Aspire has gone to school.

The software for landscaping businesses is a part of the curriculum at 39 landscaping and landscaping-design schools around the country, including Brigham Young University and Colorado State.

“It’s meaningful to us to show our customers, prospective customers, and the industry as a whole that we’re doing our best to be part of the solution in finding the next generation for the industry,” said Jon Gohl, Director of Client Experience at Aspire.

And BYU sees one of its missions is to prepare students to work in the industry. That means dealing with horticulture, but also understanding the business element of the profession. According to one BYU professor, Aspire helps young men and women grow as professionals.

“A key part of our process is helping students be focused on business success,” said Phil Allen, PhD, a professor of Landscape Management at BYU. “It’s not the only facet, but it’s an important one. To that end I decided two years ago one of my biggest efforts in moving our program forward was to help the students capture the vision of what Aspire can do, and why Aspire can help them.”

Allen said he understands there are other good business software programs, and that Aspire might not be the best fit in every situation (start-up companies, for example). 

“But from the perspective of the type of company that hires our graduates, Aspire is the best,” he said.

Heavy hitters

Gohl said BYU leverages Aspire as well as any school, and called Colorado State a “heavy hitter” with the software as well. Cuyahoga Community College in the Cleveland area also teaches with Aspire, using in classrooms a version of PropertyIntel—an Aspire offering that helps map and measure work sites.

Gohl also mentioned Upper Valley Career Center in Piqua, Ohio, about 40 minutes north of Dayton. This Career and Technical High School uses Aspire as part of its Landscape and Natural Resources program.

“It’s real hands-on training,” Gohl said, “at a high school that competes in national collegiate landscaping competitions.” 

An industry-specific solution

Allen was instrumental in bringing Aspire to BYU. About 10 years ago, he noticed friends in landscaping businesses struggling to find the right software. Some were applying non-specific software to the business, others simply couldn’t make what they had work.

At various conferences, meetings and trade events, he talked to people to dive deeper into the issue and to try to find a solution. It was at those events—including National Association of Landscape Professionals conferences—that he learned of Aspire. He eventually saw its benefits, especially with helping companies grow; one Denver business run by a friend went from $7 million to $35 million a few years after it started with Aspire.

Allen spoke with people at Aspire about bringing the software into the classroom, and soon after Gohl and he met at a leadership conference. There, Gohl told Allen that Aspire had developed a college certification program as part of its Aspire Academy. The certification would show that students had gained a deeper understanding of the software.

“I told Jon I would have that in the classroom within a week,” Allen said.

He created a one-credit course that allowed students to earn Aspire’s college certification, with almost 50 earning the certification to date.

“Anyone from BYU that a business hires is likely going to have Aspire experience,” Gohl said.

And in the real world …

Taylor Anderson, Systems Development and Growth Manager at Sunline Landscapes in the Salt Lake City area, teaches in the Plant and Landscape program at BYU. PWS 214 in the BYU catalog covers bidding and estimating, and Anderson said Aspire is an active part of that class.

“The people at BYU are actively listening and learning from their alumni base and the industry,” said Anderson, who uses Aspire at Sunline. “And they are implementing the software in whatever classes that they can.”

Greg Jolley, a professor in Plant and Wildlife sciences and Anderson’s father, has students go through the entire process of bidding, first without Aspire and then with the software.

“What Greg hopes to open their eyes to is how much faster it is with Aspire,” Allen said. “Maybe not the first time through, of course, but they learn that there are a lot fewer of what I call ‘wasted time steps.’”

That knowledge sometimes translates very quickly. 

“We recently had two graduates whose job was to be the Aspire guru within their company, to help learn and build it into their systems,” Anderson said. “And they were both in that bidding and estimating class. They had jobs before they graduated from college.”

Allen said Aspire resonates with students.

“I’ve found that unless they’re clicking on buttons, they get bored really fast,” he said.

BYU is proud of its standing in the landscaping community. It considers its offerings and education high quality, and part of its mission statement is offering the best overall education in design, construction and maintenance of landscaping. 

“I encourage our graduates who are not starting their own companies to work for an Aspire company that is also a member of the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP),” Allen said. “I want their first experience after college to be great.

“I think Aspire helps companies be better companies.”