Record year for e-conomic
March 07, 2012
13,000 new customers in 2011
e-conomic, who offers online accounting management for small and medium enterprises, attained a record influx of customers during 2011.The statement for 2011 shows that 13,000 businesses entrusted their accounting to cloud computing services with e-conomic. 35 per cent of the more than 45,000 current customers represent audit firms. This record influx is a huge step towards the company's goal of reaching 100,000 customers in 2013.
Cooperating with accountants and bookkeepers
According to e-conomic's CEO, Torben Frigaard Rasmussen, this remarkable success is partly due to an increasing number of accountants and bookkeepers seriously exploiting and marketing online accounting in their efforts to obtain a more efficient and dynamic influx of customers."While new start-ups are being convinced that there are simple and cheap online solutions, accountants have enthusiastically embraced rationalisation and streamlining of their business processes with online accounting.
e-conomic currently works with around 3,500 audit and administration firms, which gives us the high volumes we have today," Torben Frigaard Rasmussen explains.
According to Torben Frigaard Rasmussen, many audit firms define a particular business concept on the basis of e-conomic.
1,000 YouTube videos optimise support
e-conomic's service and support platforms are mostly online, which is efficient, scalable and available to customers around the clock.Because of this, the number of phone calls from the 45,000 current customers is almost the same as when the business had 15,000 customers.
e-conomic's clear strategy for operating customer service and support via web 2.0, including YouTube, wikis and blogs is also a significant contributory factor to the increasing number of its customers.
"Our strategy for support and service is to use one-to-many communication. Therefore, we are working towards changing the perception that good service is synonymous with personal service. With more personal service, we can only communicate within a specific time period.
Using YouTube help videos for example, we can provide support around the clock, and in most cases, the visual support is better than telephone support," Torben Frigaard Rasmussen says.
e-conomic's 1,000 YouTube help videos were viewed 500,000 times during 2011. The Web 2.0 strategy works in nine countries, across a total of 40 media, counting in the individual national versions.
Subscription-based business model
"We use a subscription-based business model, in which businesses pay less than 20 Euros per user per month to access all basic functions. Therefore, the financial crisis has also given us some benefits.People have understood that they do not need to spend between 700 and 3000 Euros on getting and adapting an ERP system, when they can rent the same thing for a low monthly price," says Torben Frigaard Rasmussen.
The e-conomic solution has been translated and adapted for use in nine countries, but has users in over 50 countries. e-conomic has its head office in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has a total of more than 100 employees.