Poul Kjaer (pictured), who has led Pipol A/S since 2001, is stepping down from his role as CEO on March 31st, with Jesper Vang succeeding him in the job as of April 1, 2021. Since founding Pipol, previously named Partner Power International, Kjaer has led the global partner organisation, which specialises in Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions and services, to record financial growth, increasing earnings by 45 per cent in the most recent financial year. Pipol is now well positioned in the ERP market, it says, with Kjaer helping the company deliver 500 international Dynamics implementations in more than 80 countries.
After April 1, Kjaer will continue to be part of the board of directors at the company but will also spend time on start-up companies, the company said.
“I have a great passion for entrepreneurs and look forward to spending time with committed and creative young entrepreneurs. And then I look forward to spending lots of time with my family and friends as well as doing boat trips around the world. Life must be lived, and for a curious person like me, there are so many facets of life that I still have to explore,” Kjaer says.
The idea behind Pipol started during Kjaer five years as a business development manager at Navision Software. There, he recognised a gap in the market, where Navision and their resellers focused exclusively on local customers and had no delivery model that supported international customers’ ERP requirements, he said.
“We thoroughly mapped the customers’ needs, wrote down a requirement specification and decided on what our partners should deliver, and how we should contribute. Both the partners and Pipol have relevant entrances to the market and therefore a shared responsibility to find customers and leads. The partners are good at implementation and local support and are subcontractors to us, while we as the main contractor take care of international sales, development of the partner organisation, contract management, and project management. This is how it has worked from day one, and it is still a very value-creating and well-functioning model. Customers get one overall solution, one global team, one global contract, one delivery model and one contact to place the responsibility,” says Kjaer.
His withdrawal from the role comes as Pipol was acquired by BE-terna, one of Europe’s integrators of business solutions in October last year.
