You don't accidentally find yourself in Franklin, NC. You have to WANT to go there! Earlier this month, at the kind invitation of John Sapp, VP of Sales and Marketing, we set off to visit the Smokey 
mountain home of long-time tax compliance vendor, Drake Software. If getting there is half the fun then this was going to be a trip to remember. Available airports are Ashville and Atlanta ---- the former is closer, but the drive is mountainous and and thus slower and Atlanta is, well, Atlanta. We chose the longer, but probably quicker drive and flew into Atlanta. Arriving in Franklin about dusk gave us only a hint of the beautiful little mountain town we'd see in full daylight. Our dinner reading revealed that Franklin is quickly becoming a mountain get-away for the "city-types" that can afford it. Housing prices have sky-rocketed as of late and developers seem intent on building to meet demand. But --- we're here to talk tax and technology, not travel, right?
Our visit began early the next morning in one of the multitude of buildings that house the 250+ employees. Every building we saw was different, yet all had the same flavor: simple and functional, certainly not spartan or drab, but most definitely not luxurious. The staff were, to a person, gracious and welcoming and each were anxious to tell their part of the Drake story. And what a story it is!
Phil Drake founded the company 29 years ago and, with the help of several well-placed family members, (Sapp is a childhod friend and President Tim Hubbs is a cousin) has been driving it and about a dozen other Franklin-area businesses ever since. Drake is almost synonymous with efiling having pioneered the processes back in the days when a 4800 baud modem was considered "high-speed". In the 2005 tax year Drake handled over 10 million efiled returns for it's nearly 20,000 customer firms.
I was impressed with the quality of people, the depth of technology (another cousin -- Bob Hubbs -- runs one of the finest private data centers I've ever visited!), and the vision of the executive team. They are strategic thinkers who view practicing accountants as partners and understand that clients are customers of the practitioner, not of the vendor serving the practitioner. They also seem to understand the needs of the small practitioner and as such have been quietly working to expand the Drake line to include write-up and payroll. I also got a sneak peek at their soon-to-be-released Drake ETC web-based training offering. While I can't opine on the quality of the actual courses (because I didn't watch them) the platform appears to be particularly well-suited to deliver "just-in-time" training to busy tax offices.
gll
