Einar Hafberg
Data, AI & product — thirty years of delivery.
Head of Data Integrations at Gjensidige · Founder of Markviss & Smalausnir · Oslo, Norway, with Icelandic roots.
Norse navigators crossed the Atlantic without compass or map, guided by the sólarsteinn — the sunstone that found the sun through cloud and fog. They didn’t cross the ocean in one leap; they crossed it in small solutions, each correction building on the last.
Thirty years of building software the same way.
Small solutions. Big crossings.
About
Thirty years of delivery.
Founder, enterprise consultant, data leader — and a competitive sailor.
Einar Hafberg has spent three decades building and delivering software — as a founder, an enterprise consultant, and a data leader. He is currently Head of Data Integrations at Gjensidige, one of the Nordics’ largest insurers, where he leads the transformation of a last-century data warehouse into a modern, AI-ready data platform.
Before that: founder and CEO of HSC / Cenium, which built a hotel property-management system sold through 30+ partners in 20 countries and earned Microsoft’s Most Successful MBS Partner award in 2005; BI group manager at HugurAx; and managing consultant at Capgemini, delivering Solvency II, Basel II and data-privacy compliance programmes for Nordic banks, insurers and government.
Today his focus sits at the frontier of data and AI — what he calls Implication Intelligence: the layer above BI and AI where outputs become decisions. He writes and speaks on the theme, and builds an active product portfolio through his companies Markviss and Smalausnir.
A certified architect and project manager, fluent in English and the Scandinavian languages. Outside the office he is a competitive sailor — a discipline demanding the same qualities as good software delivery: preparation, situational awareness, and knowing when to push.
Years in the industry
Companies founded or led
Countries reached with Cenium
Languages: EN · IS · NO · SV · DK
Career
The journey so far.
Leading data integration and BI development at one of the Nordics’ largest insurers. Driving the migration of a legacy data warehouse to a modern, AI-ready platform — a journey presented at the Data 2030 Summit 2025.
A goal-management SaaS platform helping teams and organisations align, plan and follow up on goals — turning strategy and execution into the same language.
Information Strategy division, responsible for the Performance Management subject area. Solvency II implementation for one of Norway’s biggest insurers, personal-data-law compliance for an international bank, BI strategy for government directorates, and analysis for the oil industry.
Post-financial-crisis Iceland startup bringing open-source Business Intelligence to market as an affordable cloud SaaS — from fundraising and design through development, sales and implementation.
Led the Business Intelligence division delivering Performance Management solutions on IBM Cognos and Microsoft. Corporate Performance Management for insurers (Solvency II) and Business Process Management that made Iceland’s largest bank BASEL II compliant.
Built Cenium®, a multilingual hotel property-management and reservation system on Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Venture-funded, 100%+ annual revenue growth, a worldwide channel of 30+ partners in 20 countries, and a 15 MUSD rollout for Choice Hotels Scandinavia. Named Microsoft’s Most Successful MBS Partner in 2005.
The first company, founded in Iceland — management, operations and software consulting — and still the umbrella for everything built since. The start of thirty years of building.
Ventures
What I’m building.
An active portfolio — a SaaS platform for goal alignment, and a family of digital products built under the Smalausnir umbrella.
Markviss
A goal-setting and alignment platform that turns objectives into measurable outcomes. Born from a decade of watching strategy and execution speak different languages — Markviss makes alignment visible, measurable and actionable.
Smalausnir ehf.
The company behind the portfolio — software development, advisory, and publisher of consumer apps including ProductWho, Veldi and Omaku. Small solutions, big crossings.
HSC — Cenium
Hotel property management sold and deployed worldwide — the venture that proved an Icelandic startup could saturate its home market in two years and go global on Dynamics NAV.
Writing & Speaking
Thoughts & insights.
What happens after data is processed and AI has spoken? Naming the missing layer: Data → Information → Insight → Implication. Dashboards show you the weather — they don’t tell you whether to cancel the picnic.
Banks, insurers and telcos spent two decades treating every customer call as a cost to cut — and quietly turned themselves into something an AI can switch in seconds. Who survives as a toll road, and who becomes a faceless backend?
As AI saturates the data landscape, Chief Data Officers are rediscovering the value of human judgment, interpretation, and contextual reasoning in a world of automated outputs.
We’ve built an extraordinary capacity for AI to generate responses. But the harder question remains: are organisations actually structured to act on what they hear?
As AI absorbs the entry-level work that once trained the next generation, junior roles are quietly vanishing — and with them the career pipeline. Why it deserves the attention of business leaders and policymakers alike.
More writing and talks on LinkedIn ↗
Contact
Let’s talk.
Open to conversations about data platforms, AI strategy, goal alignment, and product building — and to select advisory engagements through Smalausnir. Reach out via LinkedIn or the form.