The Company

What happens when a mom and dad have seven kids, all with names beginning with the letter D? Well, they start a garden center and name it “7 Dees”, of course.

That was 1956. 18 years later, Drake Snodgrass purchased from his parents one of the two garden centers operating at the time, and “Drake’s 7 Dees” has been a cornerstone of Portland, OR gardening and landscaping ever since. We have two distinct business units: a design/build landscaping services business, and a retail nursery & garden center with two locations.

The Need

From the very beginning, we knew we always wanted to be at the forefront – of technology, landscaping techniques, businesses practices, you name it. So we jumped into full-scale software right away, prior to even having used spreadsheets or other packages. That was 1994.

We had tried a custom software solution using a mini computer system for our retail business, but it didn’t pan out very well. We decided a windows-based micro computer system would be best. So we took a different approach when we began our search for business management software for the landscaping business. Rather than trying to force a custom software package to fit our business as it existed at the time, we decided to fit our business to existing software developed specifically for our industry. After all, we are gardeners, landscapers, and business people – not software developers or analysts.

How We Use Asset^TM

We don’t do maintenance work, so there are many capabilities in Asset that we underutilize.

By far, our biggest use of the software is for accounting purposes, for both the retail business and the landscaping services business. We input all of our inventory changes into Asset for each monthly statement, so we always know where we stand. We also use it for payroll and accounts payable.

In addition to the accounting functionality, one of our favorite aspects of the software for our landscaping division is estimating. For even the most sophisticated, elaborate jobs, we can knock out an estimate in about 30 minutes.

The Results

Although we use only a portion of Asset’s capabilities, we have been very loyal clients all along because we receive great value from it. We love that Include Software Corporation has such great market share within the landscaping industry that they can keep improving it all the time. So we stay at the cutting edge all the time.

We have weathered many recessions – some really bad ones – and have continued to prosper all along. We’ve been courted by nearly every software program out there, but have never been seriously tempted to switch systems because Asset really works and Include has always been there to provide the service we need. We have relied even more on the Asset software in this tough economy. We have been able to push some accounting responsibilities down to non-accounting people and reduce our office staff and admin overhead, all while keeping key front-line people employed.