The year 2020 has brought about many changes in the working and functioning of individuals and companies alike. The fact that this has caused a heavy burden on companies cannot be neglected and this problem needs to be dealt with without affecting the performance, efficiency and profitability to a company. These problems can be dealt without any additional changes or additions but they require a tedious amount of time, depleting the overall working hours of an employee and impacting the performance and output of a company.
As it is said in the world of business that time is money, thus one belonging to the business world needs to make sure that they have the best solutions to save every minute of precious work hours they can. In comes TimeXtender, a leading and world-class solution provider offering its best-in-class technology to companies and their business with its automated software platform, helping to make sure that its customers run their business more efficiently and smoothly without wasting quality work time. TimeXtender provides an automated way to build a modern data estate for analytics and AI at incredible speeds for automating data modelling, integration, extraction, cleansing, loading and documentation.
TimeXtender has revolutionized the working of a company’s business data with its software and has become one of the leading and most respected companies providing an automated way to build a modern data estate.
In conversation with Founder and CEO, Heine Krog Iversen. We learned from him about his company, TimeXtender’s service offering and much more.
1. Please tell us about the company and the reasons you feel led to its growth.
TimeXtender enables businesses to make quality business decisions faster and inspires those business decisions with data, mind and heart. We do this for one simple reason: because time matters.
TimeXtender technology is a single, integrated, metadata-driven, agile and automated software platform that easily merges data from a wide variety of data sources and uses agile data modelling to effortlessly build a modern data warehouse and semantic model.
By combining this agile platform with a user’s choice of visualization tools, users have the full power of business intelligence in a structured, governed and secured environment – all within a self-service analytics framework that helps meet compliance needs. With TimeXtender, users get actionable insights, simplify their compliance journey and make better decisions in less time.
TimeXtender was founded in 2006 and is privately owned, with employees and partners located around the world. TimeXtender serves its customers, including Fortune 500, large-sized enterprises and mid-sized companies, through a global network of partners.
It was a combination of factors that helped TimeXtender become one of the industry’s fastest-growing private technology companies. To be sure, organizations got tired of paying extensive fees for coding, consultants and technology that led to delays for getting their corporate data. The more organizations looked for a better way to get a handle on all their data, and the more they heard about what TimeXtender had to offer, the more customers we acquired. Since 2006, we have built a global partner network with close to 200 companies and more than 3,000 customers around the world.
2. Please tell us about TimeXtender’s technology solution and what differentiates it from the competition in the market.
TimeXtender is an integrated data management platform that enables building data lakes, warehouses and marts 10x faster by providing a no-code environment for automating data modelling, integration, extraction, cleansing, loading, and documentation.
We offer one of the most comprehensive technology offerings on the market for helping companies build cloud-scale analytics on Azure Synapse Analytics by providing an integrated data management platform that produces an intelligent, accelerated and documented modern data estate for analytics and artificial intelligence. Because TimeXtender remembers a company’s business logic, not only can it intelligently deploy the right code to the right platform, it orchestrates the entire process, learning from experience and improving load times with each successive execution.
TimeXtender also helps companies looking to build a modern data estate on Microsoft data platforms by accelerating and automating the construction and maintenance of data stores for analytics and AI. It connects to almost any data source, allowing organizations to catalogue, model, move, transform and document their analytics data. This enables them to move from a patchwork of tools to a complete data management platform and accelerate time to insight. TimeXtender also enables an organization to document their analytics data for compliance.
TimeXtender differs in many ways. While some companies focus on data warehouse automation, our focus is on a more complete data management solution for the corporate enterprise. We’re privately held and not part of a larger organization and this translates into speed, agility and market closeness. With close to 15 years in business and hundreds of partners located around the world, we’re able to maintain close contact with our customer base and provide support, training and assistance in person and online.
TimeXtender also helps companies looking to build a modern data estate on Microsoft data platforms by accelerating and automating the construction and maintenance of data stores for analytics and AI.
3. How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your solution?
TimeXtender has a flexible way of thinking to maintain its roots of being a fast-moving, innovative start-up and our culture is designed with modernization and innovation in mind. To stay current with changing times, our company is devoted to developing ongoing technology advancements to our technology solution for the Microsoft community. We have a constant eye on emerging trends to deliver future-proof solutions for our customers. TimeXtender leads the way in ongoing technology development to ensure that we maintain our market leadership as new advancements are made by the data community within Microsoft.
As an example of our steadfast commitment to being ready for changing times, when Microsoft announced Azure Synapse Analytics and SQL Server 2019, our technical staff made immediate development advancements to our technology to ensure that it was compatible with these Microsoft offerings once they were ready for general availability.
4. Please tell us about your professional experience and key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey.
Before forming TimeXtender, I co-founded another IT consultancy that provided business process optimization, workflow, ERP systems, and business intelligence services. At that time, while helping companies implement business intelligence capabilities on top of their existing ERP systems, I realized that manual coding was being done for all projects. Manual coding was very time consuming and expensive and I came to realize that there was a better way by leveraging the power of automation. This led us to start TimeXtender.
I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to meet people around the world and to be an ambassador for business users to be empowered by data to enable every person in every organization with instant access to relevant data, at any time from any location. This is so essential as it assists them to achieve greater business success by making strategic business decisions for their company. Data is one of the most valuable assets a company possesses, but only when appropriate stakeholders have access to it as needed and only if it’s truly accurate.
6. Please tell us about your work culture and your take on employee relations.
Our company is purpose-driven with an organizational structure based on organizational purpose circles (OPCs) which run alongside our long-standing corporate mindfulness program and our following of Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” program. Purpose-driven leadership has become the central theme for our company, as OPCs enable TimeXtender staff to be mostly self-managed, translating into an organization that has become more innovative, creative, and sustainable. This has also led to an environment that is adaptable and suitable for current times.
OPCs have propelled TimeXtender to improve processes by leveraging freedom, strengthening trust among employees and achieving greater success with a structured framework. Purpose circles inspire individuals to get more involved across different areas of interest. This modern-day organizational framework is helping the company advance to new levels of agility, productivity, sustainability, and innovation; inspiring employees towards greater personal and organizational growth. With OPCs, group synergy has come alive with extensive idea sharing, mentoring and learning. Blending individual purpose with an organizational purpose encourages each person to strive for a higher purpose in life and at work.
Team members have responded favourably to working in a culture that enables sharing of the responsibilities of technical leadership, management, planning, implementation and delivery assurance of final solutions. They cherish the opportunity to strive for a bigger purpose while working with colleagues to try and reach new heights, greater success, and ambitious goals and objectives.5
6. What are your views on competition?
Competition is coming from everywhere and at much greater speed. Or you can rephrase the term ‘competition’ to development in the market because that way you see it as though we are changing the world and growing the market together. This way competitive forces are easier to cope with.
More specifically, our market is in an interesting convergence from tools used by developers to integrated platforms and driven by no-code and automation. As we are at the forefront of this movement the key is to stay in front. Lots of new players are coming in, but so far most are focusing in on solving a single part of the 10+ areas that are covered by our Data Management Platform.
It is essential to move fast and to be driven by our innovation while having an eye on the competition is important, it’s key that this doesn’t side-track you. Competition helps bring out our best, but I will argue that being driven by our purpose is a 100x bigger motivating factor. I believe self-motivation and self-leadership are some of the most important skills you can have.
