Ultimo (an IFS company) energizes the financial resilience, regulatory compliance, and operational excellence for manufacturing, logistics, energy, and healthcare organizations through its innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Ultimo VP of Operations Candi Robison to learn more about the company.
Candi Robison’s Background
What is Candi Robison’s background? Robison said:
“I joined Ultimo as the Americas business lead in June 2024 from Cohesive where I was Global Director of Business Development, and President of Ontracks.”
“I was previously the sales lead for organizations such as IBM Maximo, Watson and Tivoli. Through all the positions I’ve held, I stand firmly in the belief that success is all about the people. It’s about building strong, unified teams, establishing trust and enabling people to perform at their best with the support of a great team behind them.”
Primary Responsibilities
What are your primary responsibilities? Robison shared:
“The company has an extraordinary track record for technical excellence, customer support and retention, and helping customers to realize value from our technology at industry-leading speed. We have over 30,000 active daily users, a 98 percent customer retention rate, and when it comes to technical customer service, we have zero major support escalations.”
“My role is to build upon three-and-a-half decades of success by remaining committed first to the success of our customers, then innovating with our solutions, creating new avenues for growth, and forging geographical expansion in the USA.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Robison reflected:
It was right after I started that the entire company went to Belgium for an outdoor weekend together. Read camping, hiking, mountain biking, canoeing, games, and time spent together getting to know one another, and having fun. I knew immediately this was a very special team of people, and the company values are clear. People first.
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Robison explained:
“We provide enterprise asset management software to industrial businesses primarily in the manufacturing, logistics, and oil & gas sectors to manage and maintain healthy physical assets, whether in a large production facility or out in the field. The customers we serve rely completely on the safe and efficient operations of their assets. So for decades running, our innovative solutions help them to energize their financial resilience, regulatory compliance, and operational excellence. For our customers, better maintenance of their assets means they can control costs, improve safety, optimize uptime, address skills shortages, empower teamwork and collaboration and support ESG reporting and initiatives as well.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Robison acknowledged:
“We are building a global team by both expanding into new territories and also integrating companies we’ve acquired. So, in the last 12 months, our headcount has increased by 50 percent, a lot of that in my own team. Naturally, we are facing some challenges as we tune our organization for this next wave of growth.”
“We overcome these challenges with clear objectives, open lines of communication – and not just within our management team – but among every employee in the company. We empower our people to make decisions. And this ability to make and own decisions is so important, it is one of our core values. It makes us more agile.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since its launch? Robison noted:
“There have been many innovations in the company’s 37-year history, but in more recent years, we have launched artificial intelligence (AI) functionality that’s completely unique in our market. Focused on delivering practical value to customers, this includes an application to slash mean-time-to-repair, as well as solutions for automating analogue meter readings, reporting, business-wide intelligence and data management.”
“Our modernization has also included two acquisitions in 2024 bringing on 14,000+ new users, and over 300 customers into the business. The expansion to the company’s portfolio means more companies in manufacturing, as well as energy, will be able to modernize their maintenance operations with an advanced, flexible platform.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Robison cited:
“The stand-out achievement is our highly profitable growth. We’re expanding organically through direct sales, indirectly through partners, and through acquisitions.”
“A few months ago, we held our first-ever global partner network event. At that time our network of partners had already seen a 46% growth in certifications and that trend continues. With partners, we add hundreds of years of related technical and industry experience such as application performance management, and digital transformation.”
“This is important because, with our growth ambitions, we can only do this with a global network of the best partners, in the right regions and sectors, to support our current and future customers.”
“We’ve also enjoyed industry recognition. Ultimo was named an Industry Leader in the 2024 Verdantix Green Quadrant®: EAM Software report. We are acknowledged for strong capabilities in business intelligence, robust integrations, our slick user interface, and flexible pricing. This marks the second consecutive report where Ultimo has achieved Leader status; a consistent standing since 2022. More recently, IFS Ultimo as part of IFS was named a Customers’ Choice by Gartner for the EAM software market.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Robison about customer success stories, she highlighted:
“We work with well-known organizations globally, ranging from London’s Gatwick Airport to American-based manufacturers such as Rockfon and Conmet. At our user conference in Orlando, Florida in October, I was proud to present with one of our most recent customers in the oil & gas sector, Maverick Natural Resources. The company deployed our EAM software in record time and realized measurable value from it in just a few months. This is very rare in the enterprise technology sector, and it is one of the main reasons industrial businesses choose to work with us.”
Funding
When asking Robison about the company’s funding details, she pointed out:
“In 2022, Ultimo was acquired by IFS, a global 1bn Euro+ company. Since that time, IFS has continued to support our success through both ecosystem and investment.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Robison assessed:
“According to the Market Size and Forecast: Industrial Asset Maintenance Software 2022-2028 (Global), from analyst firm, Verdantix, spend on the EAM software market reached $4.5 billion in 2024 and will grow at a 9% CAGR to reach $6.4 billion in 2028.”
“Of the respondents to the Verdantix 2023 global corporate operational excellence survey, 55% planned new spend on EAM software in 2024 (see Verdantix Global Corporate Survey 2023: Operational Excellence Budgets, Priorities and Tech Preferences).”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Robison affirmed:
“There are a lot of big corporations in our space that offer enterprise asset management software.”
“I believe what differentiates Ultimo from the competition is about being a strong, sustainable partner through every phase of the EAM maturity journey.”
“We have a practical approach to innovation, vetting new technologies and functionality against what our customers need. We focus on unparalleled time to value, ease of use, supporting adoption with outstanding eLearning, flexible pricing – all delivered through a team of people that are with our customers every step of the journey.”
“Ultimo has over 120,000 monthly active users and its 98 percent customer retention rate makes it a stand-out organization. When it comes to customer support, it can boldly claim to get ZERO major support escalations.”
“Bringing clarity to a complex market, Ultimo is proud to offer a flexible pricing model and a Cloud-based technology platform. Providing customer guidance on how to sequence the Ultimo roll-out and focuses on topics that add the most value in each stage, the company developed the (industry unique) EAM Maturity Model. It has also developed the Circle of Collaboration concept to address the challenge of effective organization-wide communication in transformation projects. It helps to foster a unified environment that enhances communication, reduces downtime, and promotes safety.”
“While many software companies have a cadence of pushing out software updates (bug fixes and functional updates) to users every few years, Ultimo’s ability to deliver customer-directed bi-weekly updates makes it a true SaaS platform and ensures that its customers are always working with up to date ‘evergreen’ software. This is a huge advantage, because it helps them avoid time-consuming, complex and expensive upgrades. Ultimo has upgraded this from a manual to automated process to its customers’ advantage. Not only that, but customers get to work with Ultimo on the product roadmap with toggle-managed access to trial functions and features.”
“Ultimo also leads in its field when it comes to the speed of software deployment and the time to realize value. Our incredible e-learning platform improves user adoption and accelerates customer return on investment (ROI). Ultimo GO, our mobile App, works seamlessly with our web application and shares the same business logic.”
“Ultimo focuses primarily on three vertical sectors, which means that our industrial expertise is extensive for Manufacturing, Logistics, and Healthcare.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Robison emphasized:
“Ultimo will continue to disrupt the industry outside of its super-strong home market of Benelux. With the backing of IFS, we can enter new markets quickly, with superior products and people to support them.”
“Ultimo plans to significantly expand its revenue growth from channel partners. In support of our shift to bigger average contract values and annual contract value deals, marketing program spend has also increased over 50 percent year-on-year. Marketing headcount nearly doubled from 2024 to 2025, with all new roles focused on lead generation.”
“We will successfully be achieving across our key strategies while still leading in important areas such as tech innovation, customer satisfaction and retention, support, technical upgrades, and the seamless shift to Cloud.”
“Ultimo will continue to innovate in the field of industrial AI, as well as by making acquisitions. An already respected brand in a busy industry, we will achieve all this while valuing its people talent and assuring it remains a great place to work and to do business with.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Robison concluded:
“Around 50 percent of our management team is new over the last year. Talent with global experience was intentionally recruited to help Ultimo scale operations. The current employee base is now close to a 50/50 mix between new hires and existing expertise – striking a good balance for scaling operations in new markets, while assuring continuity of excellence in areas such as product development.”
“The asset maintenance community will be familiar with computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) that are often used in the mid-market. Whilst IFS Ultimo can offer businesses the support of a regular CMMS system, we don’t focus there. Ours is a more complete and future-proof solution. With CMMS software you increase the efficiency of the maintenance department by automating (preventive) maintenance activities and smartly scheduling your operations. IFS Ultimo offers much more. For example, health and safety modules, purchasing, autonomous maintenance module, financial management, and various integrations.”
