IT Briefcase Exclusive Interview: How to Efficiently Manage Your Corporate Data

Managing all of your organizational data is a hot topic these days in the corporate world. Without proper data management, you can’t possibly make the best decisions for your company, put forth a logical AI framework, or migrate all your data to the cloud. To explore this topic, we interviewed Heine Krog Iversen, CEO of TimeXtender.

1. Before we begin, tell us a little bit about TimeXtender.

TimeXtender offers organizations and businesses, from mid-sized to Fortune 500, a modern data estate. With our technology, organizations can easily build, deploy and manage their analytics data across the enterprise. TimeXtender has been in business since 2006. We have more than 3,000 customers across 95 countries and six continents. We service our customers through our global network of 175 partner organizations.

2. Don’t most companies already manage their corporate data?

Well, sure some do, as evidenced by our 3,000 customers, but the problem exists in that too many businesses think that they are managing all of their data to make it available for analytics, but frankly – they are not. While other companies might feel as though they are simply overwhelmed by the amount of data that they have flowing into their company and look at all this valuable information as a problem. Quite the contrary, a growing number of businesses that are properly managing their data and have become data-driven are thriving, as well-used data can be a competitive differentiator.

3. Let’s dig a bit deeper on this. What do you mean that many companies view all their data as a problem?

Some studies show that the amount of universal data that is produced nearly doubles every two years. For businesses, they produce all kinds of new data on a daily basis from internal documents, their website, social data, external data and much more.

When you have a lot of data flowing into an organization you have a lot of data sources. And, when you couple that with all the various departments, employees, suppliers, customers and other stakeholders, it becomes quite challenging to manage all this data and make it available for analysis unless you have one universal, data management platform. With TimeXtender’s modern data estate, an organization can connect all of their data sources into one platform, store all of their data into a single, central location, and break down discrete data silos.

Ultimately, having a complete, modern data estate leads to what we call “one version of the truth.” Simply put, this means that all people within an organization are looking at one version of information (and the most up-to-date information) to help them make better decisions, predictions, and reports.

4. Okay that does make sense. How else can a company benefit from a modern data estate?

This is a good question and one that I could elaborate on in length but let me try to be concise.

First, historically, to build out a data management platform using a data warehouse would require a team of consultants and extensive manual coding. Both of these were very expensive and the latter was very time consuming. With our technology, most of the data warehouse process is fully automated and provides a low-code/no-code solution so that organizations can benefit from a modern data management estate that is highly cost and performance efficient that is ready for AI and analytics. We also help package all analytics data so that is can seamlessly migrate to the cloud. Also, with our proprietary automation technology, governance, compliance and regulatory requirements are automatically supported to ease this task.

Second, traditionally, business users who wanted access to data to help them make decisions related to their relevant workflow would have to put in a job request with IT. But with our modern data management estate, business users are granted instant and secure access that can be achieved by establishing different layers of permission.

The added benefit to all this is that IT is freed up from performing repetitive, manual tasks and servicing continuous job tickets, both of which require significant resources. In the end, IT can focus more on game-changing initiatives that require strategic thinking and that can have a significant impact on the corporation.

5. I can certainly see the value in having a modern data estate. Is there anything else about TimeXtender that you would like our readers to know about?

Yes, I would like to emphasize that the essence of TimeXtender is being a technology innovator. While our technology that services these 3,000+ customer is built on delivering speed, quality, and cost efficiency for businesses, it would be hard to have a thriving business without a supporting corporate culture – and we do. Our culture is quite innovative as well as we work in creative and semi, self-autonomous organizational purpose circles. We practice corporate mindfulness and follow and adhere to the ideals laid out in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. Our global partners support our worldwide customer base, and we have joint, corporate headquarters, one in Europe and one in the United States.

It’s been a very exciting ride over the last 14 years but we’re far from done. There are way too many organizations and businesses around the world that can benefit greatly from having a modern data estate and we hope to help them achieve success. Data is a treasured asset for businesses and even more so when it’s managed properly.

Heine Krog Iversen is the founder and CEO of TimeXtender. Since founding the company in 2006, Heine has been the chief executive responsible for transforming TimeXtender from a small startup to one of the fastest growing software companies in the world. Heine is driven by one core purpose: to empower every person in every organization on the planet with instant access to data, for any use case they might have, thus enabling them to achieve more and make quality decisions with data, mind and heart.