When the Cubs won the World Series, it was a great reminder to stay the course, keep up the hard work, and enjoy the ride along the way.
It’s hard to believe the changes that have occurred since starting our company on November 7th, 1987 back on the north side of Chicago in Wrigleyville. Lotus 123 and IBM DOS were standard issue tools of the trade. Those were long days and nights working away on IBM XT computers with 2 floppy drives. Stress relief came in the form of occasional excursions to see the Chicago Cubs thanks to $7.00 standing room only tickets at Wrigley Field. There were not many wins, but loads of fun.
We started out as Solberg & Associates, a technology training company focusing on Lotus 123, MultiMate, DacEasy Accounting, Word Perfect, Paradox, and Q&A. Our more technical side occurred teaching and programming in Paradox PAL and eventually Microsoft Visual Basic certified course work. We began working with the first releases of accounting systems such as Open Systems, Lacerte, Sema4, and Macola, but eventually settled on Solomon and Great Plains.
Those early days saw dot matrix printers give way to laser jets and mailing floppy drives to clients was replaced by file transfers on an amazing device called a modem (2400 baud which was pretty fast). More technology improvements came to our world on August 8th 1988 when the Cubs introduced a new technology, i.e., lights at Wrigley Field. Amazingly I was fortunate to find tickets for $12.00 in a newspaper ad in Warsaw Indiana. Craigslist, eBay and StubHub were not even dreamed of back then.
I am so grateful to our outstanding staff and customers who have been with us along the way. Their challenges and feedback have pushed us to continue to improve our services. Our success story would be incomplete without the support of our staff and customers.
Our focus on technology training extended to hosting many events with the Illinois CPA society, and eventually managing their technology curriculum for a number of years. As the accounting industry matured we moved into the new world of value added resellers and became a VAR and developer with Solomon and eventually Great Plains. We celebrated the Cubs, win or lose, with more games and time at Murphy’s, Sluggers and the Cubby Bear.
Now into year 35, with its cloud based accounting solutions, web services, browser based apps, e-commerce, and handheld devices. While still working with Microsoft Dynamics SL and GP we’re into the next generation of accounting with Acumatica and other cloud applications. And for all the changes and challenges this industry is still loads of fun. That does not quite compare to the fun of the Cubs winning the World Series. And you can no longer score a standing room only ticket for $7.00 or major night events from a newspaper for $12.00. If you’re hanging out at the game and don’t have a ticket, perhaps Bill Murray will hand you an extra ticket.
It’s hard to imagine the changes that have occurred over the years. The firepower that we have on devices and applications is mind boggling in the context of 1987 technology. We have had outstanding staff and clients for so many years. It’s been 35 years of learning, hard work, and fun working with our clients. When the Cubs won the World Series, it was a great reminder to stay the course, keep up the hard work, and enjoy the ride along the way.
Mark Solberg, President
LANDFALL Solutions