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!

Christmas is around the corner. This year we have decided to use the capabilities afforded to us by being a SaaS provider to deliver something truly special to our customers:

New improvements to the e-conomic system – released and delivered every day from December 1 to December 24!

Daily releases

Starting today, a new feature will be made available to our customers on a daily basis.

When you go to the e-conomic login page, you will see an explanation of today’s new feature, with links to further information in our e-copedia.

After you have logged on to the e-conomic system, the new feature will be automatically available for you to use.

Think about it – updates to the basic application code released every day!

Automatically available

And what’s even more impressive is that all these system updates entail absolutely no extra work for you as a user. You don’t have to run application updates, restart your system or even your computer. And you don’t need to contact technical support when your system doesn’t work correctly after an update.

Instead, an updated version of our system is automatically available in your browser whenever you log on.

Opportunities from cloud computing

Of course, this ‘Christmas Calendar’ model with daily releases is another example of the many opportunities provided by cloud computing. Unlike traditional software providers, we can make major application changes without worrying about creating issues or extra workloads for our users.

On the contrary, we can give our customers something extra to help them with their accounting – free of charge and readily available.

On our website, you can see the full list of new features delivered in December, updated every day with the latest improvements.

With so many small and medium businesses using e-conomic, it’s essential for us here at e-conomic to know as much as possible about the priorities, concerns and wishes of businesses when doing their accounting. This applies not only to us as their accounting system provider, but also to their accountants.

That’s why we have recently done a survey asking business owners what they would most of all like their accountants to do better.

The most common answer? Higher availability.

Moving accounting online

A mobile world

As one of the business owners said: “I’m on the move all the time and rely on my smartphone and netbook– it would help if more accountants did the same rather than relying on face to face meetings.  I haven’t got the time – or appetite for that really”.

There is no getting around it: The world is now mobile. It has already become completely natural to us to work on the move and have all data available around the clock.

For accountants, this means that their clients are now increasingly expecting them to communicate and interact using modern technology – and to use this technology to be more easily available.

More advice and fixed fees

Another popular request from small and medium businesses was for more general business advice from accountants. “While I accept that my accountant has to do the number crunching and get that absolutely right – it would also be useful to have them as  a sounding board when I am thinking of ways  in which to grow and improve the business,” said one business owner.

Fixed fees rather than billable hours was also high on the list of frequent replies. And in the category for miscellaneous issues were answers like “Getting a decent bottle of wine at Christmas rather than cheap plonk” and “It would be nice if they spelled my name correctly on correspondence!”

Cloud-computing for accountants

At e-conomic, we have of course been stressing the benefits of online accounting – not only for clients, but also for accountants – for a long time. By using a cloud-based accounting system, accountants can fully exploit and market online accounting in their pursuit of more efficiency and a more dynamic customer approach.

As an accountant you can use a system like ours to interact much more closely and quickly with your clients since you both have access to the same data and can make real-time changes that are immediately visible to all parties.

So, instead of insisting on face to face meetings, you can use an online accounting system to look at the same screen as your clients – allowing you to save time and make your clients happy.

Last week, I was interviewed in the Danish business media about my experience with banks and obtaining loans as a growth company.

Here, I described our paradoxical situation: We can present excellent results over the past years in terms of both growth and profitability (hence our newly-awarded title as Most Profitable Gazelle in the Copenhagen region), our number of customers is increasing rapidly, and we have a well-proven business case – yet, our credit in the bank has gone down by 50% over the past three years.

The explanation from the bank? Everything about our company looks fine, except that we don’t have a physical stock or real estate to offer as collateral.

Flawed argument

This is a flawed argument on at least two grounds:

First, no matter how well software companies like us perform we will by definition never be able to meet this requirement, yet no-one will dispute that software companies can be very profitable businesses nonetheless (in fact, the general consensus is that IT and other knowledge industries is one of the main opportunities for growth in Denmark).

And second, as the financial recession of the past years has made it very clear, physical collateral such as real estate really doesn’t constitute the security that the bank sector still seem to think it does.

Identifying sustainable businesses

 A bit cheekily, but also seriously, I would suggest that bank staff with decision-making responsibilities become better educated and equipped at identifying and supporting sustainable businesses. In fact, they could start by simply taking a look at other authorities’ evaluation of growth companies.

In our case, we can point to an AAA credit rating, held by only 5% of companies in Denmark.

Furthermore, we have a DKK 10 million guarantee from Vækstfonden (the Danish state investment fund) in place, based on their evaluation of the conditions and sustainability of our company.

This guarantee means that Vækstfonden will cover 75% of losses from our loan, thus minimizing the risk that banks will run.

Change the system

Yet these factors have not been enough to convince banks to even maintain our credit level. For the bank sector, the overriding concern is to cut down costs and reduce losses, to a large extent as a way of meeting the demands of the government’s Bank Packages.

So, if the government really wants to ensure that sustainable growth companies can thrive, the system needs to be changed.

How to move forward

The way I see it, what is required is for the government to play a more active role in helping growth companies.

One way to do this is for the state to act as a bank proper and lend money to companies through Finansiel Stability A/S (state-owned financial institution).

Another way is by actively forcing banks to accept guarantees from Vækstfonden so that companies can use these as vouchers that enable them to obtain a bank loan with the full amount from the guarantee.

If you have any other ideas or suggestions for how to improve this situation, please let me know by leaving a comment.

Cloud based computing is here to stay – you heard it here first!

Okay, perhaps you’ve already heard this statement elsewhere – in fact, you’ve likely been bombarded with hundreds of reasons why cloud computing is indeed the way forward, and why it will continue to expand across the competitive landscape.

As cloud computing continues growing very quickly in all areas of software distribution, it’s no wonder that the “trendy” term is surrounded by excessive hype.

Data “in the cloud” can be accessed by users from anywhere at anytime

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This morning, we released another handful of system improvements as an addition to the substantial batch of improvements we introduced last week.

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A carpenter needs to spend his precious time on his trade, not on project management or paper work.

This is something we have thought about here at e-conomic, and therefore we have created a craftsman’s solution intended for the busy carpenter, architect or bricklayer looking for a simple and time-saving approach to managing his business.

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Last week, I gave an interview to the UK press, outlining our strategy for international expansion for the second half of 2010.

To reach our mission of providing online accounting to more than 12 countries by 2012 and servicing more than 100,000 customers by 2013, we are currently looking for venture capitalists with money in their pockets.

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Living in the online world, we are used to grabbing information and moving on. Finding and downloading information should be quick and effective, and we do not want to waste any time waiting for a page to load.

Therefore, we have taken a closer look at e-conomic’s website performance and made some substantial adjustments, resulting in a 50% speed improvement.

Page Load Time for www.e-conomic.com as reported by Google Webmaster Tools

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