Exact

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"), 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 until 2000.

Internationally, Exact grew by acquiring Belgian firms Cobul and Cubic (17,000 customers) in 1989. The opening of offices in the United Kingdom and Russia meant that, as of 1995, 20% of Exact's revenue came from abroad.

Expansion into the German 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 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.