Exact is a Dutch

software company A software company is a company whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. They make up the software industry. Types There are a number of different types of soft ...

that offers accounting, ERP, and other software for small and medium enterprises. Exact develops cloud-based and

on-premises software On-premises software (abbreviated to on-prem, and incorrectly referred to as on-premise) is installed and runs on computers on the premises of the person or organization using the software, rather than at a remote facility such as a server farm ...

for industries such as accountancy, wholesale distribution, professional services and manufacturing, serving more than 500,000 companies. Exact, founded in 1984, has its headquarters in

Delft Delft () is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, and The Hague, to the northwest. Together with them, it is part of both the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan ...

. It has

subsidiaries A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...

and offices in Europe, North America and Asia. The company was listed on

Euronext Euronext N.V. (short for European New Exchange Technology) is a pan-European bourse that offers various trading and post-trade services. Traded assets include regulated equities, exchange-traded funds (ETF), warrants and certificates, bonds, ...

until March 2015, when it was bought up by a group of investors led by

Apax Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...

and in 2019 by investor

KKR KKR & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global investment company that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strateg ...

History

Exact was founded in 1984 by Eduard Hagens, Rinus Dekker, Arco van Nieuwland, Paul van Keep, Paul Frijling and Leo Schonk. The six had worked as freelancers for Grote Beer ("

Ursa Major Ursa Major (; also known as the Great Bear) is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. Its Latin name means "greater (or larger) bear," referring to and contrasting it with nearby Ursa ...

"), one of the first Dutch companies to produce standardized accounting software. When Grote Beer fired all of its freelancers, Hagens ''et al.'' started their own business. Their Exact Software would later, in 1994, acquire Grote Beer, which at that time had an annual revenue of ƒ100 million, expanding Exact's customer portfolio to some 60,000 companies. The former company's name was used as a

trade mark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from othe ...

until 2000.

Business

Internationally, Exact grew by acquiring

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct language ...

firms Cobul and Cubic (17,000 customers) in 1989. The opening of offices in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

meant that, as of 1995, 20% of Exact's revenue came from abroad. Expansion into the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

market soon followed with the acquisition of Pcas, Bavaria Soft, Szymaniak (1997) and finally Soft Research (1999), German market leader in payroll software. In the 2000s, Exact acquired US manufacturing ERP software providers Macola, JobBOSS and MAX. In 2007, Exact purchased Longview Solutions for US$51.5 million. Longview Solutions got sold off to Marlin Equity Partners in July 2014 for an undisclosed amount of money. The mid-2000s saw Exact embroiled in internal power struggles. In 2004, founder Eduard Hagens returned from ten months of sailing round the world, to find his company reorganized in a decentralized way that did not suit his vision of how Exact should be led. Hagens clashed with CEO Lucas Brentjens and CFO Bert Groenewegen, leading to the resignation in September and October of that year of Brentjens, Groenewegen, and subsequently the company's entire board of directors. Hagens's " ''coup''" (as ''

de Volkskrant ''de Volkskrant'' (; ''The People's Paper'') is a Dutch daily morning newspaper. Founded in 1919, it has a nationwide circulation of about 250,000. Formerly a leading centre-left Catholic broadsheet, ''de Volkskrant'' today is a medium-sized ...

'' put it) caused a staff drain within the company. The following April, after the resignation of the company's new CFO, Hagens announced his own departure. He was succeeded by Rajesh Patel. In October 2014, Exact announced a buy-out by

Apax Partners Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...

. That acquisition was completed in April, 2015 for a sum of €730 million. The acquisition meant that Exact was de-listed from the

stock exchange, on which it had been listed since 1999. Exact was th
personal sponsor
of Dutch Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen from 2015 until late 2019. In 2017, Exact acquired the French software vendo
Dièse Finance
and later the accounting software compan
Reeleezee
in the Netherlands. Later that year, Exact sold their American division including Macola, JobBOSS and MAX to ECi Software Solutions. By then, Phill Robinson was announced as Exact's CEO. In 2018, Exact acquired three Dutch companies: Parentix, ProQuro and SRXP. Exact expanded its presence to the construction sector in the spring of 2019 with the takeover of bouw7; a leading Dutch supplier of cloud software for SMEs in the construction sector. In 2019, Exact also added the Belgian WinBooks to the organization. WinBooks is a software company specialized in accounting and business management solutions. With the acquisition of WinBooks, The Dutch software company increased its presence in Wallonia and Brussels. In the autumn of 2020, Exact announced both the acquisition of the Belgian HR software supplier Officient and the acquisition of Unit4 Bedrijfssoftware, the business unit of Unit4 that serves the accountancy, SME and large business markets in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Leadership

In 2019, Robinson announces he suffers from chronic neurological Parkinson's disease. He then continued to work as CEO, but given the further progression of the symptoms associated with the disorder, Robinson took the decision at the end of 2020 to step back and join the supervisory board as non-executive director. Robinson's successor is Paul Ramakers. Until now, the new CEO, was COO at Exact. Ramakers has been with the company for 25 years and has held various positions over the years.

Products

Exact's rise to market leadership was mostly based on its

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

-based accounting package, also called Exact. The company also launched a

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

version of this package, but this was heavily criticized because it never attained the full functionality of the DOS version, leading many companies to stay with the DOS software into the late 1990s. The Exact package was replaced March 30, 2000 with a new product, Globe 2000. This

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Wi ...

-based product was designed around a modular architecture dubbed "One-X" that underpinned all of Exact's offerings. Criticism of this software focused on the fact that the One-X architecture was incompatible with the older Exact software, and that it was tied to

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ...

, which was considered too heavy of a

database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...

for the small computers typically used at Exact's

small and medium enterprise Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Ban ...

customers. In 2005 Exact Online was launched, the company's effort to bring Exact software to the cloud. With this product, Exact initially targeted only the

Benelux The Benelux Union ( nl, Benelux Unie; french: Union Benelux; lb, Benelux-Unioun), also known as simply Benelux, is a Political union, politico-economic union and formal international intergovernmental cooperation of three neighboring states in ...

countries, until in May 2010 it announced a joint venture with Turkish software developer Triodor to market its product in Turkey as an experiment. The trial ended later that year, with Exact citing a lack of results and announcing a sole focus on its Dutch and Belgium markets. Later, Exact Online tried to expand to cover France, Spain, United Kingdom and Germany. Around 2019, the focus was moved back to the Dutch and Belgium market. In 2011 a more extensive version of Exact Online was launched; the focus broadened from accountancy software only to include industry solutions such as trade, PSA and manufacturing. In 2018, Exact Online was expanded with the function Exact My irmas a collaboration tool between accountant and entrepreneur. Other products of Exact are: * Exact Synergy; for CRM, HRM, DMS and workflow * Exact Financials; financial software for non-profits and enterprises with a large transaction volume.

References

External links