At e-conomic, we believe that everyone within the organization should be acquainted with our company’s very highest priority: our customers.

That’s why last week, I sat down with e-conomic’s Online Manager Tue, and we spent the day making welcome calls to new e-conomic customers (Undercover Boss anyone?).

As I’ve said before – it’s not by coincidence that the word “fun” is part of e-conomic’s mission statement.  Fun is essential for everything, and over all I must say that this experience was insightful, enriching – and fun!

Welcoming new e-conomic customers on the e-conomic phone hotline

A continuing event

Tue and I has a great time calling customers, and overall we had a very positive experience being on the phone hotline.  We were educated and guided by some of e-conomic’s incredible support team – thank you to Charlotte, Gurjap and Asma for your help!

We learned many new things by speaking directly with the very people that we are in fact all working so hard for every single day, and this was an eye-opening experience for us.

Note to CEOs out there – when was the last time you talked directly to your customers?!

To hear their positive attitude and interest in our accounting system and service was exciting and empowering.  I think it is very important that all of the employees in e-conomic have the chance to reach out to our customers – not only our phone support staff.

Therefore, we will be asking all of our non-support employees to spend time on the phone hotline for a day. I believe that this will give them further insight into who exactly we are delivering our product and service to – and what we can do even more of to make them happier.

Two subjects that I regularly cover here on the blog are the importance of cloud computing in the growing market and expanding an innovative business model.

I have worked with start-up companies in the online industry for many years (you can take a look at my experiences on LinkedIn), and in the coming month I will be sharing my experience with business start-ups, growing online companies, and how to gain a competitive advantage – not just here on the blog, but also in person!

Join me at the Above the Cloud and Innovation Champion conferences

Above the Cloud

On October 6, 2011, join me in Stockholm at the Above the Cloud conference from 15:25 -15:50, where I’ll be discussing how collaborative online accounting and the “e-cosystem” can approve administrative efficiency and flexibility in business processes.

Kjell A. Nordstrom, one of the highest rated speakers in the world, will also be speaking at the event.  He will share how the business climate is influenced by trends in cloud computing.  Take the opportunity to participate in the Above the Cloud conference, where you can find out how the most successful companies use cloud services to gain a competitive advantage.

Find out more about the event here.

Innovation Champion

In June, I blogged about e-conomic’s sponsorship of the 2011 Innovation Champion event – a Danish business competition to find the most innovative company leader or team.  Now the winners of Innovation Champion 2011 will present their innovative business at a conference organized by IBC Innovation Factory, in Kolding, Denmark on October 11, 2011.

I will also be in attendance at the conference, where I will share how e-conomic reinvented bookkeeping as an online service and became one of Denmark’s fastest growing entrepreneurial companies.  (Hint: We believe the key is a culture of innovation and strong team-work!)

Find out more about the event here.

Please join me

I hope to see you at one of the upcoming conferences.  Please stop by and say hello if you’re in attendance!

This past week in Norway, the magazine PC World compared nine different online and offline accounting systems against one another, including the e-conomic online software.

I’m happy to share that e-conomic received fantastic scores in this test and exceled in several specific areas.

e-conomic scored high in PC World's accounting system test

e-conomic –  easy and secure

The PC World test compared the nine different accounting systems based on the needs of a public company with three users, who would use the program over a period of three years.  A number of categories were judged.

In the getting started category, PC World highlighted e-conomic as the easiest accounting system to start working with.   They also highlighted the fact that e-conomic was the only online option for companies who do not use a Windows operating system.

e-conomic also scored highest in the backup and security category, and our e-conomic apps were highlighted as a clear strength.

Low cost, high expectations

In the cost category, e-conomic also received the highest score.  Out of the nine programs tested, e-conomic was the lowest priced system.

Over a period of three years, the e-conomic system cost nearly 1,125 Euros less than the second cheapest system, as well as 3,970 Euros cheaper than the other online system in the test.

With e-conomic’s high scores in all three of these categories, it is clear to see that the cheapest solution can also be the best solution!

Looking forward to the next round

It has been an honor to receive these high scores (e-conomic was the only system to receive the top score in three different categories), especially since PC World has highlighted some of the aspects of our system that we work hard to emphasize – most notably usability, security and flexibility at a low cost.

Later this year, PC World will once again run a comparison of numerous accounting systems, this time based on sole proprietorship companies.  e-conomic will again be among the compared systems, so we look forward to seeing their assessment in the next round.

See here what PC World said about e-conomic (in Norwegian).

As you might have heard, e-conomic’s Referral Partner Program has a new website design. We hope that the new design will encourage more partner sign-ups, while simultaneously improving the quality of our existing partners’ referrals.

Earn money working from home 

If you haven’t heard about our Referral Partner Program before, then it’s time you learned how to earn money with e-conomic!

The Referral Partner Program is all about one thing: giving our partners the possibility to earn money by referring new customers to us.  But you can be assured that it is not one of those “make a fortune without doing any work” offers that we have all heard of (and ignored).

The new design and layout of the e-conomic Partner website

e-conomic RPP – not like the others

Unlike other online affiliate programs, the e-conomic Referral Partner Program promotes a B2B product: cloud based accounting software.

For our referral partners, this has several implications:

1. Our products address a certain niche. In e-conomic’s case, out target market consists of individuals who are deciding which accounting system should be used in their small or medium sized business. This might sound very specific, but the truth is there are tons of SMEs out there and most of us even know people who make decisions like this in small companies every day.
2. Referral Partners may use whatever platform they would like to get in touch with the relevant audience. Websites, facebook or LinkedIn profiles, Twitter pages, blogs, etc. are all possible ways of promoting your partner links.  The context of your page should always be about the target customer: SMEs.   But whether it is the latest accounting system or cloud based solutions for SMEs in general which gets the news, is up to the individual Referral Partner.

A program for all users

The lesson here is simply the fact that earning money through internet marketing is not something that is only possible for techies.  Anyone who feels that SMEs are part of their audience, readership, or visitors can get on-board with the e-conomic Referral Partner Program and start earning 80 Euros per customer referred!

If you aren’t yet on-board, then what are you waiting for?  Partner up today!