Deni Porter and I started the business in 1988. We’d known each other for all of 6 hours when, during lunch, Deni said “Let’s quit our jobs and start our own company!” Overnight, we each consulted with our families about taking such a big risk and the next day, Bennett/Porter was born.
Wait. Let’s back up a bit.
Deni had been working for a large Portland accounting firm as their ERP implementation specialist, though her work was anything but specialized. On any given morning, she might be installing and training on Platinum for Windows Accounts Receivable, while in the afternoon, she might be implementing payroll by State of the Art software (now known as Sage 100). While she dealt primarily with software, my job at the time focused on hardware. I was working for a retail computer store selling a variety of computers: Apple, Compaq portables, as well as IBM PS/2 and AT computers.
(Anybody remember those IBMs?! It was a pretty big deal when a 1 MB hard drive card that fit into one of the IBM AT computer slots was introduced, and folks didn’t have to store their work on 5-1/2” floppy drives anymore. That 1 MB card sold for over $1000! Look how far we’ve come.)
Anyway, the leaders at Deni’s accounting firm and my retail computer store had the bright idea of pairing us up. I would sell the computers bundled with Great Plains software, and Deni would perform implementations through the accounting firm she was working for.
After our third demo together at the retail computer store, we went to that lunch together and both complained about our jobs. Deni was unhappy with hers because night after night she had to learn some module of software she’d never seen before to train clients on it the very next day. I really disliked mine because I had monthly quotas of computers that I had to sell, whether the customer needed computers or not. Neither one of us was enjoying our job – at all. It was the start of a great relationship.
Deni started with her Compaq Portable computer, and I had an Apple Macintosh. Deni was familiar with State of the Art software and Platinum for Windows, and I knew Manzanita Software (now known as Sage BusinessWorks), Great Plains, and Open Systems. Between the two of us, we had a very substantial and varied knowledge base of emerging industry software. We were able to sell State of the Art, Manzanita, Platinum for Windows, Open Systems, and Great Plains for both the Macintosh and PC.
We hit the ground running with plenty of demand, as Deni’s former accounting firm didn’t have anyone to do all the work they had lined up for her before she left, and I was already contracted to implement the couple of clients we had jointly sold to when I worked at the computer store. Bennett/Porter’s first State of the Art client was in Longview, Washington, about an hour away from our office. Deni read the manual to me as I was driving, and we did our first installation.
We ended up being our own competition for a time, because we would show clients multiple software packages that we knew would work for them. But Great Plains and State of the Art were our best sellers, and so those ended up being the only two products we pitched. Eventually, State of the Art outsold Great Plains by leaps and bounds, so we dropped Great Plains and became a State of the Art (i.e. Sage)-only reseller.
Deni retired in 2002, but Bennett/Porter continued to evolve with the times. We originally used Windows for Workgroups to connect computers together so data could be shared by different workstations. However, network technology was continuing its revolution, and we were in jeopardy of overspecializing. We were told by more than one networking company that we needed to stay in our lane with accounting software and leave the hardware to them. So, in 2005, we purchased a well-known local computer company, which gave us the credibility to provide hardware and networking services along with the software…just like we’d done in the company’s early days. This acquisition also diversified the business and provided our clients with more flexible support options. Thus, in 2012, we started hosting Sage 100 in our Tier IV secured facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. Today, our I.T. team support the business operations of numerous companies on our networks as well as dozens of on-premises Managed Service Agreements.
And we didn’t stop there. In 2014, we added Acumatica ERP, because we wanted to offer an accounting product that has more advanced features than Sage and is truly internet-based. In 2017, we added our People Savvy HCM division, which supports Payroll, Time and Labor Management, and Human Resources for our clients.
What have I learned over all these years since that fateful lunch with Deni?
First and foremost: be honest with clients. It’s the common reaction Deni and I had to working jobs with quotas and being forced to sell something that we didn’t 100% agree with set a tone for our business when we started it. If we don’t have a product that is right for a client, our policy has always been to refer them elsewhere rather than try to jam a square peg in a round hole.
Second, we can’t carry every product clients ask us for. We need to be masters of all the products we carry, which is why we sell only two different accounting systems, have two payroll offerings, and sell only specific brands of hardware that we know we can rely on.
Third, every employee at Bennett/Porter must care about and act in the best interest of the client. We try as hard as we can to put ourselves in our client’s shoes and do what is right for them.
When I think of where we started and where we are now, thirty-seven years seem to have flown by. The changes in technology over those years? Wow! The first cell phone I had was mounted on a big post on the floorboard of my car. We didn’t have laptops and had to use that Compaq portable (which was anything but portable). The internet was barely a search engine at the other end of a dial-up modem. Through all the relentless changes, we’ve tried to maintain the three principals we started with – be honest, concentrate on having only the best products and services for our clients, and, most importantly, care about our clients first. Technology will continue to evolve, and Bennett/Porter will evolve with it. But we’ll stay true to those three founding principles, whatever else may change.
