LOCATION: Oslo, Norway
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: Norwegian, Danish, English, German, Swedish
CURRENT ROLES:
PREVIOUS LEADERSHIP ROLES:
CEO, Visma Founder
CEO, Cinet AS
BOARDWAVE ROLE: Patron
Øystein Moan is chairman of Visma, one of the five largest software companies in Europe where he was CEO for more than two decades. Despite his successes, Moan didn’t dream of becoming a software leader. In fact, he nearly didn’t become one. Moan grew up in a factory town in Norway, which was all about heavy industry, and Moan felt that his path to university and beyond was all mapped out.
“I wanted to study chemistry, be a metallurgist and go into the chemical industry. But I did something wrong on the university application, so I ended up in mathematics and computer science.” He admits that it was “a fortuitous mistake” – it was 1979 and
the start of the computer revolution. “At the time, I didn’t know anything about computing but, after a week, I decided that this was the right thing for me,” he says. When Moan graduated with his master’s, he established his own company, Cinet AS, which introduced the area’s networks and servers to the Nordic markets.
Moan’s line of business meant that he had to source products from Silicon Valley, where he travelled regularly. “It was a cool place, dynamic and prosperous, and I wanted to move there,” he says. While he never relocated, he had plenty of fun in the valley. “There were some nightclubs with punk rock bands. It was quite crazy and vibrant,” he says, laughing.
Journey to the top
Following the success of his own company, Moan took over as the CEO of Visma in 1997 – initially appointed to turn the flagging company around.
“We sold off everything but the core ERP business in 2000. At the end of the year, we were just 100 people and about €10 million in revenue. We sold the maritime business and the consulting business in March 2000 at very high prices, as it was the peak of the dot-com bubble.” A year later, Moan began buying up competitors “as the stock markets for IT companies collapsed”.
As the company progressed, Moan had an idea to createa pan-European cloud software business. But, he explains, entering a new market organically would take time and require a thorough understanding of a country’s local business culture and regulatory requirements. “We had to recognise that cultures are different, but so are the products whenit comes to accounting, tax and payroll – especially in the SME sector,” he says. But Moan had a master plan: “Itis much easier to buy successful companies in the new countries,” he says. “We let those companies continueas legal entities, often in their own name and with theirown products.”
Secrets to success
Learning what is working – and what isn’t – is something that Moan applies to the business and the products it sells. “With cloud computing, you can observe what features your customers are actually using in real time. If you have features that no one is using, remove them,” he says.
Moan explains that he is a fan of William Deming, an American business theorist and economist who set out 14 points of what he calls “total quality management”. One of his mantras is about always equipping yourself with the facts. “And that has been quite important to me: always get the facts you can and act upon them. Do not act on beliefs or hearsay or biases but always on the facts.”
The key pillars for a successful business,as Moan sees it, are “good infrastructureand proper accounting – so you knowwhere you make money and where youlose money,” he says. “More companies are going bankrupt because of bad operations and bad systems, rather than a lack of ideas.”
But having a good understanding of the industry, and having all the pertinent facts to hand, is not enough unless it can be combined with an ability to make decisions. “I’ve seen very well-educated people with a lot of competence, and also a lot of facts available to them, but they still cannot bring themselves to make decisions. If you can’t make decisions, you shouldn’t be a leader.”
A moment of reflection
But what has being a CEO for 30 years taught him about himself? “I like to build and develop things – and I like to make decisions.If you are able to make decisions, if you have ideas, it is a great thing to be a CEO, particularly in operating profitable companies because it can also be financially rewarding.” But there are downsides too. “It’s an all-consuming job – 24 hours a day. Everything has to stop with you. And that can make you a little special, and not always too social and not always easy to live with,” he says.
Moan stepped down as CEO in 2020. But it does not mean he has stepped away. Visma is, he says, “still expanding and growing”. “Of course being the chair is far less of a job than being a CEO but it still keeps me quite busy.” He is also an advisor to Hg and he’s been getting more involved in Boardwave – taking part in panels, attending conferences and offering advice. He has more time to enjoy life too. He is a keen skier too. “I try to spend 70 to 80 days on skis a year, which is pretty normal for Norwegians,” he says. He’s even sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Cape Town, with a crew of 10. “It was hard. On watch from 1am to 4am, in the pitch black.” How did he find being part of the crew, when he is more used to being the one giving the orders? “I don’t mind taking orders in domains where I am not an expert,” he says with a smile.
What are your tips for a successful business?
1. Keep it simple and get your fundamentals right. 2. Create products that make customers happy. 3. Make decisions with speed and conviction.
If you hadn’t become a CEO, what career would you have pursued?I would probably have become a metallurgistor chemist. And you can never know what kind
of career that would have led to but there were certainly fewer opportunities than in the software and computing field.
Can you tell us something surprisingabout yourself?I’ve been a fan of Leeds United football club since 1969. I grew up in Norway with only one TV channel to watch, and it showed British football matches every Saturday. They were the best team in the early 1970s but there have been ups and downs since.
Is there a piece of tech, other than your phone, that you could not live without?I live in the Google world: Google apps, Gmail, sitting around with a Chromebook. That’s where I spend most of my digital life. Everything is cloud- based now and I like that space very much
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