Exact

Abstract

Exact was founded in 1984 by six university students and has since grown into a company with more than 50 offices worldwide in its high times, ensuring their presence in every part of the world. Exact has been listed on the Dutch stock exchange since 1999. Focused on serving entrepreneurial businesses in all industries, from production, wholesale and distribution to business services, Exact delivers business software solutions. They started with two products; e-architect and e-account, which both played an important role in the eventual success of the company. E-account, an accounting software product, turned out to be the most important for Exact, since this is still the heart of the software solutions Exact sells today. On the other hand, especially in the early days, e-architect, a project administration package for architects, played a vital and distinctive role in acquiring customers. The trigger to building the e-architect product came from Ahrend, a large office furniture supply company. By building this software product as requested, Ahrend was prepared to serve as one of the dealers for Exact, providing them with a launching platform. While there have been other important products in the history of Exact, these two products had a large impact on the early successes of Exact.