Jeroen van der Heijden

JEROEN VAN DER HEIJDEN

Chief Technology Officer
Exact
Enterprise SaaS ERP Software
2025 TOP 30 EMEA CTOs 2025

Career History

Exact is a Dutch software company offering accounting, ERP and business software to over 500,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in sectors such as accountancy, distribution, professional services and manufacturing. Backed by KKR as majority owner and Silver Lake as a minority investor since 2021, the company has continued to expand its cloud-first SaaS product suite. Jeroen van der Heijden has served as Chief Technology Officer since August 2018 and is part of Exact’s Executive Committee.

In his role he leads the innovation roadmap, engineering organisation, and the transformation of Exact’s products toward cloud-first, SaaS-friendly architectures. Van der Heijden has overseen continued enhancements to Exact Online, including usability improvements aimed at reducing time to value for customers, tighter integration between modules like CRM and financials, and an increased focus on performance and data security. He has also driven internal process modernisation to streamline feature delivery, such as adoption of agile across teams and continuous deployment pipelines.

Prior to being CTO, he held technical leadership roles at Raet and Cegeka-DSA and earlier worked at Exact from 1991 to 2005. He holds two Master’s degrees in literature: one from Radboud University Nijmegen and the other from the University of Utrecht.

About Exact

Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Delft, Netherlands, Exact publishes business software for SMEs, including products such as Exact Online, Exact Globe, Exact Synergy and Exact Financials. Although its roots are in on-premises accounting and ERP, Exact has been increasingly shifting investment toward cloud and hybrid solutions, enabling customers to choose deployment mode depending on regulatory, security or integration needs.

Highly acquisitive, Exact has broadened its capabilities through targeted purchases such as Gripp (professional-services automation), Officient (HR cloud software) and Weclapp (cloud ERP/CRM). Exact supports more than 500,000 customers across Europe, with offices in the Netherlands and beyond. Roughly two-thirds of its customers are based in the Netherlands and about 11% in the United States.

← Go back to the Top 30 CTOs in EMEA