find it more difficult to get them all to use the technology because they’re afraid it’s going to replace their jobs,” he added. “We have a process for rolling things out, and I think it puts us on a level playing field with some of the bigger companies.”
Future Growth
Building for the future, in Beeles’ eyes, constitutes hiring new team members whose core values dovetail with the dealership. As in the case of AI, he’s continuing his commitment to supplying his crew with the tools they need to enjoy success. Acquisitions represent another potential outlet to complement organic growth, although he notes “I think everybody in Idaho and Utah who wanted to sell has been bought up.” He’s made about a half-dozen deals in all, the most recent being a small operation in Boise roughly four years ago. What remains in the market, for the most part, are dealerships Allied’s size and bigger.
Growing the Utah market is one of the firm’s primary goals. Beeles is focusing on maintaining his base, finding optimal IT clients and leveraging technology to make jobs easier. He’s proud of the system Allied has in place for rolling out new technology and ensuring team members can grasp it and feel excited about it as opposed to worried about their job security. Speaking of security, in the context of IT, Beeles believes the world of software patches and updates will be greatly accelerated on the strength of machine learning, which will force providers to deliver in kind.
He’s also proud of the work environment cultivated at Allied. “We spend a lot of time together, so it’s good to have healthy conflict and disagreements, then come to a conclusion,” he said. “I want to have a good debate on why we should or shouldn’t do something. Our people have developed a culture of owning what they do and doing the right thing. I feel super fortunate that I’ve got some really great folks who care.”
