Successful Main Software 50 companies continue to grow in sales, profit and internationalization

Dutch Software companies appear healthy and outperform this year in all relevant KPIs: 64% of companies expect to grow with more than 20% over the next two years.

Yesterday the successful award show of the Main software 50 took place at the HarbourClub in Amsterdam. The event took place for the fifth consecutive year in order to make the Dutch software sector more visible to a wider audience as a driver of growth and innovation. The interest from the media, business world and investors for the event gets bigger every year.

Main Software 50 (2016 edition) again shows that Dutch software companies grow significantly in sales volume, internationalization, profitability and employment. On average all KPIs improve significantly compared to last year. Total revenue grew by 18% (compared to 12% last year), share of international revenue grew by 30% (compared to 25% last year) and revenue per FTE increased further to EUR 129k (compared to EUR 122k last year). The median revenue growth was 22% (compared to 21% last year).

Presentation of the event once again was in the hands of René de Monchy (BNR Nieuwsradio). The keynote speaker of the event was Jurrie van Rooijen (CIO of bol.com). He shared a valuable insight into the importance of software and innovation for the successful growth strategy of bol.com.

Important factors in the composition of the list are: 1) revenue size, 2) revenue growth, 3) degree of recurring revenues, 4) sales through partners, 5) degree of internationalization and 6) profitability. Independent research bureau Dialogic acts as audit partner of the Main Software 50. Media Partner of the event is AG Connect.

Main Software 50 Award Winners

This year Voiceworks, active in communications software, again won the award for most successful software company. Voiceworks realizes strong international growth with their proprietary communications platform called Summa. Voiceworks scored particularly highly on key criteria such as total revenue growth and the realization of cloud sales. Moreover, the company has established a successful partner channel leading to scalable expansion of the international business.

The second prize of this year was awarded to Slimstock, specialist in solutions for planning and inventory optimization. With the deployment of smart software tools, companies can structurally improve their stock positions. Slimstock did particularly well on criteria such as degree of internationalization and overall revenue growth.

In third place comes Raet, a provider of software in the field of human resources cloud solutions with 1.4 million daily users. Raet scored particularly strong on the level of recurring revenues and the realization of cloud sales.

InSided is this years’ Cloud Champion. InSided makes social community platforms that allow companies to build their own social media community for contact with customers and users. Off all participating companies, inSided generated the highest percentage in revenue growth from the cloud.

This year the Highest Growth Award went to Bynder. The company is active in the field of marketing software and provides smart tools for managing content files. The actual percentage of revenue growth was a whopping 252%.

Winners Main Software 50 Edition 2016:

Key statistics Main Software 50 Edition 2016

 

Dutch software companies that participate on the list appear to be healthy and outperform on all relevant KPIs this year. Please find below an analysis of the results:

Revenue growth: Total revenue amounted to € 614m, with an increase in total revenue of 18%. 58% of the companies on the list grew with more than 20% annually. The median revenue growth was 22%. The growth forecast is strong: 64% of the companies expect to grow with more than 20% in the coming two years.

International success: The percentage of international sales continues to increase to an average of 30% of the total. Dutch software companies are increasingly able to sell their software abroad. 36% of participating companies gets even more than 50% of sales from abroad.

Partner Channel: The percentage of sales through partners is growing to an average of 18% of total sales. Using a partner strategy results in above-average growth. Companies that generate more than 10% of their sales through a partner channel show an average growth of 28% in revenues.

Profitability: Fast growing software companies are once again able to grow and remain profitable. 74% of companies achieved a profit margin of more than 10%. 42% of companies achieved a profit margin exceeding 20%.

Innovation: Software companies invest more than average in R&D. Over 90% of participants is investing more than 10% of annual turnover in R&D. Already 85% of the participants currently provides software and services also in the cloud.

Employment: Total number of FTEs was 4,753 FTEs, an increase of 18% compared to last year. The average revenue per FTE increased to EUR 129k. This may indicate an improvement in productivity.  

Partners of the Main Software 50: