The Foundation: 2025's Remarkable Achievements
Let me share what makes me proud of where we stand today. Every morning, 145,000 professionals wake up and use Ultimo to manage their critical operations. That's not just a user count, it's 145,000 asset heroes keeping airports running, theme parks safe, manufacturing plants productive, and hospitals operational.
These teams manage 22 million assets through our platform. From the baggage handling systems at London Gatwick serving 45 million annual passengers to the production facilities at Dr. Schär producing life-changing nutritional ingredients for people with renal disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Our software is the invisible force keeping critical infrastructure running smoothly.
Our 95 percent customer retention rate tells the real story. When customers stay, it's because they're getting genuine value. Gatwick achieved 25 percent efficiency gains for their maintenance planners. Dr. Schär reduced downtime by 30 percent by shifting from reactive to preventative maintenance. Petrofer cut inspection time by over 60 percent. These aren't vanity metrics; they're transformations that impact millions of lives.
And in August, we acquired FSI, the 800-pound gorilla in US healthcare asset management. This wasn't just about growth; it was about recognizing excellence and investing in category leadership where regulatory moats and deep domain expertise create genuine barriers to entry.
The Inflection Point: Why Now Matters
Here's what keeps me up at night in the best possible way: we're at a genuine inflection point in our industry.
A year ago, most of our clients viewed artificial intelligence (AI) as hype. Today, nearly 70 percent of organizations in our recent Maintenance Trend Report expect to derive meaningful benefit from contextual intelligence - AI-augmented systems that provide intelligence at the point of action, right when technicians and planners need it most.
But there's a catch. To benefit from AI, organizations need digitization. They need clean data, structured workflows, and systems that can fuel intelligent automation. This creates a powerful feedback loop: digitization enables AI, and AI justifies further digitization investment.
The urgency is real. Across nearly every client we serve, the most experienced technicians - those past the age of 50 with decades of irreplaceable expertise – are approaching retirement. The knowledge gap this creates isn't just a human resources (HR) problem; it's an existential risk to operational reliability.
The Pivot: From System of Record to System of Action
Five and a half months ago, we made a decision that redefined Ultimo's future. We took half of our development resources - a massive commitment for a company that just doubled in size - and pivoted them toward a completely new direction.
We're no longer content being another SaaS-based system of record. We're building two distinct product categories:
First, our core platform is becoming a true system of action. We're moving from reactive dashboards and reports to proactive intelligence that surfaces insights and recommends actions automatically. This isn't about replacing human expertise, it's about augmenting it, amplifying it, and ensuring it's deployed where it matters most.
Second, we're creating an entirely new product: digital labor for maintenance operations. These are agentic, autonomous systems - digital coworkers that work 24/7/365 alongside human teams.
Our health, safety & environment (HSE) Manager is a prime example of digital labor that is already deployed with customers. It continuously monitors work orders, identifies potential safety incidents that might have gone unrecorded - like that warehouse door dented by a forklift - and proactively files safety reports for human review. It's not making decisions alone; it's ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
Coming in the next few months: our digital Planner and Scheduler, Reliability Engineer, and Parts & Stock Optimizer. Each one a specialized digital colleague designed to handle repetitive tasks, capture institutional knowledge, and elevate the capabilities of entire teams.
The Vision: Humans and Agents, Working in Harmony
Our vision is crystal clear: to be the category leader in AI-augmented enterprise asset management.
Notice what we're not saying. We're not trying to be the category leader in traditional EAM systems - we'll leave that battle to legacy players. We're changing the game entirely.
We want to be the number one provider of EAM systems where humans and agents collaborate seamlessly. Not to replace the skilled professionals our clients depend on, but to empower them. To capture the diagnostic expertise of that 55-year-old master technician and transfer it to the cohorts behind them. To automate the administrative burden that keeps experts from focusing on complex problems. To ensure that when skills walk out the door at retirement, knowledge stays behind.
This is about elevating the asset heroes - the maintenance technicians, reliability engineers, planners, and HSE managers who keep the world running. They're invisible when things work and blamed when things break. We're giving them the tools to be consistently excellent, consistently visible, and consistently valued.
Beyond Ultimo: Building a Platform Portfolio
Our ambitions extend beyond the Ultimo brand. FSI is just the beginning. We're actively identifying best-in-category vendors in specific verticals - companies that dominate their niches through regulatory expertise, domain knowledge, or market position - and bringing them into the Ultimo Group.
But here's the key: we're not forcing platform consolidation. Each acquired company will have a platform that adds value in our space. What we're building instead are shared foundational services - particularly in high-R&D-cost areas like digital labor - that benefit the entire portfolio.
Our digital labor products have been built on the Ultimo platform, but soon they'll extend to other EAM systems in our portfolio, and eventually, to other EAM systems on the market. We're defining a category that transcends any single platform.
The Partnership Imperative
None of this happens in isolation. The partners in our ecosystem bring complementary solutions, domain expertise, cultural knowledge, and reach into territories where we lack presence. Whether you're implementing our technology, integrating specialized capabilities, or reselling in regions we can't effectively serve alone, you're essential to this vision.
When you walk into a client meeting with an Ultimo Group product, I want you to know the deck is stacked in your favor. We're investing in being best-in-class so you can win.
Looking Forward
In 2026 and beyond, expect to see:
Rapid expansion of our digital labor portfolio, with new agents and expanding capabilities for existing ones
Continued strategic acquisitions that bring category-leading solutions into the Ultimo Group
Deeper AI integration that makes contextual intelligence the default, not the exception
Platform interoperability that lets digital labor orchestrate across multiple EAM systems
Relentless focus on the micro-verticals where we already dominate, rather than diluting our expertise.
We've doubled once since the AI revolution has hit the market. There's no reason we can't double again and again.
My message to you is clear: Ultimo is ready. More than that, we're excited.
Excited about the technology we're building. Excited about the problems we're solving. Excited about the asset heroes we're empowering. And excited about building this future together with partners who share our ambition to transform an industry that's been invisible for far too long.
The operations and maintenance change makers keep factories, food supplies, airports, hospitals, and energy facilities running and deserve better tools. In 2026 and beyond, we're going to give them exactly that.
