The company FakturaIT is one of the users of a new software portal. And here CEO Lars Bo Koch can use it for both buying and selling software.

Most companies face the problem: you need a piece of software that can solve a particular task or problem, but where should you start looking? Have you already partnered with a supplier, a consultancy or other, where you naturally can seek help ?. But can you be sure that the advice you get is independent?

No, you can not. And if you choose instead to search on Google, you can easily become unsure whether you now have chosen the best program that addresses your needs. Additionally the Google path almost guarantee that you will end up spending heaps of time on the task.

This is roughly how you summarize the predicament of CEO Lars Bo Koch from the company FakturaIT. Therefore, he has been one of the first companies to jump on a new Danish developed portal which went live while most of Denmark was on summer holiday.

“I think it is a good example of how to present solutions. It will be easy to compare, and you get an overview,” he says of the portal swipx.com.

The idea is pretty simple: to assemble and present software in various categories. The user defines his/her needs and is presented with a systematic overview of the software options available.

Behind the portal is Svend Erik Kundby-Nielsen, who has a long career in banking in Denmark, Germany and the US – and later in his career worked many years at IBM. Most recently he has worked as General Manager for IBM in Australia and New Zealand.

He claims to have discovered a gap in the market and is now focusing on the portal where a company as a start can present its software for free. This is necessary if we are to solve the chicken-and-egg situation, says the entrepreneur, whose earnings will come from the sale of various additional services.

“The idea actually came when to me during my time with IBM. I was working with a very large company, who had not heard about the products of a large software company. And if the software products of large and renowned software companies are not widely known in the marketplace then what about the products of all the smaller software manufacturers,” says Svend Erik Kundby-Nielsen.

Lars Bo Koch easily sees the point in the new portal. He could, for example, have used it, as a few of his employees recently went through a major Google search.

Google is a time waster

“Like everyone else, we use many different software solutions, so we are often looking for software. At the same time, we look at whether we can find something that is smarter, cheaper or more efficient. And we very recently went through this process. Two colleagues spent one week to try to find a specific tool that could help us in everyday life. But at the time there was not a portal where we could just say that we, were interested in something that could read data in a PDF file for example. In addition to the many search results Google searches are also a bit of an ordeal, because you often end up downloading sites filled with advertising”, says Lars Bo Koch.

“It’s hard to grasp. And it is difficult to compare features. Therefore you just use incredible long time scrolling Google zeroing in on something that might be used,” says the CEO, who actually sees himself to be a kind of dual-user of swipx.com.

FakturaIT sees namely also a good opportunity to market its own services via the portal. Yet it is not quite clear what keywords to get its products to pop up on Google. But it is in any case something about invoices.

As the name implies, FakturaIT namely specialized in handling electronic invoices include media houses – but also such diverse companies as LeasePlan, Velux, Infomedia and Taxi Nord.

“Electronic invoices sent around between companies of different carriers and in different formats. And here FakturaIT ensures that a company can simply submit his invoices. FakturaIT then routes through the invoices along the path and the receiving customer or supplier wants it” says Lars Bo Koch, who hopes that the new portal will get wings and he really only sees one risk to the new portal:

“if there are no software (supplier) on the platform there will be no buyers of software. And there are no suppliers before there are some customers. But there are already now many suppliers on the portal, and they are not charged for anything other than value-added services. And this should also help make it easier to get new suppliers on the platform. And for those inside looking for software, it must also count on the plus side, that the owner of the portal does not interfere in the relationship between a software supplier and its customer.

“It is trustworthy, he is not involved in the sale. There is no kick-back to swipx when something is sold or brokered,” says Lars Bo Koch.