Enabling data-driven innovation at Ulstein Group with the momenttum platform

Enabling data-driven innovation at Ulstein with the momenttum platform

Business need

A siloed landscape

As a maritime company focused on sustainable solutions, Ulstein had a clear ambition to become more data-driven to foster innovation: “Innovation has always been a key part of Ulstein, and data is becoming increasingly important to drive that innovation. So, we needed a new and more efficient way of working with data,” explains Johannes Volle, CFO at Ulstein.

One example is that vessels in Ulstein’s market segments produce large amounts of operational data. This information can be used to optimize shipowners’ operations, reduce fuel consumption and emissions, and automate manual reporting processes to enhance decision making. Ulstein already support their customers by bringing some of this data to shore via our ship-to-cloud solution Blue Box, ensuring it is easily accessible. However, the data from each vessel and other sources was siloed across systems and managed manually, making analysis time-consuming, error-prone, and resource-intensive. To address this fragmented data landscape, Ulstein began exploring solutions that enabled harmonization and scalable analytics.

Accelerating with a proven partner

Instead of building a platform from scratch, Ulstein saw clear advantages in teaming up with an experienced partner who had already developed a solution and scalable infrastructure.

“We need to be clear on what we, at Ulstein, should be good at, and where we should leverage the strengths of others,” says Johannes Volle and adds: “It was important for us to gain momentum and actually start using the data, rather than spend years building the underlying infrastructure.”

Ultimately, Ulstein found that NTT DATA’s momenttum platform was the perfect match. In late 2023, they ran a successful proof of concept with NTT DATA to test the solution, validate its potential, and train internal resources. The full platform went live in the summer of 2024.

Solution

One source of truth

With the momenttum platform, Ulstein has built a unified data foundation that connects data from vessels, ERP systems, and other critical sources. This integration provides consistent structure and automation across data flows, eliminating manual processes and reducing the risk of errors.

“Now, we can do a more effective data analysis across vessels, where we can add those databases per ship to combine different data sources. This makes it much faster and more accurate to generate insights than before,” says Ida Mari Solvåg, Business Intelligence Manager at Ulstein.

The platform applies rules to standardize and harmonize data across sources—from historical records to real-time inputs. All transformations are automated and traceable, with full logging and documentation of changes. This ensures transparency and data governance, providing Ulstein with high-quality data to act on.

A platform for independence

A key objective for Ulstein was to build in-house capabilities to gain control of the quality and the meaning of the data. To support this, the project included workshops, weekly meetings, and extensive training. Today, NTT DATA acts as a sparring partner and advisor, while also hosting and maintaining the infrastructure to ensure security, stability, and continuous updates. This setup allows Ulstein to focus on development and innovation while maintaining full control of the solution.

Outcomes

Driving innovation with data

With the solution, Ulstein benefits from an improved ability to make data-driven decisions across operations, product development, and customer strategy.

According to Johannes Volle, the new platform is a backbone for future digitalization activities: “The platform is becoming an important enabler for innovation. It gives us a robust and scalable foundation for both developing external services and power our innovation activities internally.”

Laying the foundation

With a solid foundation in place, Ulstein is now ready to take the next steps on their data journey—including AI-driven analytics.

“The focus until now has been to fix the basics around the data—to get the quality, the classification, and the security in order,” says Ida Mari Solvåg. “We haven’t deep dived into AI yet, but we’ve taken the first step with machine learning for data classification and are looking forward to seeing what else the platform can enable.”