My First 100 Days as Formpipe CEO

Becoming the CEO of Formpipe marks a significant milestone in my career journey. Equipped with my deep knowledge from the international IT and cybersecurity industry, I entered the role in August 2023 with a clear vision in mind.

My goal is to leverage my commercial acumen and technical expertise to steer Formpipe's evolution towards a future of expansion, both in untapped markets and within the broader ERP ecosystem.

In this blog post, I will share the valuable insights I've gained during my first 100 days as Formpipe CEO. I will outline where we are as leaders in the document management and digital archiving space now and how we, as an organisation, can build upon our successes to transform the industry in the years to come.

Diving into Formpipe's company culture and unique selling points

My initial attraction to the role of CEO at Formpipe stemmed from the company's impressive customer footprint and extensive installed base. Formpipe has achieved remarkable market penetration thanks to its diverse product portfolio, and has gained a substantial number of long-term customers along the way.

During my visits to several Formpipe offices, it quickly became apparent that a large part of the company's success is due to our company culture – which is very down-to-earth, oriented towards problem-solving, and pragmatic. Our dedicated team is clearly passionate about empowering organisations as they embark on their digital transformation journeys. We also place a special focus on maintaining security and integrity for the individual, which is key to building trust in this industry.

During my first 100 days at Formpipe, I also witnessed our solutions' profound impact on our customers and partners and how we help organisations solve many business challenges.

For instance, as ERP systems continue to proliferate across different sectors and generate vast amounts of data, Formpipe plays a pivotal role in assisting companies in extracting valuable insights from their planning tools. Our offering truly enhances their adaptability and growth potential, even in this uncertain economic climate.

With these client findings and the invaluable support of our leadership team, we are progressively identifying even more opportunities where we can enhance and expand our offerings to bolster client successes.

Formpipe's prospects in the public and private sectors

From my perspective, I believe Formpipe is poised to capitalise on two significant growth opportunities over the next 100 days and beyond.

Firstly, we have a substantial market presence in the public sector, which offers a prime opportunity for our team to upsell and cross-sell solutions to our existing clients. We have a lot of potential to deepen our customer relationships and take on more extensive workloads and responsibilities. For example, we can help clients transition to the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. While SaaS is prevalent in many industries, public sector clients may require extra support and reassurance to fully embrace it as a trusted tool in their document management and archiving processes.

By demonstrating how Formpipe can help these organisations future-proof their tech stack, we can assist public sector clients in alleviating their operational burden while maintaining data integrity. We are committed to making our solutions easy to find, consume, and use through the cloud, along with providing additional professional support services to help them streamline and automate tasks as their workload increases.

Secondly, we are growing rapidly in the private sector, with a strong international focus and good traction in the Microsoft Dynamics area. However, we acknowledge that Microsoft Dynamics represents only a small fraction of the total ERP market – according to Gartner Market Statistics around four per cent. Therefore, we plan to actively target new international locations and ERP ecosystems to increase demand for our document management and digital archiving solutions. This will be a crucial task for our organisation throughout 2024 and beyond.

Shaping governmental entity’s digital transformation

Drawing upon my experience as Managing Director of Speed Identity AB, I have gained a deep understanding of the emphasis government entities place on document and case management in their decision-making processes. Data integrity and sovereignty are paramount, as these organisations must make citizens feel assured that the state is utilising their data in the right way to protect their interests.

With this core principle in mind, our mission is to position Formpipe at the forefront of digitalising communications between governments and citizens. We are dedicated to offering adaptable and reliable core systems that bolster essential decision-making processes and we plan on continuing development in this area to strengthen our core value proposition.

Meetings Live: Providing greater transparency in government decision-making

In line with our commitment to innovation, the launch of our new Meetings Live solution has been an exciting milestone in my Formpipe CEO journey thus far.

This groundbreaking service facilitates meetings and voting among government entities.

The user-friendly app includes advanced features such as management of presence, speaklist and digital voting. In short, Meetings Live promotes efficiency, transparency, traceability and data security, aligning with our goals to modernise governance processes.

Our flagship ERP product – Lasernet – has a bright future 

Another one of Formpipe's core value propositions, Lasernet, transforms data outputs from any ERP into customer or supplier documents, simplifying document management processes for businesses of all sizes.

Lasernet has helped 2,500+ organisations worldwide so far, and its global demand and its success in the Microsoft Dynamics sector will empower us to expand into new geographies and ecosystems. It's our primary objective to ensure our solution caters to as broad a client base as possible in the coming years.

Sharp focus on the banking and finance sectors

The banking and finance sector is a highly competitive market with increasing compliance requirements, and we can do a lot to help financial institutions continuously improve their offerings.

Our expertise in customer communication provides our clients with a competitive edge, and as we continue to refine our services, we aim to strengthen our position in this vital sector. 

Advice for talented professionals looking to join an organisation like Formpipe

When it comes to offering advice to talented professionals in this industry, I believe two fundamental factors come into play: working hard and being lucky. In many ways, our professional journeys are a bit of a lottery. The more effort you invest, the more "lottery tickets" you accumulate, increasing your chances of success. However, hard work alone is not enough; you must also be willing to take action and adapt as necessary.

In the context of software development, there's a concept known as "failing fast." This term implies that sometimes it's more productive to embrace failure as a means of learning from mistakes, rather than endlessly analysing what to do. An action-oriented and results-focused approach is something I genuinely enjoy, and Formpipe boasts a highly competent team that allows our people to learn and collaborate in this way. Additionally, our work culture is characterised by openness and transparency – we always aim to maintain efficiency while fostering a healthy work-life balance.

At Formpipe, you'll find a place where you can engage in fascinating projects alongside remarkable individuals. We take pride in our substantial contributions to government entities and our impactful work with private sector businesses, offering global opportunities for those interested in such endeavours.

Formpipe has a promising future marketed by growth and transformation

We are in an excellent position with our customers, products, and people. I expect that we will continue to grow with profitability. In the public sector, we will continue to deepen our relationships with existing clients. In the private sector, we set our sights on expanding into new ERP ecosystems and geographical markets.

Overall, I am pleased with the direction Formpipe is taking. As a company, we value leading by example, being transparent and taking a result-orientated approach. I'm very much looking forward to building on these principles and seeing where this takes us as a brand.

If you would like to learn more about what's in the pipeline for Formpipe as a company, regularly check for updates on our Blog & News pages or our LinkedIn channel.