Doug Johnston Datapro Sales Up 754 Percent Since 1991

Not all California business executives who move to Spokane bring their companies with them. Some buy companies that are already here.

That’s what Doug Johnston did.

When he acquired DataPro Solutions Inc. in 1991, he says the long-established Spokane firm with seven employees was flat on its back.

“The company was floundering,” Johnston says. “We were supposed to be in the computer business, and we had two PCs and an old mainframe. We didn’t have the right knowledge base. We weren’t cross-trained.”

Earlier this year, though, DataPro was named one of Washington’s 50 fastest growing companies in a Puget Sound Business Journal survey.

Of a half dozen Spokane-area companies that made the list, DataPro was the highest ranked. It was 19th on the overall list.

“Since 1991, our growth in sales has been 754 percent,” Johnston says. “Our 1996 sales were right at $2 million. From here, I want us to grow at 15 to 25 percent.

“I think that rate would be manageable.”

DataPro’s turnaround is an example of powerful business management experience being focused on a small company.

Johnston grew up in Montana, and received an MBA from Gonzaga in 1971. He left Spokane with an eye on opportunities with bigger companies than he could find here.

He hooked up with an international construction company in San Francisco called the Atkinson Co. He worked there for five years before going to McKesson Corp., a $5 billion-a-year drug and health care distribution company.

After six years, he was recruited back to Atkinson, but McKesson came and got him back three years later.

Johnston became the youngest senior vice president in the company’s history when he was named vice president of distribution operations.

After a few years, McKesson dispatched him to head up a small company that was struggling to fulfill a contract with McKesson. The contract was to develop an automated materials handling system for warehouse operations.

“That was a real coming-of-age experience for me,” Johnston says. “Both of the principals in that company were very senior to me. One was in his 60s. They were an electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer. It was like going in and telling your dad that the way he was doing it just wasn’t getting the job done.”

Soon after Johnston successfully completed the project, he began to have doubts about his future in the company in an era of corporate restructuring. So he went to a fast-growing computer retailer in San Jose called Business World as senior vice president of distribution. But that company was bought out by a New York-based competitor three years later.

“So I did one of those, ‘I’ve had enough of this California stuff,”’ Johnston says, “and I moved back home.”

His plan was to buy a business in Spokane. He looked at a Taco Time franchise, some automotive distribution companies, a Hertz car rental franchise, among others.

“I almost didn’t even talk to the guys who had DataPro,” he says, “because I wasn’t interested in getting back into the computer business, because the margins were going away.”

He finally did talk to the DataPro people, though, and when he looked closely at the company’s numbers he thought, “Maybe I could build something out of them.”

Founded in 1959, DataPro was a batch processor, doing payrolls and other clerical tasks for local companies. Johnston kept that part of the company, and updated it with training and technology.

But he also got into sales of computer software solutions for business management problems. The company sells automated time and attendance packages, bar code date collection systems for tracking inventory and documents.

“We have a pretty significant installation at Inland Imaging where they track film between their locations,” Johnston says. “We have an application out at SeaFirst that has to do with tracking of credit card statements.”

Johnston has expanded DataPro’s customer base throughout the Inland Northwest. But he said the company is being “pulled outside of the area.”

Work he did for Kaiser Aluminum here led to the installation of a system at Kaiser’s Tacoma smelter.

“And now there’s a pretty good chance we’ll will be putting in a document imaging and management system at Kaiser’s headquarters in Houston,” Johnston says.

“I’ve been very pleased with the decision to buy this business, and with its progress,” Johnston says. “There’s a lot of satisfaction in installing a solution that actually improves a business’s productivity, and lowers its costs. That feels real good.

“And its nice to be back in the Northwest.”

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