Don Dupuis is a local technology pioneer whose work shaped how local businesses learned to operate in the early days of the digital age.
Dupuis founded Acadiana Computer Systems in 1969 at a time when most offices still relied on adding machines, paper ledgers and manual calculations.
He spoke about his years in the industry with Jan Swift of the Discover Lafayette podcast. You can listen to their conversation here.
Dupuis, whose business was housed in a building that was recently purchased by South Louisiana Community College, saw that businesses, especially medical practices, needed help navigating billing, coding, payroll and data management.
It grew its client base to include doctors, lawyers, oilfield companies, universities, public offices and even the horse racing industry, he said.
He credits early partner Roy Arwood, a mathematician and programmer, as “a genius” who wrote the software while he sold, ran and personally operated the systems.
They computerized payrolls with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of employees, ultimately processing more than 1 million W-2s in a single year.
