Edition Five
2024. Welcome to the year of AI empowered people and business outcomes
2023 was a year where we saw the coronation of HRH King Charles III, against a more sombre backdrop of geo-political disruption with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and of course, OpenAI and the ongoing impact this will continue to have on every aspect of life in the year ahead.
At Ultima, we extended our technology investment portfolio across Cloud, Security, Digital and leveraged our automation and AI experience to attain a leading position as a Microsoft Copilot partner. With the recent announcement from Microsoft about Copilot now on general release and as an offering to businesses of all sizes, we are excited about how Ultima can help our customers to take full advantage of the workspace benefits this will bring.
Our first 2024 issue of UiQ focuses on what we see as being the main technology trends to consider. Unsurprisingly, AI dominates as both an influencer and an enabler across Cloud, Security and Digital Workspace and this edition looks at the opportunities as well as the risks. I hope that you will find it useful when considering your strategy development and consolidation over the next 12 months.
As always, our technology experts and advisers are on hand to help further.
Thank you for being an integral part of our journey, and here's to a year filled with growth, resilience and success.
Kindest regards,
Scott, CEO, Ultima
Scott Dodds, Ultima CEO
Scott Dodds, Ultima CEO
Moving forward, together
So, here we are, already halfway through the year. Where does the time go? As we hit this midpoint of the calendar, I always think it’s a good opportunity to review our progress – and define how we’re going to move forward.
At Ultima, we’ve enjoyed a successful past 12 months and I’m delighted to tell you that our business is moving exactly in the right direction. We’ve opened 105 new customer accounts, and most importantly our net promoter score is up to +60, which means we must be doing something right for our customers.
Our new brand identity and marketing strategy have already resulted in a significant and positive impact on our reputation, customer confidence and vendor support. For instance, our new UiQ TV video channel has reached over 20,000 new audiences already. And our new website is changing the game for us with over 250,000 site sessions to date and a 33% increase in users.
As with any kind of change that we advise our customers about, culture is key. And I’m proud to say that our brilliant team have done a great job in embracing the recent changes with positivity and passion (more about them later!). It’s entirely down to them that we were able to win Hitachi’s ‘Partner of the Year’ award, gain five out of the six key Microsoft designations, and get nominated for Microsoft’s ‘Partner of the Year 2023’ award.
It's fair to say that we’ve set a completely new standard of excellence and we’re looking to keep that momentum going.
Whether it’s continuing to invest in Ultima LABS, our automation company that’s delivered a whopping £1.3M in cloud optimisation cost savings; further reduce our carbon impact on customers, which we already did by 50% over the past 12 months; or drive initiatives such as our Women in Tech campaign, we’re not going to stop putting people first.
In this edition of UiQ, you’ll get a flavour for where we’re heading and what’s coming up next. As ever, please do keep your feedback coming into us – it helps to keep us moving forward, together.
Kindest regards,
Scott