Olav Lange Hansen developed and “published” his first software solution on a Commodore 64 in 1984/85. He was 14 years old at the time. It was a “Learning Quiz” solution, that was implemented on his boarding school’s 8 student Commodore 64’s. (Reference, Teacher at Aagaard Ungdomsskole, John Panduro)
Olav started his business career during education. He worked for G&H Products (busines unit of Alfa Laval) in Wisconsin, USA in 1995. During the ½ year internship as marketing coordinator he developed and automated their custom built DOS based DataEase DMS (Direct Marketing System) and the business unit grew sales by 40%. (reference: Ole Lind Terkelsen who was Marketing Director)
One year previously he had a 3 months internship with 2020 Computers Ltd in London doing a 360 degree organization business operations analysis, which led to implementing a CRM system (CRM=Customer Relationsship Management). After returning from the US and finishing his studies in International Economy and Marketing he accepted a job offer at 2020 Computers Ltd in London as marketing coordinater. He continued his work with digital streamlining and automation of information and workflows, introducing a standard SuperOffice CRM system (a leading CRM system in Europe at the time), extended with integration and workflow automation modules Olav developed. After three months Olav advanced to Marketing Manager. However, Olav was not a “city person”, and it was much due to traffic congestions and city noise, that Olav spent less than two years with 2020 Computers Ltd. During this time, however, the company had grown from 22 employees to 40 employees. (reference: Melvyn Geddes who was CEO)
After London, Olav returned to Denmark, where he founded Nordic IT & Marketing A/S, later Nordic CRM A/S and Kontineo A/S. In this company Olav basically caried on the work he had been doing in the US and London. Now, however, as a software, marketing, sales and business consultancy company for many both small and large companies. Moreover, he also implemented custom designed alert, automation and data integration solutions for The Danish Ministry of Finance and other public sector customers. Later on he established a mother company, Green Economy Initiatives A/S and two subsidiaries: CRFO ApS and Vækstpartner ApS. In 2014 he sold Vækstpartner ApS with five employees to ProHolding A/S (reference: Gert Davidsen, majority owner), who also bought existing customer base and exclusive distribution rights of the then Kontineo flagship product, C-Route for SuperOffice for the Danish market.
Olav was always an innovator, studying and self taught programmer and developing his software solutions for 360 degree management and automation of his own companies, he not only used the latest technologies and methodologies. He also invented new technologies and a form of early Artificial Intelligence.
Bosch Rexroth Denmark A/S was one of the first corporations implementing a solution launched in 2006 together with launch of the generic Business Intelligence and automation platform, Kontineo 2006. The solution was launched under the name “Ms. Kontineo”, because it fully and intelligently automated a substantial part of a Sales Secretary’s job. Very short: Every afternoon it scanned 40 sales people’s calendar for day after next day’s customer meetings. For each registered meeting, it searched and collated a 5-15 pages PDF report with statistics and key information about the individual customer from all systems (SuperOffice CRM, A/S 400 ERP and custom built solutions customer complaint system). These, often hundreds of PDF reports were 100% automatically generated and sent by email to the sales reps. The resultwas, that they had these reports available in their email inbox in the morning on the day before their meetings. In the report, was also the first simple zipcode based intelligent visit planning (GIS system), but just listing other customers and potential customers nearby the scheduled meetings. This helped sales people to fill their calendars with customer meetings, with minimum kilometers spent on driving. A customer priority intelligence was also in the reports, listing customer by ABC after importance and colored by last visit time, thus intelligently bringing the attention to not neglect important customers.
On of the key parameters that had increased sales efficiency and results the most in both Alfa Laval in the Us and in 2020 Computers Ltd in London, was focus on reduction of travel and road kilometers. Less driving equals less costs, less time and more meeting. More meetings equals higher results. So already when Google released it’s Google Maps API V1 in 2005, Olav had started planning and programming for a visit planning solution with much higher intelligence and efficiency.
However, it should take a few years before Google Maps provided the required services to complete a sufficiently effective solution, but when Google API V3 was released in 2009, it was all there and enabled the next generation of Kontineo software: C-Route was born.
Kontineo A/S released the first version of C-Route in 2010. This was a true GIS solution,fully automating geocoding and visit planning. The enterprise package had a telebooking module and the first enterprise customer was Falck Alarm Denmark A/S, part of the global Falck Group. They had 10+ telemarketing meeting bookers using C-Route to plan customer meetings for their field sales reps. When a sales rep got a customers address, the solution intelligently scanned sales reps’ calendars and came up with possibly meeting times intelligently sorted, so the top suggestion was always the best. The algoritm sorted by least kilometer driving combined with also filling calendars with least possible wasted time – and considering employee welfare and security by ensuring they would not have to leave before working time – and that they would be back home, not being stressed to speed to pick up children from kindergarten or school.
Over the following years the C-Route software helped many large and small customers in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and in the US with increased productivity and sales increases, as well as it reduced driving time, costs and CO2 emissions substantially.
The video is a 2012 commercial video introduction to the C-Route software.
Introduction to C-Route. Click here to see more videos from Kontineo A/S.
The C-Route product generated a steady and growing revenue, which for a time allowed Olav to invest in innovation, market expansion and to focus on his passion projects, a C-Route for Outlook system, that could work stand-alone or integrated with any CRM or ERP system – and GreenDriveThinking and an Intelligent Realtime Ridesharing solution. In 2014 C-Route for Outlook was nominated to the IT Award of the year. It’s intelligent route planning engine was also the fundament for intelligent ridesharing software for workplaces and organizations. The video is a commercial introduction to C-Route for Outlook.
C-Route Frontier for Outlook – presentation (UK). Click here to see more videos from Kontineo A/S.
Olav’s innovation and business ideas and projects always had focus on increasing profit, but at the same time make a positive sustainable impact. GreenDriveThinking was initially formed as a non-profit project in 2010. early 2015 it was changed into a for-profit company with the main objective of reducing traffic and reducing CO2. However, weak funding and unforeseeable events caused first Kontineo’s bankruptcy in 2015, which again caused the bankruptcy of all of Olav’s companies. After two years of fighting in court, Olav’s family broke apart and crushed the fundament under Olav’s newly started “Familien bag GreenDriveThinking ApS”, Olav let go of everything and left Denmark to “start life from scratch”.
Since then he has worked for Aalborg university in an EU Intereg funded G-Patra (Green Passenger Transport in Rural Areas) and other small part-time jobs of various character while staying up to date with development and new technologies, until he again started serious software development in 2025, next to also being CEO of a small Danish outsourcing company.