In the early ‘80s, ten members of the marine Spader 20 Group contributed $5,000 each to help Duane Spader develop accounting software for their indispensible reporting system. As luck would have it, Duane ran into Jeanette Wolcott, a New Jersey computer programming professor who was staying with her family in a camper at the KOA Kampground owned by Duane. She agreed to write the first set of software on an Apple Macintosh computer. Working closely with Noel Lais, Jeanette developed the Spader Grand Ledger system. Sales Analysis, the Big Ticket unit inventory and sales system, soon followed.
Duane and Noel grew the software business over the next several years by hiring a staff of programmers, installers and support specialists. Over the next fifteen years Spader Software grew to be the largest dealership software provider in the marine and RV industries, with a staff of nearly 50 employees. In 1997, the company received an offer to sell future development rights on the software and Spader scaled down to a lower business plateau and concentrated on training, consulting and 20 groups in expanding industries.