Looking Back and Racing forward: Key Talking Points for 2021
by CRO of Data Migration International: Thomas Eberle
What has the past year taught us and what are the challenges going forward? How can Data Migration International help companies survive, and thrive, in the current crisis? And what’s so different and disruptive about the Data Migration International approach? Tobias Eberle, Chief Revenue Officer of Data Migration International, discusses all of this and more in our interview.
1. Today we’d like to take a look back at 2020 and also hear how 2021 is shaping up for Data Migration International. 2020 has been quite a year on many levels. How was it for Data Migration International? What was driving the business?
Tobias Eberle: The pandemic presents our society, and business with enormous challenges. Companies have to save costs and master digital transformation, in particular by implementing SAP S/4HANA. And they also have to future-proof their business through activities such as takeovers or spin-offs. These were priorities before the pandemic, but the crisis has really pushed them to the fore. We can support companies in all of these scenarios with our information management platform. Numerous companies are already benefiting from our support, even if some projects have been delayed due to the crisis and lockdown. Overall, we can look back on the past year with satisfaction.
2. Looking ahead to 2021, what’s your vision for the business going forward?
Tobias Eberle: Our approach of separating information lifecycle management from the lifecycle of applications and systems has proven its worth, especially during the pandemic. Customers can save massively on costs and implement new software versions more quickly and cost-efficiently. They can also manage mergers, acquisitions and the sale of subsidiaries and business areas much faster and with less effort. IT becomes as agile as the business demands. Our goal for 2021 and beyond is to bring the benefits of our platform to an even wider audience and demonstrate its application across many further business scenarios. In this way, we aim to win new customers and market share.
3. Many of the challenges businesses faced in 2020 are still ongoing. What are the biggest pain points for your customers in 2021? And how is Data Migration International able to help with these?
Tobias Eberle: The trends that we saw in 2020 will persist throughout this year and, in some areas, become even stronger. Our approach and platform will help companies to completely shut down legacy applications and systems, saving an average of around 80 percent in operating costs. Companies that want to accelerate their transformation to SAP S/4HANA can reduce the associated project effort by 50 percent. For mergers and acquisitions, you can harmonize your IT easily, quickly and cost-efficiently, and completely decommission and dispose of any applications and systems that are no longer required. In the case of subsidiary sales or carve-outs, companies can separate relevant data and documents at the push of a button and hand them over to the buyer in a modern format. In every scenario, our platform ensures easy access to all legacy information. In addition, our approach of managing the entire life cycle of the information stored on our platform lays the foundation for 100 percent legal security.
4. This will be welcome news to many companies looking to restructure as a means to save costs. Perhaps you could tell us a little more about how Data Migration International’s approach differs from more traditional decommissioning methods?
Tobias Eberle: With traditional methods and approaches, these scenarios really do represent a major challenge. Bringing together heterogeneous IT landscapes in mergers or acquisitions, or conversely in the case of sales, then ensuring only the necessary information is extracted and handed over to the buyer – all of this used to take a lot of time and considerable financial and personnel investment. In contrast, our JiVS IMP platform extracts all of the information and data at the push of a button, transfers it to our platform in a legally compliant manner and organizes it according to business criteria. In this way, we massively simplify and accelerate the entire process. Our approach and our platform are disruptive, and save our customers a lot of time and money.
5. Compliance is also a hot topic for 2021. How can Data Migration International help ease this burden for businesses?
Tobias Eberle: The advantages of our disruptive approach are particularly evident when it comes to compliance, because we not only store information on JiVS IMP, but also manage its entire life cycle up to its final and legally secure deletion. And we can even do this at the level of individual data sets or documents. This is absolutely critical for corporate risk management and complies perfectly with the corresponding requirements of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which applies equally to all legacy information. Less than three years after it came into effect, this regulation has become the global standard and serves as a model for new data protection laws around the world, including the California Consumer Privacy Act. By offering consistent retention management in JiVS IMP, we help companies to ensure legal compliance, regardless of how far back in time their information goes. And on top of all of this, companies save a lot of money and increase their agility. Our approach and our platform are also disruptive when it comes to compliance.