Embracing technology

Richard Deering

Not all tech entrepreneurs find themselves in Silicon Valley. Sometimes, they build multi-million-dollar software companies from a farmhouse in Springfield, Ohio.

Nearly 40 years ago, Dick Deering founded ServicePro, a software company that makes it easy for pest management professionals (PMPs) to automate everyday tasks. Its headquarters were in Columbus, Ohio, about 50 miles west of where he has lived all his life.

“I live on the same farm in the same house I was born in,” he says. “I would drive about 54 miles one way to the office for 36 years, five days a week and sometimes six.”

Deering retired in December 2020. In January 2022, ServiceTitan acquired ServicePro, which is now part of FieldRoutes. Daughter Kim O’Connor and son Andy joined the company in the late 1990s; they currently serve as head of operations and general manager, respectively.

DEVELOPMENT STAGES

Deering did not set out to start a tech company. In the early 1970s, he owned a lawn care company that also offered pest control. Although the company started with three people, it grew rapidly. Before long, the company provided services in 14 cities to about 45,000 customers in various states. As he searched for a way to run his business more efficiently, the idea hit him to create a business reporting program.

“There was no good software for service industries in the early 1970s,” Deering says. So, he developed the program that eventually became ServSuite using a mainframe operating system he continued to use through the early 1980s.

Technology advanced and mainframes gave way to Windows. “We were getting to be a sizable software company at that point,” he says. “By the late 1980s, I was still in the service business pretty heavily, but a lot of people used my software.”

Windows 95 transitioned to the early 2000s and web-based solutions. Little by little, the company started developing a web-based program. When the economy took a hit in late 2007 through mid-2009, companies that needed to cut costs did away with their IT departments and turned to custom software or web-based programs to run their companies for a fraction of the cost, Deering recalls. Then came powerful mobile devices and the ability to work remotely. Deering was there for it all.

FAMILY INVOLVEMENT

His two children helped ServicePro achieve success, he says, noting Andy and Kim brought their own unique talents. “It was very much a family thing,” he notes. “I don’t program. I don’t type. But I know what an owner needs.”

Deering’s common sense, his desire to “keep it simple, stupid (KISS)” and his experience in the service industry contributed to the company’s success. He also credits his employees.
“There were people who worked at software companies who came to work for us,” he says. “They were good on a keyboard, but they didn’t know a termite from an ant.”

Even the software users themselves made a difference, as ServicePro held in-person user conferences that encouraged users to share with developers what they wanted in future versions of the software.

Deering has become close friends with a lot of company owners in the industry. “I put that mainframe operating system together in 1970 and started to give it to some of my friends in the late 1970s, and some of those people are still my customers,” he notes. “I helped them and they helped me.”

Nowadays, Deering spends his days “putzing around on the farm” where he grows sweet corn.

“I have 10 grandkids and one great-grandchild,” he says. “I like to bring them to the farm, get them good and dirty and send them home.”