As I shared with you recently, e-conomic has been selected as a ‘Gazelle’ company based on our excellent growth and turnover performance, which includes doubling our turnover in just three years.

Most Profitable Gazelle

Now, we have received further recognition as we’ve been named ‘Most Profitable Gazelle 2011′ for the Copenhagen region. I was presented with this additional honor at Dagbladet Børsen’s Gazelle conference earlier today.

Being presented with the ‘Most Profitable Gazelle’ award

Growth despite obstacles

I’m very proud of this acknowledgement as one of Denmark’s premier growth companies. Despite a marked lack of understanding on the part of banks and financial institutions of how we’re going to ensure future growth in Denmark, e-conomic has been able to generate massive growth during the financial downturn.

To me, our success is all down to the dedicated, skilled and committed people working at e-conomic. And my list of employees has grown significantly longer over the past years. When I started in 2008, 35 people were employed at e-conomic – a figure that will soon exceed 85!

Increasing the number of people at e-conomic

Hope for small and medium businesses

So, it is still possible to create growth and jobs in Denmark in spite of the recession, and in spite of the difficult conditions that banks provide for companies like ours.

And hopefully, success stories like e-conomic can serve as an eye-opener to financial institutions showing that it makes sense to invest in small and medium businesses with the right business case, market potential and people in place.

Tribute to our clients

Finally, I’d like to thank our clients – most of them small and medium businesses facing the same challenges as us. Our growth would of course not be possible without the loyal support that we have from a great number of these businesses. So, a big thank you is in order to all our clients.

Today, I have the honor of introducing the world’s largest selection of accounting apps!

All apps integrate with e-conomic and are part of our strategy to make bookkeeping and accounting easier and more fun for small and medium businesses.

Providing the world’s largest selection of accounting apps

Streamlining and simplifying processes

For business owners without accounting experience, bookkeeping can be very time-consuming. That’s why we strongly support the development of apps that streamline and simplify these processes.

Using e-conomic apps, you can e.g. report mileage automatically using your mobile phone, automatically record orders and sale of a web shop, or automatically scan and transfer invoices to e-conomic. In the same way, apps are available for helping you collect outstanding payments, book salary and record time and materials spent on projects.

Connecting systems

In e-conomic, an app is an integration application that works as an intuitive utility to connect e-conomic with other systems such as web shops, CRM systems, payroll systems etc.

As you may know, e-conomic is structured around an open Application Programming Interface (API) enabling other companies to develop and sell apps that integrate with e-conomic. This is part of our basic philosophy that data should be allowed to flow freely between business systems. Our framework is so standardized and easy to use that you can code almost all of your app in our API.

We don’t make money on apps, but the number of apps has increased by 40% in the last year, and they play a significant part in attracting new customers and so help us increase our growth.

Apps seminar for developers

With so many apps and opportunities provided through our API, we’d like to play a much more active role in helping developers and partners create the best possible apps.

That’s why we’re organizing a Getting started with Apps seminar (select ‘Getting Started with Apps’ as ‘Type’), which will take place November 24  at 18:00 CET. Here, developers will get introduced to our API, our app resources and learn how to create their first app.

We’ve also set up an Apps team dedicated to assisting developers and partners by providing them with feedback on their ideas, helping them promote their apps and pointing them towards resources.

With these new initiatives, I look forward to seeing even more great e-conomic apps developed in the future. Keep an eye on the Apps section of our website to stay up-to-date with the latest apps.

Recently e-conomic had the opportunity to collaborate with Microsoft.eu and discuss my view on the cloud movement and it’s lasting impacts on the international marketplace.

I shared e-conomic’s experience as a start-up in the cloud marketplace 10 years ago, and how far we – and the cloud movement as a whole – have rapidly progressed ever since.

Read ‘The cloud is more than just hot air’ on Microsoft.eu

e-conomic for Microsoft.eu

You can read my full guest post, The cloud is more than just hot air, on Microsoft’s website.

Please feel free to comment here or on Microsoft.eu with any thoughts you have on the subject.  Do you agree with me that the cloud is truly the way forward?

Thank you to Microsoft for this great collaboration!

I’m happy to share that e-conomic has been selected as a ‘Gazelle’ company, one of the most prestigious awards for growth companies in Denmark!

To make us entitled to this award, we have experienced continued yearly growth and doubled our turnover during the last three years – which is actually one year less than the required turnover doubling in four years.

No mean feat, I think, particularly in light of the global recession – as witnessed by the fact that last year only 1 in 500 companies were able to meet the requirements.

Among these elite growth companies, the very best Gazelle companies will reveice further honors on October 31, and of course e-conomic will be in the running for this. You can read more about this announcement and the Gazelle award in general on Børsen’s website (in Danish).

The Gazelle award is presented by Dagbladet Børsen, the leading Danish business newspaper

Reasons for success

It’s always great when others appreciate your hard work – and I think everyone at e-conomic has delivered a huge effort to get the company to the position it is in today. So, well done and congratulations with the award to the people at e-conomic!

Also, the award is proof to me that we have made the right strategic decisions by e.g. focusing on expanding into foreign markets. This strategy is starting to pay off now as we’re really establishing ourselves around Europe – and that’s one of the reasons why I see plenty of room for continued growth for e-conomic in the coming years.

Ready for growth

While we’re on track for continued growth – and we do, after all, aim to reach 100,000 customers by 2013 – we have also made some key decisions concerning how to support an increasing number of customers in more and more countries.

Here, we have chosen to stay true to our roots as a digital and online company by relying on social and online media to communicate with customers and provide support and service. This way, our customers can get assistance in their own language, wherever and whenever they need it.

In short, I believe we have everything in place to allow us to stay Gazelles for many years to come – and hopefully already receive further honors as Gazelle winners on October 31!

As a company in rapid growth, it’s not only our number of customers and turnover figures that are climbing. We’re also more and more people working at e-conomic, with offices all around Europe, from Spain to the UK to Ukraine.

That’s why it’s especially important for me that we take time out – as we did on September 29 and 30 – to meet and exchange ideas, share knowledge, be inspired by each other, network and get to know each other a little bit better.

And of course, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have fun while you’re doing this!

Having fun at the e-conomic Company Days

Benefits all around

Close to 80 people from e-conomic’s different offices were part of the Company Days. They all contributed to a great atmosphere, full of energy, dedication and a desire to share and learn from each other to help move the company forward.

That’s why I think this event is not only beneficial to e-conomic as a company and the people working here – it’s also an opportunity for us to consider new and different ways of creating even more value for our customers.

If you have any ideas for how we can improve your e-conomic experience, we would love to hear from you.

And in case you would like to know what the people working at e-conomic look like – they are all there in the video below, doing an umbrella version of the e-conomic logo!

With Steve Jobs’ passing, the world has lost a great innovator and visionary. On a global level, Jobs changed the world we live in and how we interact with each other.

Learning from mistakes

Aside from the inspiration of seeing a creative genius like Steve Jobs at work, his story also shows us another thing: Learning comes from mistakes. Jobs dropped out of college, was fired as tech executive and was, for many years, an unsuccessful businessman.

One of my basic philosophies is that if we make no mistakes, we are not doing enough. But do not repeat mistakes.

No-one konws exactly what the future holds – even we at e-conomic don’t know precisely how online accounting will look in say, 10 years. But we know that we want to keep creating, adapting and innovating to provide our customers with the best that we can possibly give them.

Steve Jobs talks about dropping out of college and being fired from Apple

Online, interesting, fun

At e-conomic, it has of course been very fascinating and inspiring to follow Steve Jobs and Apple as they have moved along the same path as us promoting concepts like online, flexibility and innovation.

Personally, I’ve been truly inspired by Steve Jobs in a number of ways – both in terms of forging the way for connecting the world online, but also in terms of making products “fun”.

I was really struck by this quote from an Apple customer who was asked how Apple products had affected her life, and replied:

“They made it more interesting. And fun.”

This is exactly what we strive for at e-conomic – and by achieving this you have, at the very least, done something right!