Dairy.com, a Frisco, Texas-based provider of software-as-service solutions for dairy supply chains, acquired Data Specialists, Inc. (DSI). The combined companies will feature over 100 employees in four locations.

"DSI and the Mertes family are dairy technology pioneers, developing and delivering solutions that have fueled customer success for nearly 40 years," says Scott Sexton, chief executive officer of Dairy.com. "Adding DSI to our portfolio materially broadens Dairy.com offerings. Connecting platforms takes us to places we have not been. In particular, the DSI manufacturing suite is a powerful solution that handles complex in-plant processes, further extending Dairy.com traceability capabilities across the supply chain."

Ryan Mertes, president of DSI, will become president of the DSI division of Dairy.com and chief solutions officer of Dairy.com. The DSI division will maintain operations from its base in Elkhorn, Wis.

"Joining with Dairy.com allows our employees to create the largest pool of dairy talent available," Mertes says. "We believe the combination is going to provide exciting and unique solutions. We can't wait to discuss the breadth, scope and benefits with the industry we've spent decades supporting."

With this acquisition, Dairy.com's farm-to-fork offerings include:

• Procurement tools, including milk dispatch, milk receiving, milk scheduling, producer payroll, mobile farm ticket data collection, liquid by-product scheduling, freight exchange and farm management.
• Plant tools, including production scheduling, production management, sales analysis, costing, inventory management, distribution management, wireless barcoding, electronic data interchange and lab information management.
• Management tools, including dairy market intelligence, price risk management, mass balance audits, transportation analytics, payroll processing, outsourced logistics, financial evaluation, on-call economists, feasibility studies, manufacturing best practices, logistics benchmarking and strategic planning.