Growth through takeovers and integration: what strategy is involved?

Business takeovers and acquisitions are a cornerstone of Exact’s strategy and ultimately serve a higher purpose: to make entrepreneurs' everyday lives easier. Our CEO, Paul Ramakers, was a guest on the Business Insider Netherlands podcast "The Next Move", speaking about this topic to Joost Diepenmaat from Moneybird and presenter Diederik Heinink.

Unit4 Business Software, Gripp and Officient: these are just three companies recently acquired by Exact. According to Paul Ramakers, there are always specific reasons for taking over a company: 'It’s part of our strategy. For one thing, we are always looking at how we can strengthen our current portfolio. In addition, we are always looking for meaningful acquisitions that will enrich our portfolio, such as companies specialising in one thing in particular. An acquisition gives you access to a product with a new group of customers, as well as more people with a lot of knowledge of that market and product.'

Putting entrepreneurs first

These considerations are part of a broader strategy aimed at making life easier for the entrepreneur, i.e. the customer. Paul Ramakers: 'In other words, we wish to enhance the entrepreneur's capabilities. How can we serve them even better and offer additional services and functions? This can be done with our own developers or with people and products that we obtain through acquisitions.'

According to Paul, everything revolves around the user, who needs to be able to rely on the integration of applications in order to make their work more manageable. 'While it is difficult to look four years ahead, it is clear that applications are increasingly being integrated in order to make the user’s work easier.'

Read more about how Exact and our employees are engaged in contributing to the local community: https://www.exact.com/about-us/corporate-social-responsibility

Wish to hear the whole story? Listen to the podcast in which Paul talks all about it. Read the Dutch article here.