Context: Economic Uncertainty in the Environment – Conscious Stability at STL

STL’s 2025 annual review looks back on a year marked by global uncertainty, to which STL responded with conscious decisions focused on strategic clarity and stability. Geopolitical tensions, economic disruptions, and debates around energy, data sovereignty, and artificial intelligence formed the broader context.

Against this backdrop, 2025 was not a year of loud announcements for STL and cimoio, but one of deliberate strategic positioning.

The foundation for this was a strategic setup developed in 2023 and 2024 that proved resilient in 2025: a business model built on three strong pillars – cimoio aero, cimoio industry, and cimoio academy. This mix of aviation, industry, and educational academies proved robust, as the market dynamics of these sectors differ significantly.

While individual industrial projects were postponed or halted, growth in the academy environment was able to offset these effects. At the same time, it became clear that long-term engagements – particularly in aviation – provide stability even in uncertain times.

cimoio is often classified as a learning management system. In practical use – particularly in academy, industrial, and aviation environments – an expanded requirement profile becomes apparent. In addition to providing learning content, cimoio takes on central tasks related to the planning, execution, documentation, and billing of training activities.

In 2025, the focus was less on adding individual features and more on sharpening this role as a platform for operational training management, bringing together learning content, exams, certificates, organizational workflows, and commercially relevant processes.

From Learning Management (LMS) to Operational Training Control

While classic learning management systems primarily focus on content and courses, training in many use cases is understood as an end-to-end process – from planning and delivery to examinations, evidence, and billing.

cimoio is designed for this type of operational training control. As a hybrid learning and training management system, it maps training processes end-to-end, including scheduling and resource planning, examination logic, certificate management, and structured tracking of qualifications.

This orientation forms the basis for the use of cimoio in business-critical, regulated, and certification-driven environments.

ERP-Integrated Processes as a Consequence of Real Training Workflows

The closer training processes are to real business operations, the more they intersect with commercial and organizational workflows. In many customer environments, cimoio is therefore not used in isolation but as part of integrated system landscapes connected to ERP systems.

Billing-relevant data and process steps must be complete and consistent and are, in most customer installations, transferred to existing ERP systems for further processing

Process Guidance Instead of Feature Growth

2025 was marked by a changed approach to the growing complexity of cimoio. In addition to the continuous development of features, greater emphasis was placed on usability, clarity, and clearer process logic.

This was reflected, among other things, in the introduction of process-guided workflows for complex tasks, the expansion of multi-stage automations (scheduler, intelligent auto-mailers, BPMN-based processes), stronger structural decoupling of content through integrations based on Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), and supplementary video conferencing integrations for GDPR-compliant usage scenarios.

A planned major release in the second half of the year was deliberately postponed in order to implement these structural adjustments consistently and sustainably.

Exams, Certificates, and Evidence as Integral Components of Training Management

Another key focus in 2025 was the targeted expansion of exam- and certification-related features. In many scenarios, exams, certificates, and evidence are not optional add-ons but integral components of operational training management.

Based on concrete customer requirements, examination regulations and grading logic, open badge structures, and public certificate pages were further developed.

A particular focus was placed on cimoio academy, where exams and evidence are often directly linked to business-critical qualifications. The guiding principle remained unchanged: features relevant to multiple customers belong in the product core – not in project-specific custom solutions.

Sales and Billing in Integrated System Landscapes (ERP Integration)

In addition to functional and process-related development, sales and billing logic was further professionalized in 2025. This primarily affected scenarios in which training is not only organized but also marketed and billed.

Quotation and order logic was revised and expanded to include clearer B2B/B2C differentiation in the webshop, support for legal requirements such as XRechnung and ZUGFeRD, and the introduction of installment payments.

While cimoio can map billing-relevant processes itself, it is integrated into existing ERP landscapes in most customer installations. Development therefore focused on consistent data models, clear status logic, and stable interfaces within integrated system environments.

External Events

External exchange played an important role in 2025 but was more consciously prioritized and differentiated.

LEARNTEC (Karlsruhe) remained an important meeting point for discussions with existing customers and visibility among prospects. At the same time, it became apparent that the share of relevant corporate training contacts was lower than in previous years. Pragmatic exchange with corporate training managers increasingly gave way to more conceptual topics, supporting the decision to reduce trade fair presence.

EATS (Portugal) and EAMTC (Switzerland) took place in 2025 together with our implementation partner qamaas. Both events are clearly positioned in the aviation and MRO environment and closely linked to the further development of cimoio aero. They enabled intensive exchange with decision-makers and a well-founded assessment of regulatory developments.

As part of EATS, Patrick Ross, Managing Director of qamaas, participated as a speaker in the panel “Technological Solutions for Effective Training,” underlining the close professional collaboration in the context of aviation training.

User Group Meeting: Dialogue at the Center

A key highlight of 2025 was the cimoio user group meeting, which took place as an in-person event in June and as an online summary in December.

The focus was on customer networking, cross-product exchange, and the discussion of future topics in workshop formats. Personal interaction provided a deliberate contrast to the digital working environment.

The value of the user group meeting was also reflected in tangible follow-up effects, including a noticeable increase in demand for the calculation module for pre- and post-calculation.

In 2025, the focus at STL was less on awards and more on formal evidence and robust references that play a central role in selection and tendering processes.

Of particular importance was the ISO/IEC 27001 certification, which was updated at the beginning of the year. This certification is a fundamental requirement for many tenders and selection processes and supports smooth collaboration with customers.

More decisive than formal certificates for many prospects remains reference marketing: concrete projects, real-world deployments, and the willingness of existing customers to share their experiences. Especially in complex and regulated environments such as industry, academies, and aviation, this form of trust is often crucial.

STL deliberately refrained from classic awards in 2025 in favor of operational priorities.

Closing & Thanks

We would like to thank our customers for their trust, openness, and willingness to discuss even challenging topics together. Many strategic decisions did not emerge from formal specifications but from open exchange and mutual listening.

Special thanks go to our team, who remained committed, critical, and solution-oriented even in demanding situations, as well as to our working students, who quickly took on responsibility and noticeably eased day-to-day operations.

What shaped 2025 in a special way was the human factor. We work with people, for people – and in many cases over many years. This closeness requires attention, time, and mutual understanding; at the same time, it is the foundation for trust, willingness to learn, and long-term collaboration.

With this mindset, we move into 2026.