Next Thursday, I am sending 16 of my colleagues off to take part in the Danish E-commerce Awards which is a pretty big annual event for anyone in the e-commerce industry.

Last year, e-conomic was awarded 1st prize in the category Business to Business with high-end buzzwords like company growth, integration and competitive pricing among the main factors.

Indeed something to be proud of.

But this year, I am perhaps even more proud to announce our nomination in a new category called “Online customer service” which manifests our dedicated efforts in a field which I consider the DNA of our business.

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A very interesting article on Forbes.com argues that ERP systems are becoming a thing of the past as a consequence of the way that subscriptions and services are currently replacing the traditional “buy once” product model as the standard business model of today.

While I completely agree about the changing business model, I think it’s very premature to write off ERP systems. In fact, I believe that a SaaS provider such as e-conomic points to one of the ways that ERP systems may be built in the future.

Traditional ERP systems challenged

Traditional ERP systems like SAP and Oracle are very complex systems that cost a lot of money, take a long time to become fully acquainted with and cannot immediately be customized to a company’s specific needs.

With the benefits that cloud computing and subscription-based services can offer in terms of products that are easy to get started with and easy to customize, these systems no doubt face some serious challenges.

A new way for ERP systems

Contrary to what the Forbes article claims, however, I don’t believe that the need for ERP functionality itself is fading: Companies still need to integrate finance, manufacturing, sales, operations etc.

One of the ways to fulfill this need is by building your own customized ERP system from various components that integrate with each other. This is where an application like e-conomic can be used as a platform that can be expanded to produce a kind of ERP Light for small and medium businesses.

First off, a number of modules can be added from within e-conomic itself, e.g. Stock Management and Project Management, to give more advanced product and project functionality.

Additionally, e-conomic is built around an open API that makes it easy for other systems to integrate and exchange data with the application. These integrations, or apps, allow you to connect e-conomic with e.g. CRM systems, reporting tools and payroll systems.

If you’re interested in building your own ERP with e-conomic, you can learn more about our add-on modules, or you can browse through our selection of apps that integrate with e-conomic.

I am very proud to be able to share some big words with you today: e-conomic is now officially among the leading providers of online accounting software in Europe.

According to a just published report by the International Data Corporation (IDC), one of the most highly acclaimed market research companies in the world, e-conomic is right up there as one of the leaders of what IDC Research Director Bo Lykkegaard calls the “silent revolution” of adopting online accounting in Europe.

The study emphasizes our impresssive $10 M 2011 turnover results, placing e-conomic at the very forefront of the segment of online accounting software in Europe.

Read the press release on our website or get the report at IDC’s website.

Today, I’m happy to share with you that in the first quarter of 2012, we paid our referral partners more money than ever before.

That’s great news for all parties involved! For our partners, it means that they are getting rewarded for referring new customers to e-conomic. And for us, it means that our Referral Partner Program is working as well as we imagined it would – and of course, also that we can welcome even more new users to our system.

And let’s not forget our new customers: With more than 1.200 referral partners worldwide recommending us through their websites or social media profiles, companies now have a better chance than ever before of getting introduced to the benefits of e-conomic through one of our partners!

Earn money with e-conomic

In case you are new to the Referral Partner Program and wondering how to become a partner, all you need is a website or a social media profile that you think may attract potential e-conomic customers. As a partner, you then earn money for every customer that you refer to e-conomic through your website or online profile.

An exciting partner

To illustrate how such a partner website can work, let me point you to Cloud ITeration, one of our recent and exciting new partners. Cloud Iteration helps companies and public institutions implement cloud-based services, including e-conomic, which makes them an ideal e-conomic partner.

On their website, they cover a wide range of cloud-related topics – from the basics of cloud computing to the ways cloud-based services can help you cut costs, save time and simplify your IT setup – with a page specifically dedicated to presenting e-conomic.

Interested in joining? Then go to our Referral Partner Program website to find all the information you need to become a partner.

Yes, we’re hiring. Now more than ever. Looking for those special resources that make us who we are.

Looking just a few years back in the ever-changing times here at e-conomic, we used to regularly have a couple of open positions spread somewhat randomly around our various websites and job banks.

And by the time our web editors sat down to put some structure into this, the position had already been filled and we were looking for a different profile.

Admittedly, it wasn’t very neatly organized and if you visited our sites on a jobhunt, you may not have got the impression that we were a rapidly growing company in serious need of the best resources.

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Most of us enjoy fast applications and websites. Sometimes you really notice the high speed, sometimes you don’t notice it, but just have this good experience that makes you return.

Awareness of high-speed applications and websites has been increasing over the last few years, but I doubt the average speed has been improved much as web pages have increased 20% in size during the last 12 months.

At e-conomic, speed has always been a concern, now more than ever.

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A great story about e-conomic: As reported in Computerworld today (article in Danish), business schools are turning to e-conomic for teaching accounting to business students.

The reasons why they are switching to  e-conomic as the accounting system to train students on? As one business school teacher explains, it’s because it is easy and fast to introduce students to the system, and there is no risk that the system breaks down on their computers.

From Microsoft Axapta to e-conomic

The Computerworld article describes how e-conomic has replaced Microsoft Axapta at the Niels Brock business school in Copenhagen. Peter Manniche Riber, a teacher at the school, explains that Microsoft Axapta had been causing issues for a long time since practically all courses experienced major breakdowns to the application, and because it was complicated and difficult to teach.

As a consequence, the school has now turned to e-conomic as the system for teaching accounting. Teachers can now get students started with the system in 2-3 hours, compared to minimum 3 days for Microsoft Axapta.

Additionally, since e-conomic is a SaaS provider (Software-as-a-Service), the school doesn’t have to worry about the system breaking down on their computers, since all maintenance and updates are handled by e-conomic, with nothing to install locally.

Interest from other schools

According to Peter Manniche Riber, he is continually asked about the system by teachers from around the country. As he explains: “The industry is ready for a change. They want something that works and is easy to use”.

Go here to read the article (in Danish).

Over the past year, we’ve as usual been hard at work improving and refining our existing application – but we’ve also been building something new to complement our current offering.

The reason for doing something new? Because sometimes you have to take a step back and think about new ways of doing things in order to move forward. And we’re not the only ones who have taken this approach, as e.g. 37signals can testify.

More speed and flexibility

e-conomic was launched 10 years ago – that’s a long time, especially on the Web. Since then, we’ve continually adjusted and improved our product, largely based on input and feedback from our users.

But over time, some fundamental wishes mainly from our administrator users – accountants and external bookkeepers – have proved impossible to accomodate within the general design and flow of our product.

These requests were mainly to do with speed, with users expecting our software to be as fast to work with as on-premise systems, and flexibility for customizing setup for individual administrators and countries.

That’s why we’ve created a new power journal called Tab Finance with just these features, with the aim of fulfilling the requests from our administrator users and providing professional users with a system that fully supports the way they want to work.

Something completely new

The power journal is an optional Finance tab  – hence its name – that administrators can opt to use in e-conomic, and even though it looks and feels very different from our regular product, it is thus still part of our existing product.

However, we’re also working to build something entirely new and separate from our regular product.

One reason for this is that technology now offers new possibilities compared to 10 years ago. We’d like to use these possibilities to give our users something faster, better-looking and more user-friendly to help them with their accounting. And, particularly in relation to speed, our users now actually expect us to deliver a service that is as fast as any physically installed software.

Additionally, we’d also like to implement our new ideas about how to build an accounting system that even people with little experience in accounting would find easy to use. Some of the fundamental elements will be similar to what we already have (for instance, we’d still like our users to be able to create invoices!), but the way these elements function and are presented to the user will be very different.

So, we realized that these changes would be so great that they couldn’t be encompassed within our current product – and that’s why we’re currently building something brand-new.

Main focus on existing product

Our customers continually tell us that they’re happy with our product, and our customer growth numbers back this up. We have no intention of forcing customers to switch to our new system, or in any way making it difficult for them to remain with our existing product.

On the contrary, our main focus will still be on our current product, and we will continue to develop new functionality and make adjustments to this system.

What we’re doing with our new product, then, is finding new ways to move forward without parting with the great things we have.

I recently stumbled on these results from an OECD survey which put a feeling that I’ve had for a long time into clear facts and figures
- Denmark really is the best country in the world to work in!

Having worked for – and run – international companies both in Denmark and abroad, I have truly come to appreciate the benefits that come with an employment in Denmark.

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Following on from my thoughts on what’s in store for the year ahead, I’d like to share with you some of our early results for 2012.

So far, we’re on course in January to reach the highest number of new customers, the most accountant and bookkeeper signups, and the highest number of trials for a single month. To illustrate, we passed the 1,000 new customers mark just 11 days into the new year!

New employees

In addition to customers, we’re also adding heavily to the number of employees working at e-conomic.

Over the past couple of months alone, we’ve welcomed 8 new people on board, and we will be adding at least 5 more during the next month. By the end of Q1, we should be more than 100 people working at e-conomic, up from 70 at the start of 2011.

We’re far from done after that, however. As you can see from our list of available jobs at e-conomic, we aim to continue our employee growth at this rate for quite some time – provided, of course, that we’re able to find qualified and dedicated people.

Ambitions for the year

Taking the year as a whole, I expect us to reach a customer growth rate of 35-40%, meaning that close to 60,000 customers will be using e-conomic by the end of 2012.

In terms of geographical expansion, our hope is to include 2-3 new countries as e-conomic markets, and preferably at least one country outside Europe.

Reaching these goals for 2012 will mean that we are well on our way to accomplish our stated mission goals.

A warm welcome

Let me finish by extending a warm welcome to both the new customers and the new employees that have joined us recently, and thanking our longtime clients who trust e-conomic with their accounting every day.

I look forward to seeing what this year will bring – and taking the journey with even more of you!