Strong cultural fit accelerates the development of IFS Ultimo 

Most industries face the challenge of limiting the impact of disruptions, maintenance, replacements, or updates as much as possible and guaranteeing quality and continuity to the greatest possible extent. Asset management software helps achieve this. Global market leader IFS Ultimo’s software is co-managed and developed by NetRom.

Ultimo’s role in efficient asset management

In 1970, some 160,000 containers were handled in Rotterdam. Today, that has increased to hundreds of millions a year. Large-scale logistics keep the Dutch economy going. Hutchison Ports Europe Container Terminals is Europe’s largest container handling company in the port of Rotterdam. The company utilizes thousands of assets at multiple locations in Rotterdam. Until a few years ago, the company’s Technical Maintenance Department was using specific Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) to manage all its assets. However, this didn’t offer enough possibilities to use data analytics for process improvements. Hutchison Ports Europe Container Terminals’ Technical Maintenance Department now uses Ultimo as its Enterprise Asset Management solution.

EAM, as used in logistics, increases asset availability and lifespan, and contributes to greater safety and cost control. EAM software is primarily intended for larger groups of users within larger organizations. Companies using EAM often feature multiple branches that need to communicate effectively. Most users are based in sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, infrastructure, and energy.

Gartner Group currently regards IFS Ultimo as one of the most important developers and providers of EAM software. The international software company now serves some 2,500 customers worldwide. Ultimo started as a small independent software developer in the Netherlands in 1988 and is now part of IFS: a multinational software company headquartered in Linköping, Sweden.

Ultimo is now a fully cloud-based SaaS product, although selected customers still use the on-premise product. Cloud migrations account for part of the technical work, which is partly carried out by NetRom. Also, as with any other software product, the platform must be developed continuously. In this way, IFS Ultimo can respond to new trends and developments, such as the rise of data-driven business in which sensor data plays an important role (‘Industry 4.0’).

“Users of EAM systems are increasingly using augmented reality applications and AI,” explains Erik Huisman, CTO of IFS Ultimo. “Think of examining the ‘insides’ of complex machines while technical information or drawings are projected over a video image. Or having external experts examine video footage. Data flows play an important role in this, and IFS Ultimo’s solutions are intended to facilitate the use of such methods and techniques. Increasingly, data analysis is also used to identify patterns and deviations. This makes predictive maintenance possible, for example.”

“At the start of the collaboration with NetRom, we carried out a pilot project, focusing on an individual application module. That instilled more than enough confidence to keep expanding the team,” Huisman said. “On the software development side, we scaled up to ten developers and testers at NetRom.”

Ultimo’s IT team had four scrum teams working in the Netherlands. The initial idea was that these teams would guide the NetRom developers in Romania. That turned out to be a little too much of a ‘waterfall’, Huisman recalls: “Transfer of new software from NetRom’s agile teams led to all kinds of feedback. That’s why we’ve been working towards mixed scrum teams, with a joint stand-up and a joint backlog.”

During the COVID19 pandemic, this was scaled down from ten to three people. Although necessary at the time, the decision had its downside, Huisman now sees. “It entailed a form of capital destruction, just like saying goodbye to people in the Netherlands.” Domain knowledge that was lost as a result had to be rebuilt at the end of the pandemic, but fortunately this was realized quickly.

As the collaboration progressed, it became clear that more capacity was needed in order to work on other projects. A software update team was set up, for example, aimed at customers who use Ultimo’s on-premise solution. These customers currently run software in-house but will eventually move to the cloud version. “That migration involves all kinds of automated and manual processes. We have outsourced the technical portion of this to NetRom. For some customers, the software has been expanded considerably with customization in recent years. This needs to be studied carefully during a cloud migration, along with modification and transfer of databases.” This type of activity, the result of a successful sales process, has its peaks and troughs. Incidentally, configuration work from 20 years ago is now often incorporated in the new clous solution as standard functionality.

In addition, more people were needed for integration activities. “NetRom provides developers who work on the APIs required to link our software to other solutions,” says Huisman. And finally, NetRom plays a role in second-line support of overseas customers focusing on bug fixes and complex end user questions. All in all, Ultimo now has a team of 20 professionals via NetRom in Romania.

With NetRom as a partner, IFS Ultimo has access to a flexible team with extensive in-house domain knowledge that can accelerate specific development activities when needed. NetRom has immersed itself in Ultimo’s corporate culture from day one, in order to get started in a way that would be agreeable and familiar. Huisman: “In my opinion, this cultural fit is a very important success factor. The NetRom developers on the team are perfectly capable of indicating whether something is a good idea or not – we are used to such directness in the Netherlands, where it makes no difference whether someone is a colleague or a client. This means that the difference in working methods between Dutch and Romanian developers is minimal. This is often not the case in other regions, as you might notice when working with developers from Germany, for example.”

Ultimo understands that NetRom developers tend to stay with their employer for a relatively long time. “Of course, people sometimes do leave the NetRom team, but NetRom takes good care of knowledge retention and internal knowledge sharing,” says Huisman. “What we used to do more frequently in the first few years was to set up regular exchanges. Due to Covid, remote collaboration has become more or less standard, but you really have to keep organizing in-person meetings. You have to shape the partnership together. Making it part of the strategy, thinking about operations, sharing successes, and celebrating together are all part of this.”