Frequently asked questions

HelmCore is an Operational Impact Intelligence platform for organisations running distributed operations. It brings together signals from point of sale, network and any other system that has an API into a single view, and translates each incident into its financial and operational impact. HelmCore is ready for any multi-site operation today and is rolling out in retail first.

HelmCore is operated by Fastcom AS Limited, trading as HelmCore, based in Sligo. The company works with multi-site operators across retail, food and beverage, hospitality, travel, healthcare and logistics.

HelmCore is the current name of the company previously trading as OpSite AI. The platform, team and legal entity are unchanged. The HelmCore name reflects the company's position as a standalone Operational Impact Intelligence brand.

Ross Palmer is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder. James McLoughlin is Chief Technology Officer and holds CISSP, CRISC and CISA certifications alongside an MSc in Security and Forensic Computing, with experience across finance, energy, telecoms, retail, healthcare and government.

HelmCore closes the translation gap between technical signals and commercial decisions. IT teams hold detailed operational data, and HelmCore expresses what that data means in financial terms so IT, finance and operations can act on the same information at the same time.

Operational Impact Intelligence is a category of software that correlates signals from every site into one view and translates each incident into its financial and operational impact. It is built for organisations running business-critical technology across many sites, where disruption causes losses that can’t be won back.

Read more about Operational Impact Intelligence

Observability platforms are built around infrastructure and application telemetry for engineering teams. Operational Impact Intelligence is built around the physical estate and the commercial consequence of each incident, with a dashboard designed for operations, finance and customer experience roles as well as IT.

Network monitoring covers connectivity and device health as a single domain. Operational Impact Intelligence correlates network signals with point of sale, IoT and energy data, so each incident is understood across every system it touches and priced according to its effect on the business.

IT service management platforms organise tickets, workflow and service records after an issue has been raised. Operational Impact Intelligence surfaces the issue as it emerges, points to the likely cause across systems and shows what the disruption is costing while it's happening.

A modern multi-site operation runs point of sale, payment terminals, refrigeration and IoT sensors, energy systems and network infrastructure at once, replicated across hundreds of locations. Downtime in that environment carries an immediate and measurable cost, which makes financial context part of the operational picture from the start.

HelmCore detects problems across a distributed estate within minutes, groups related alerts into a single incident, names the site, device and fault, and points to the likely cause. It shows the financial impact of each incident in real time, tells your team exactly what to act on and closes the incident once the fix has been verified. The results are presented in a role-customisable dashboard.

HelmCore shows the financial impact of each incident in real time, based on the customer's own baseline store figures. The cost rises while the incident stays unresolved and sits on the incident itself, alongside the technical detail.

Some actions run automatically, depending on the action, for example powering down Wi-Fi access points out of hours. For everything else, HelmCore points to the likely cause and tells the responsible team exactly what to act on, with suggested next steps. Your own team or support partner carries out the fix, and HelmCore closes the incident once the fix has been verified.

HelmCore uses a rules engine that collapses related events into one incident before any analysis begins. A network fault that generates alerts across several point of sale terminals and devices is presented as one incident that points to the likely cause, rather than as dozens of separate alerts. Sleeping laptops and planned restarts are filtered out.

The HelmCore dashboard presents the same underlying estate data filtered to what each role needs. IT sees the likely cause, correlation and estate health. Finance sees cost and cumulative impact. Customer experience sees which sites have service at risk and for how long. There are dedicated views for the CEO, CFO, COO and CIO.

Yes. HelmCore shortens the time to detect an incident by bringing together signals from every site, so problems surface within minutes rather than when a site reports them. It shortens the time to resolve by pointing to the likely cause and telling your team exactly what to act on. Some actions run automatically, depending on the action, and your own team or support partner carries out the rest.

HelmCore connects to any system that has an API. Across each site that includes point of sale, network equipment whatever the make, CCTV, refrigeration systems, IoT devices and platforms, fuel pumps and pay-at-pump readers, and energy systems.

No. HelmCore runs as a small program on the Windows machines a site already has, plus the monitoring already built into its network equipment, so implementation effort for the customer's team stays light.

Multi-site estates commonly run several generations of point of sale, network and refrigeration equipment side by side. HelmCore correlates across that mix, which is why the platform is organised around the incident and its business consequence.

HelmCore brings in energy data from systems that have an API and powers down Wi-Fi access points out of hours, with the saving shown as an estimate. Sustainability and ESG stakeholders use the same estate data as IT and operations.

HelmCore applies AI in three ways. Incident analysis uses engineered prompts and runbooks over Azure AI Foundry. A plain-language chat assistant answers questions about estate data. Automated reporting produces output tailored to the audience receiving it.

The HelmCore chat assistant lets a user ask questions about their estate in plain language and receive an answer drawn from their own operational data. It gives non-technical roles direct access to estate information without requiring a query language or dashboard training.

HelmCore constrains AI analysis with engineered prompts and documented runbooks rather than open-ended generation. A rules engine consolidates related events into a single incident before analysis begins, so the model reasons over one clean incident record.

HelmCore applies a sanitisation layer that strips sensitive data before anything reaches the model. AI processing runs over Azure AI Foundry.

HelmCore uses customer estate data to serve that customer within their own instance. Data handling, retention and processing terms are set out in the HelmCore data processing agreement.

HelmCore holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification, issued by Amtivo under certificate number 537204. The certification covers the information security management system governing the platform, including change management, access control, vendor assessment and incident handling.

HelmCore is single-tenant. Each customer gets their own HelmCore, on their own hardware or in their own Azure subscription, which keeps one customer's estate data within its own environment.

Single-tenant deployment gives each operator an isolated environment for their estate data, with configuration, baseline store figures and access control scoped to that customer alone. It suits operators with strict internal requirements on data separation and supplier assurance.

HelmCore operates an ISO 27001 certified information security management system covering change management, vendor assessment and access control. Christy Lowe holds the Security Officer role and owns the process.

Security ownership sits with Christy Lowe as Security Officer, with technical accountability held by James McLoughlin as Chief Technology Officer, whose certifications include CISSP, CRISC and CISA.

HelmCore operates from Ireland under EU data protection law, with an ISO 27001 certified information security management system underpinning its controls. The sanitisation layer removes sensitive data before AI processing, and data handling terms are documented in the HelmCore data processing agreement.

HelmCore serves six sectors: retail, food and beverage, hospitality and leisure, travel and transport, healthcare, and logistics and distribution. HelmCore is ready for any multi-site operation today and is rolling out in retail first. All six share distributed estates, a central IT function and an immediate cost when a site is disrupted.

HelmCore is built for multi-site operators where a central IT function manages every site and a single site outage carries a measurable cost. The value grows with estate size, because correlation and prioritisation matter more as the number of concurrent signals rises.

The IT Director usually initiates the conversation, finance holds the budget, and customer experience leaders act as stakeholders. Sustainability and ESG managers join the discussion where energy reduction is a stated objective, and procurement and C-suite participate on larger agreements.

Outsourced IT and point of sale service providers use HelmCore to manage multi-site estates on behalf of their clients. They gain estate-wide visibility across the sites they support, with each incident pointing to the likely cause, which reduces diagnostic time and site visits.

IT teams use HelmCore for estate visibility and the likely cause of each incident. Finance uses it for cost of downtime and prioritisation. Customer experience uses it to see which sites have service at risk. Operations uses it to decide what to address first.

HelmCore connects to the systems already running across the estate, using a small program on the Windows machines each site already has and the monitoring built into its network equipment. Each customer gets their own HelmCore, on their own hardware or in their own Azure subscription. Financial impact is based on the customer's own baseline store figures, which are set up during onboarding.

HelmCore is priced by estate size and scope. Pricing is confirmed during the commercial discussion once the number of sites and the systems in scope are established.

HelmCore sits above the systems already in place and correlates their signals into one view. Customers keep the vendor tooling they rely on and gain a single estate-wide picture, with the likely cause and financial impact of each incident on top of it.

Organisations start with a conversation about their estate, the systems in scope and where operational disruption is currently costing them. Book a demo through helmcore.ai to arrange it.