Oct. 5--In the past 40 years, Leader Data Processing emerged from providing local businesses with rudimentary payroll and inventory services to the leader of technology solutions for school districts and state departments of education.

The road to success for the Valmont Industrial Park business was full of change.

Created in 1968 as Leader Store, the owners wanted to bring their credit card system in-house.

"We had the old Addressograph machine for our own in-store credit cards," recalled CEO C. Jeffrey Mason, whose father and uncle started the company. "But the credit card business we had exceeded the capacity of the equipment we had."

So, the company's credit manager at the time, Frank Stancato, purchased modern, state-of-the-art equipment, and Leader Store became an IBM house, with an IBM computer, tape drives, disc drives, a printer and card sorter.

"We had extra capacity on the new equipment, so we sold the time to businesses from Allentown to Scranton," Mr. Mason said.

The company provided business data processing services for payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger and inventory control.

In 1973, Leader Store closed and the store's ownership spun off a new business, Leader Data Processing, setting up shop in the Valmont Industrial Park.

LDP moved to the next generation of computers, Hewlett Packard, which gave the company the capability to offer online and timesharing services to businesses and labor organizations on a national and international basis. Then, in the next two decades, LDP developed custom software applications for a wide variety of clients, including a number of Fortune 500 companies. LDP represented Hewlett Packard as an original equipment manufacturer.

Then, technology forced the company to change further. As computers became more compact and modern, the services LDP were offering could easily be done by a company with their own equipment in-house.

"As PCs and packaged software became prevalent, our business began to dry up," Mr. Mason said. "We had to find niches. We have a very good reputation in the industry that we are people you can come to who will listen to your ideas. We found niches, as we bought and sold companies and kept what was good and sold off what didn't fit into our business plan."

In 1991, LDP obtained Leader Physician Services, and began to provide custom billing services for medical practices. In 1992, this division of the company was awarded a contract from the state Department of Education to obtain Medicaid reimbursements for school districts throughout the state.