Making The Big Switch

That has been a while ago since I wrote my last blog post. A couple of months ago and many things happened in the meantime. Lots of things I can and will write about in the next period. People who visit my blog regurarly will notice a few things, that also why I cal this blog post: the big switch. First of all, I will continue writing my blog posts in English. At Exact we are opening many new offices in other countries which makes my reach going beyond the Dutch borders. In order to serve much more readers I decided to switch to English. With our cloud business software, Exact Online, meanwhile we opened offices in London, Boston and Frankfurt. Brussels we are re-aligning and new countries will follow in the next years.

WordPress Theme

You will also noticed I changed my WordPress theme from Continuum to Typegrid. This was quite a job. Themeforest is a great portal for themes and once starting looking for one, you end up clicking endlessly. During this journey I bought various themes to conclude it did not work out. Finally I got the theme Bloq, contemporary, flat design and also having some parralax effects in it (sliding panes over each other to animate 3D effect). Since my spare time is limited I asked some professionals to build up this theme and implement. For the last couple of days I was working with it but I was not able to get my arms around it. So yesterday I made the decision to throw away this theme and search for another one. At the end it should serve the reader, finding things easily with a good reading experience. Bloq was very nice from a design perspective, as a blog post it simply didn’t work out. I hope you like this one, clean, simple and responsive so great reading experience on tablet and mobile. Switch number 2.

Triathlon

Last September 1st for me was mentally the switch from a traithlon rookie into an amateur triathlete. After 2 years fo extensive training finally I did my 1st half triathlon, the Ironman 70.3. This 70.3 stands for the total distance in miles. Prior to this hald distance I did many 1/8 and 1/4 distances. With completing this half distance in 5:58h I made a serious step to my sport ambition, doing the long distance in a few years from now. It was a great experience in the surroundings of Austria, Zell-am-See. I will defenitely write a seperate blogpost abut this awesome experience.

Championsleague

Many people ask me: ‘Mark, what is the reason you are so passionate about Exact?’. My answer is simple: I am in the middle of the championsleague of the cloud, saas, marketing and business software. We are making great steps from many perspectives. I was challenged to re-organize our marketing organisation so we became more international focussed. With all new countries kicking in we have to overcome many new issues around marketing, communications, our automation systems and cultures. It is great to be part of it and being able to set new directions based on new insights. ‘Mark, what is the reason you are so passionate about Exact?’I am priviliged to work with such a marketing team, highly qualified professionals with various background that complement each other. I am sure that in the next few months we will exceed our own expectations with having new methodologies, systems, insights and experiences in place. Best parctices around marketing automation, content marketing and social media where we will start talking about. I am happy to share many things we experienced, what went wrong and what went right.

Our Product

Without having a great product you are simply not able to grow. It is mandatory to enable yourself to conquer the world. Ans off course I am telling you that our products are great. That’s the reason why more than 120.000 companies are already working with Exact Online, their business software in the cloud. I am proud to be able to talk about it. We have ambitions but most important, we all think we can achieve them. Our product suite is unique from accounting to accountancy, from wholesale & distribution to manufacturing. All integrated with other integrations through our App Center. Not only others are integrating with us, we are also integrating with other like Intuit, QuickBooks online and on premise. This is our go-to-market in the US. In December our wholesale & distribution and manufacturing products will become commercially available fully integrated with the accounting products of QuickBooks online.

What Makes Us Spark?

For next year off course we have some great plans in the pipeline. The new countries need to get up and running and from a product perspective we will ad many new features. But we think adding new features only is not enough. That’s why we will do some major improvements around user experience making sure that when new customers start trying our products, they get activated in a pleasant way quickly. Helping them to get the most out of it. The reason why we just appointed a Customer Success Director who’s mission is to get customers happy.  I promise you, this will be mind blowing.From a product perspective I hope I can share more in a couple of months from now. I promise you, this will be mind blowing. I truly believe with this direction we will support accountants and entrepeneurs in a way they have never experienced before. Based on the latest market developments around big data, social and mobile Exact Online users will be able to grow their business to new heights.

So, lots of things to talk about, many things that I really like to share that will hopefully help others and inspire them. Enjoy the reading and when time passes more and more posts will be in English. Welcome to my new revitalised blog!