From Babylon tot PerfectXL
The Starting Point
On 23 January 2013, Felienne Hermans received her PhD from Delft University of Technology with her professor Arie van Deursen on the topic Analyzing and Visualisation Spreadsheets. This thesis is the basis of PerfectXL’s software and working method.
Prototyping
A good idea is not yet a useful product. Not by a long shot. In September 2013, Matéo Mol became managing director of the tiny company. He had studied econometrics, but worked as a publisher at De Volkskrant, among other things, where he always asked himself the question: What does our client really want? So he started at PerfectXL by mapping what spreadsheet builders really need to create reliable models.
Early Adopters
Development needs fans. A crowdfunding in 2014 raised as many as 175 big fans plus the capital needed to fund development. YesDelft! supporting with know-how and space. International asset manager Robeco was our first fan as a customer. And still the most fanatical PerfectXL users work at Robeco.
Version 1.0
In the first phase of development, PerfectXL was still a single tool. Only later were the components for visualisation, risk finding and comparison developed separately to serve the user even better. In 2015, first version of PerfectXL was ready for clients
Step by step developing
- December 2015: PerfectXL Server 1.0
- August 2017: PerfectXL Server 2.0
- November 2019: PerfectXL Compare 1.0
- October 2020: PerfectXL Explore 1.0
- October 2021: PerfectXL Highlighter 1.0
- April 2023: PerfectXL Risk Finder 1.0
Awardwinning
PerfectXL Compare was the winner of the “Audit Extraordinaire” category at the 2020 Financial Modelling Innovation awards.
“This tool is fast and has a clear summary of differences, and is useful for auditing, developing, and validating spreadsheets.”
“The category winner, PerfectXL Compare, deploys an intuitive user interface to solve a problem wanting in comparison of versions of the same model.”
And growing fans
Is your organization next?
Don’t get stuck with fragile Excel models full of risks and ambiguities. Join the club. Contact us today for a short demo. Without obligation, of course.