Paul Ramakers, CEO of software company Exact: "Partnerships are a crucial part of our strategy"

16 march 2023

Helping companies grow in a future-proof way is what Exact is all about. But how does the Delft-based software company see the future? What is the strategy of the organisation and where are the growth opportunities? We spoke to CEO Paul Ramakers, who shared his clear vision: "You don't grow alone; you do it together with clients, colleagues, partners and the environment in which you work."

It's no secret that Exact has growth ambitions. To achieve these ambitions, the software company has a clear strategy that will continue to lead them in 2023. The strategy is based on a combination of innovations, acquisitions and collaborations. This means that Exact can grow both in breadth and depth, which is of great value to Exact's clients. CEO Paul Ramakers: "We want to offer the most complete portfolio of business software for small and medium-sized organisations and their accountants."

Every day, more than 600 colleagues at Exact work on product innovations to develop new software products and improve existing ones. "Innovation is our foundation for growth", explains Paul Ramakers. "I can already reveal that we'll be launching a number of great innovations this year. We will place great emphasis on this in the Netherlands on 16 May, during the tenth edition of Exact Live at Rotterdam Ahoy. One example I'd like to mention is Exact Online Premium, with which we're launching onto the market a software suite for growing and established SMEs. Exact Online Premium offers companies more options to automate processes according to their wishes, enables them to process a larger volume of transactions and also has a link to Microsoft Power BI. Currently, a controlled release of the product is available to retailers and manufacturing, and should be available to all SMEs by the end of this year.

As already mentioned, acquisitions also play an important role in Exact's growth strategy. Paul continues: "In recent years, Exact has acquired several companies, such as Horeko and weclapp in 2022. With the acquisition of the latter, a leading provider of cloud-based ERP software operating in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, we're taking an important step across the border. This is a logical choice in our growth strategy, as this region offers a great many opportunities. Many companies still need to make the move to the cloud, and we can help with this. Acquisitions such as these offer us the opportunity to expand our playing field, while at the same time gaining knowledge and expertise from the local market. We believe that this knowledge is essential to create added value."

Partnerships with other software developers are a third important pillar of growth for Exact in order to provide customers with the best possible service and to adapt software to their needs. Paul: "That's correct. We attach great importance to this point and invest accordingly. For example, we're actively working on the Exact App Centre, a cloud platform where we bring together apps from various software providers. Customers have freedom of choice here and can easily link additional software solutions to their Exact products and vice versa. This allows our customers to adapt the software even better to their specific needs. With everything we do – the innovations, acquisitions and partnerships – it's important not to lose sight of user-friendliness. We strongly believe that software must be intuitive to use; this applies to our own software solutions, but also to products that we've inherited through acquisitions or that are available to our customers through collaborations. User Experience is therefore high on our agenda in 2023. We offer our customers a whole host of functionalities, but often from various interfaces. One identity, one look and feel of our product and therefore ease of use for the customer, is extremely important. We're working on it."

Exact's growth ambitions go beyond just the figures. "I really think we as an organisation have a responsibility to make a positive impact. With our responsible business programme, we do this in various areas: we want to halve our CO2 emissions by 2030 and significantly increase our contribution to the local community. Another important pillar is cybersecurity and data privacy. This is something that's becoming increasingly important as we all increasingly rely on technology in our daily lives. We want to inform and inspire others, and increase their knowledge of this topic. In doing so, we're fully aware that communicating about responsible business practices alone is not enough, which is why we set specific goals each year and report on them. So, as far as we're concerned, growth is really something we do together; it's a cross-organisational thing. Successful growth means you work together with your customers, colleagues, partners and the environment in which you operate."