The European Business Review March/April 2021

Leading a business in the post-pandemic world means shifting not only your management methods, but your mindset about what it means to be a collective business team. Coming to the first-year anniversary since the entire world simultaneously shut down to the crippling virus, we are now only beginning to see slow movements towards reparations the pandemic left in its wake. Along with new normal societal guidelines and radical changes in the workforce, this re-opening of the global market is sure to come with its own set of learning curves. In light of these changes, The European Business Review has spoken with notable figures from Cedar Rose, Form3, MobiDev, Academy of Executive Coaching, and TimeXtender who excel tremendously in navigating through the steep slope of their respective industries and have generously shared some…

Q There is an old saying that “there is nothing new under the sun”. Do you think that business managers are facing something fundamentally new in the post-COVID world, or can they tackle it using tried and tested approaches? A The pandemic shows that there are challenges out there that we have not thought about when we have been putting together long-term strategies. There has been a human cost, a financial cost, and a cost to how we live our lives and do business. We have seen in real terms just how vulnerable we are as humans to the disease and just how compromised our organisations can be structurally and financially. It has also highlighted how we have become ethically fragile, with more value placed on economic success rather than on…

Gina Lodge has over 20 years experience in management roles while employed by Shell International Chemical Co. Ltd and subsequently in IT and Education. During her career she gained significant experience in project and change management. Gina was directly involved in implementing Quality Management standards, Business Process Re-engineering projects, and IT applications. Gina managed a department of 25 handling the supply chain logistics for Shell Chemicals International Trading Co. Ltd, where she gained a detailed knowledge of International import and export procedures. The role included liaison and troubleshooting with global service companies. Gina joined the AoEC in 2008, became Marketing Director and Board member in 2010 and in 2015 was appointed CEO. She is an accredited Executive Coach and a graduate of the AoEC. Gina also sits on Editorial Board…

Q What key qualities set Cedar Rose apart and will help guide the company through this uncertain future? A I’m proud to say that Cedar Rose is a proactive, dynamic, innovative and agile business. For the past 20 years, my team has gathered and transformed data while building quality, reliable credit and compliance solutions for our customers. We love being provocative market disruptors by merging hard-to-reach data with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create new markets and services. We will keep investing in top-end translation technology and data standardisation to give us a unique multilingual, multifunctional database covering the Middle East, Africa and Asia. All this means we offer accurate global coverage for automated credit and compliance assessments. This combination of innovation, future thinking and agility along with years of experience…

In a post-COVID world, it is hard to say which work models are still conventional and part of the status quo. Such lines have been blurred for traditional 9 to 5's and open office floor plans. Leading one of the monumental changes to make work from home all the more easier and convenient is TimeXtender's CEO Heine Krog Iversen. Heine shares with you how TimeXtender managed time efficiently during the pandemic with a remote workforce and "work from anywhere" business model. Q By far the dominant theme in the business world, as in the world as a whole, in 2020 was, of course, the coronavirus pandemic. What were the immediate issues that confronted your company at the outset of the crisis? A We had a very short reaction time to make changes.…

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, growing TimeXtender to 3,300 customers across 95 countries. Heine is driven by one core purpose: to empower every person in every organization with instant access to data, for any use case they might have, thus enabling them to achieve more by making superior business decisions with data, mind and heart. He oversees strategic planning, global outreach, positioning and differentiation, and organizational growth. Heine has worked tirelessly to manage TimeXtender’s growth and to build the management systems needed to support a rapidly growing organization with new regional offices, staff, customers, sales channels, alliances and partnerships. Heine has also played an instrumental role as…