The platform in depth: how Ovinto works and why it is different
Everything behind the promise on our homepage: the components, the data model, the way we work and where Ovinto fits next to the systems you already run.
Your asset reality is scattered, and it is costing you every day
Most organisations do not actually know what their assets are doing, what they truly cost, or how many they really need. Not because the data doesn’t exist, but because it sits in systems that were never designed to talk to each other.
One question about one asset, six systems. Multiply that by every asset, every day, in operations, maintenance & repair, procurement and yard management.
The blind spot of management and IT
Attention goes to the order-to-cash backbone (ERP, TMS, WMS). What gets overlooked is the daily reality of the people who manage the assets, and the growing stack of external applications imposed on them by suppliers, customers, carriers, governments and customs.
Armies of people doing repetitive work
Operational teams hop between poorly aligned applications and repeat the same manual actions again and again. Automation is reserved for central IT inside the big core systems, almost never configurable by the people who need it.
The spreadsheet where intelligence disappears
When the fleet system blocks on an asset it doesn’t know or an exception nobody planned for, people fall back on spreadsheets. Version conflicts, errors, and data that stays invisible to the rest of the organisation.
EAM and fleet management in one platform, a combination you will hardly find anywhere else
The market offers two separate worlds. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) handles maintenance, work orders, certificates and the technical lifecycle of equipment. Fleet management handles moving assets, trips, utilisation and positions. Almost nobody does both.
Ovinto grew into both. We started in fleet management, and over twenty years our customers asked us to manage everything around their assets as well: the maintenance they need, the certificates they carry, the contracts they fall under and the cost they generate. We built the EAM side from those real needs, so your moving fleet, your on-site equipment and your returnable assets sit in one register, under one set of rules.
A classic fleet package tells you what its designers decided you should know about the assets they anticipated. Ovinto lets you bring together everything that matters about every asset you touch, and act on it.
And because nothing is hard-coded, your operational users configure their own fields, views, analyses and automations, and extend them tomorrow without waiting for a vendor release.
Enterprise Asset Management
Maintenance, work orders, certificates, inspections, technical lifecycle, on-site equipment
Fleet management
Moving assets, trips, positions, utilisation, contracts, turnaround
One asset, equipment & fleet register
Every unit you own, lease, rent, or are simply responsible for
Connectivity
Any source, no developer
Working environment
Including exceptions
Analysis
On a contextual data model
Rule engine
Automate and orchestrate
Domain data model + 20 years of operational context
The foundation underneath, built for AI
Four components. Together, as far as we know, unique in the market.
No competing asset or fleet management product offers these four capabilities together for operational, non-IT users.
1. Configurable connectivity
Bring in asset data from any internal or external application, without a developer or IT capacity. Bidirectional, mapped once (AI-assisted) and fully automatic afterwards. This is how the asset picture becomes complete.
2. Central working environment
Asset managers, planners and site operators manage everything in one place instead of hopping between systems, including the activities and exceptions that fit nowhere else.
3. Analysis environment
Rule-based calculations and formulas on consolidated asset data: utilisation, true cost per asset, exposure, bottlenecks and what-if fleet simulations. Data can also be cleaned and enriched before it goes to your data lake, BI or AI tools.
4. Proprietary rule engine
Comparable to RPA: users create their own rules to automate alerts, allocations, status updates, notifications and checks, and to actively steer other applications and external parties.
The foundation you cannot buy off the shelf
Underneath the four components sits twenty years of experience in rail freight, intermodal freight and industrial sites, captured in a very specific data model. It does not just store asset data but also encodes what the data means: how a rail tank car relates to its lease contract, its ECM, its certificates and its maintenance regime; what free time, demurrage and dwell mean per customer, site and product; how an ISO tank container moves through terminals, depots and cleaning stations.
Ovinto never replaces your core systems (SAP, ERP, TMS, WMS). It connects them, consolidates their asset data, adds analysis, and actively steers them.
| Data formats | CSV, Excel, machine-readable PDF, JSON, XML, iDoc, EDI, ASCII... |
|---|---|
| Protocols | E-mail, AS2, SFTP, REST, SOAP, MQTT... All bidirectional. |
| Cadence | Real-time and event-driven, at the frequency your source data is delivered |
| Governance | Everyone builds their own environment, the data stays consolidated. An admin per customer manages permissions per user. |
| Financial data | Ovinto’s own financial model, or direct retrieval from your ERP, your choice |
Managing the assets no system knows about
This is where classic asset packages break, and where Ovinto is fundamentally different. Users enter and manage activities manually in their own working environment, right next to the data that flows in automatically. Exceptions get handled instead of ending up in a spreadsheet.
A supplier’s ISO tank container arrives damaged at your yard. The law says you must handle the damage. But your system doesn’t know the container exists.
With a classic asset system
Blind spot- SAP doesn’t recognise the container, because its asset management is built for your own fleet.
- Someone starts a spreadsheet to track the damage case.
- Versions multiply between colleagues, e-mails and phone calls.
- The data stays invisible to the rest of the business, and to any analysis.
With Ovinto
Under control- SAP simply stays connected, nothing changes there.
- The user configures their own environment for this kind of unforeseen activity.
- Repetitive steps are automated with rules.
- The data is centralised, accessible to everyone and usable for analysis.
The same logic applies to every asset your core system doesn’t cover: rented trailers, customer IBCs, borrowed equipment, temporary units.
Visibility, Insights, Control: three layers of asset control
The layers build on each other. What starts as consolidating asset data ends as actively steering assets, workflows and applications, applied use case by use case, for continuous efficiency gains and growing decision intelligence.
Visibility
All relevant asset data in one environment: 100% visibility over assets, actions, status, certificates and real cost.
- Order events linked to asset, financial and contract data
- Internal systems, partner portals and manual entries
- All IoT and telematics platforms in one “Timeline of Truth”
Insights
Analyses that fleet owners typically never have.
- True total cost of ownership per asset
- Utilisation, idle time and exposure
- Bottlenecks and what-if fleet simulations with financial impact
- Cost reconciliation between operations and invoicing
Control
Configured rules actively steer your existing applications and orchestrate asset processes.
- Workflows automated, step by step
- Decisions supported
- Execution coordinated across teams and partners
Same data, better answers: AI on a model that already knows
Public, general-purpose AI knows nothing about demurrage clauses, maintenance regimes, RID certificates or wagon turnaround times. It sees columns and numbers and has to guess what an idle period or a status code means, and in asset operations, guesses are exactly where false conclusions come from.
Generic AI on your exports
Ovinto
That advantage cannot be replicated by pointing a public AI tool at your exports. AI is used deliberately and selectively, and classic rule-based automation remains the standard.
AI-assisted data mapping when connecting new sources.
Natural-language questions on your consolidated asset data.
Prescriptive recommendations for operational decisions.
One environment for every IoT and telematics platform you run
Three, five, sometimes eight platforms side by side, each with its own portal, login, data model and report. Ovinto consolidates them across vendors, asset types and even across companies into one coherent asset data layer.
Any source, any vendor
Telematics, temperature, pressure, weight, GPS, gate events and camera data in one place.
One timeline per asset
A location event, a temperature deviation and a shipment status become one reality you can act on.
Act, don’t just watch
Rules and alerts instead of yet another portal to check.
No vendor lock-in
Add devices or change providers without disrupting the operation.
Separate vendor portals today
Any asset, any industry, any size
Nothing is hard-coded to one asset type. The mechanics that manage a fleet of rail tank cars are the same mechanics that manage trailers, containers, vehicles, returnable packaging or production equipment. Only the configuration differs.
| Asset | Type | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTC-40218 | Rail tank car | Idle 94 days | ERP + GPS |
| TRL-7734 | Trailer | In transit | TMS |
| ISO-11902 | Tank container | Damage open | Partner portal |
| IBC-58831 | IBC unit | At customer | Manual entry |
| RTC-40655 | Rail tank car | Certificate expires in 12 days | Maintenance |
| CRN-0142 | Yard crane | Available | Site system |
Rail & intermodal assets
Rail tank cars, freight wagons, ISO tank containers, swap bodies, dry containers.
Road fleets
Trucks, trailers, tankers, vans, company cars, chassis, including subcontracted equipment.
Returnable & pooled assets
IBCs, drums, gas cylinders, kegs, pallets, crates, supply and fascia racks.
On-site & yard equipment
Stackers, forklifts, cranes, weighbridges, loading installations, gates, storage tanks.
Technical & production assets
Machines, tooling, mobile plant, measuring and safety equipment with certificates and maintenance history.
Assets you don’t own
Supplier containers, customer equipment, leased and rented units your own system doesn’t recognise.
From a few hundred assets to many thousands
Because the start requires no IT project and no core-system change, a mid-sized company gets the same platform, the same way of working and the same payback logic as a global chemical group, scaled to its own reality.
Wherever valuable assets move
Between sites, parties and systems, in any industry: the same platform, the same way of working, the same payback logic.
Nine ways next-generation asset management creates value
What becomes possible once all asset data sits in one configurable environment. Proof points, not limits. The same mechanics apply to many more processes and asset types.
Complete asset & fleet management
Specifications, positions, orders, maintenance, certificates, inspections, contracts and real cost combined, with analyses and automations hard-coded packages cannot offer.
On-site equipment management
The yard as a fleet: yard, weighbridge, loading, stacker, maintenance and smart-camera systems connected into one executional timeline, orchestrated by rules.
Timeline of Truth for third parties
One shared, timestamped record across carriers, terminals, workshops and customers for claims, cost reconciliation and continuous contract compliance.
IoT consolidation & management
All IoT and telematics platforms in one coherent asset data layer, acted on with rules instead of watched in yet another portal.
Asset-aware order visibility
The order tells you what has to move. The asset data tells you whether, how and at what cost it can.
Maintenance, certification & compliance
Certificates, inspections and repairs per asset with full audit trail, warnings before deadlines expire, and shipment-level Scope 3 carbon accounting following SQAS rules in production.
Traceability across all stakeholders
Full traceability over assets, batches and their handling across internal systems and external partners, without replacing anyone’s WMS or ERP.
Bridge during IT change and M&A
Keep asset operations running and visible while a core system is migrated, or consolidate an acquired entity’s fleet in weeks.
Multi-party freight orchestration
One intelligent layer over every party’s applications: fewer empty moves, faster turnaround, automatic contract-performance scoring and cost allocation per customer, trip or asset.
Where the value comes from: four value axes
| Asset and capital efficiency | Specs × availability × order data × contract data: the same volumes with fewer assets. Lower transport and operating cost, deferred or avoided CAPEX. |
|---|---|
| Prevention of unforeseen cost and risk | Certificates, inspections, contract and tariff parameters fully available, so overruns, penalties, demurrage and incorrect tariffs avoided instead of discovered afterwards. One prevented incident often pays back several years of platform use. |
| Agility in disruption and regulatory change | New levies, longer lead times, asset scarcity or compliance rules: a new analysis or rule is configured within days to weeks, without an IT project or ERP change. |
| Strategic insight from new data combinations | The biggest value leaps come from crossing datasets that never stood together: orders × asset specs, contracts × performance, maintenance × utilisation, finance × physical flows. |
Where Ovinto sits in your landscape
We don’t replace your core systems. We fill the gap none of these categories was built to cover, and work alongside all of them.
| Category | What it does well | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| ERP / TMS / WMS | The order-to-cash backbone your business runs on. | Built around orders and transactions, not around the asset, its exceptions or its real lifetime cost. |
| EAM packages | Maintenance, work orders and the technical lifecycle of equipment. | Weak on moving fleets, trips, utilisation and the commercial side of an asset’s life. |
| Classic fleet management packages | Positions, trips and utilisation for the asset types fixed at purchase. | Functionality hard-coded; equipment and third-party assets fall outside; new questions need a vendor release. |
| Visibility & track-and-trace | Showing where a shipment or asset is. | Position without contracts, cost, maintenance and certificates isn’t asset management, and it doesn’t execute. |
| IoT / telematics portals | Rich data from the vendor’s own devices. | One portal per vendor, incompatible data models, lock-in. |
| Integration platforms | Developer-grade system-to-system integration. | Built for IT, not for the operations team. Pipes, not an environment to manage assets in. |
| BPM / low-code workflow tools | Generic process automation. | Cannot hold your asset data, analyse it, offer a working environment and orchestrate other systems at the same time. |
| BI tools | Dashboards on data that is already clean and combined. | They visualise. They don’t consolidate scattered sources, handle exceptions or act. Ovinto can feed them clean data. |
| Generic AI tools | General-purpose language and analysis. | No knowledge of demurrage clauses, maintenance regimes or certificates, so they guess the context. |
| Developer shops & integrators | Custom builds and large legacy integrations. | Paid by the hour, months of projects, and the operational user still can’t change anything. |
| Ovinto | EAM and fleet management combined in one register, consolidating every source including all IoT platforms, with analysis on a contextual data model and a rule engine that automates and orchestrates, configured by operational users, not by IT. | |
The reversed approach: first the fix, then the roadmap
Classic IT programmes start with an audit, a report and a roadmap, and the fix arrives quarters later, if at all. All that time, the problem on the work floor keeps costing money. Ovinto turns this around.
The classic route
Value arrives at the very end, if the project survives the roadmap.
The Ovinto route
Value arrives first. Every later decision is taken on facts.
Your path, step by step
Use-case workshop
With your operational people we identify the asset frictions and prioritise those with the fastest, most measurable payback.
Read-only start
The first use case runs on standard exports such as asset master data in CSV, SAP orders in iDoc by e-mail, maintenance planning in XML via SFTP.
Live in weeks
Our Customer Success team configures it with your team in short, iterative working sessions. First results typically within weeks.
IT joins on proven value
Once the business value is evident, IT typically asks to automate the exports and feedback loops itself.
Grow use case by use case
You expand only as each business case proves itself. Short payback, low investment risk.
As much guidance as you want
Some customers configure everything themselves, others leave it to us. Most sit in between, with weekly working sessions with our Customer Success team.
Learning by doing
No “read the manual” philosophy. Teams learn in their own operational context and are typically comfortable with the basics within 8 to 10 weeks.
Your own power users
One or a few power users emerge per customer, so knowledge stays inside your organisation.
See what it would do for your fleet
A short, no-obligation introductory call with someone who knows asset operations from the inside.