Early in the life of 27-year-old full-service Precision Landscape Management, Bruce Birdsong, President, recognized the value of computer-based administration.

Unlike many landscape firms that start by managing estimates, job assignments, and billing manually, he knew from the beginning that taking advantage of what technology offered was good for his business. Unfortunately, his first steps into this realm were big disappointments:

Step 1: Four years of managing administration using simple spreadsheets. It was better than manual, but not good enough, as the data had to be entered multiple times and was prone to errors.

Step 2: Out-of-the-box accounting solution, but soon discovered this was too limiting because it couldn't do estimating.

Step 3: Landscape-focused software. It didn't take long to realize that since the software did not include payroll, there was a big hole in its effectiveness.

Step 4: Another, more sophisticated landscape-focused software product. It turned out to be an unreliable solution because when technical problems arose, the supplier was totally unresponsive.

Hoping that the "fifth time would be the charm," Birdsong scoured the market for another option — and this time he knew exactly what he wanted:

• A system built just for landscape companies
• One solution that does it all — estimates, proposals, work orders, invoices, payroll, and job cost tracking
• A system that links every step in the process, so data has to be entered only once

In 2002, Precision found and installed Include Asset™. With EstimateAnywhere™ and CREWtek™, it has met all of his criteria and more.

"We've been running our entire business on Include Software. It not only paid for itself in six months, but our company has doubled in size since we installed it in 2002," Birdsong reports. "We've got 210 employees in the field, and five in the office — and every one of them loves it."

“We’ve tried all of the rest and finally found the best”, he added.