He did his first ACCPAC installation at a Price Waterhouse client in 1987 and he has been working closely with the product since then.

In 1988, together with a couple of friends who qualified as Chartered Accountants at the same time as Etienne, he started his first computer supply and consulting company, Fincompt (Pty) Limited. Fincompt focused it’s business to the supply of fully integrated financial solutions for mid-sized and para-statal organizations. This included hardware, networking and ACCPAC Software solutions.

Fincompt grew to 5 branches, employing more than 75 people within 5 years during which time Etienne created a branch within the company which specialized in developing custom solutions for clients running ACCPAC.

In 1993 Etienne purchased the Development division from Fincompt and rolled it’s operations into a new company, EcceSignum Pty Ltd. – Latin for “Look at the proof". EcceSignum then released Inventory Receipts, the widely adopted purchasing module for ACCPAC Plus. 

Inventory Receipts became one of the best selling third party modules for ACCPAC and users included many larger and prominent companies, including De Beers Diamonds, Coca Cola, Afrox and many others, including ACCPAC International.

Etienne also developed Resource Reservations, a hospitality reservation system which was implemented by the Kwa-Zulu, South African Wildlife Conservation Board for their 65 resorts.

In 1998 Etienne merged the business operations of Ecce Signum with UniDevCo and settled in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. Many of the products developed by Ecce Signum were further developed by UniDevCo and became an integral part of many successful installations of ACCPAC ERP and UniDevCo released UniResMan, a Windows version of Resource Reservations.

Etienne sold his share in UniDevCo at the end of 2004 and started North49 Software, which, after it’s merger with Arylin Consulting, became North49 Business Solutions.