phase of their Geographic Framework and expansion contracts in France with the Euro Metropole of Strasbourg, the Metropole of Nantes’ Water Department and a large French water utility company.

In France, eleven existing customers have commenced migration from the Group’s legacy platform, to the Esri platform, paving the way for future expansion.

Our longstanding customers, such as Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Ireland, the Rural Payments Agency, Gas of Strasbourg and Engie (France), have also continued to expand the solutions and services we provide.

We made good progress in the year adding or strengthening partnerships in each of our three areas of focus to extend our market reach: major technology consultancies, software platform providers, and adjacent industry specialists. We are increasingly being utilised by our partners as their data integrity provider, cleansing the data before passing it back through wider systems.

Our strong partnership with Esri France is generating increasing interest in the local authority and utility market and was strengthened post period end through the winning of a prestigious Esri award, for 1Spatial’s innovative and extensive product integration within Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise. This followed 1Spatial being given Esri Utility Network Management Specialty designation, recognising 1Spatial's knowledge and expertise within utilities and the implementation of Water Solutions.

In the UK, we have also partnered with Esri UK on the Northern Gas Networks Utility Network Migration, the first such migration to take place in the UK.

Our new partnership with Ordnance Survey has seen us secure the prestigious pilot for the Energy Networks Association and we have started joint webinars demonstrating how the combination of data from Ordnance Survey’s new Data Hub with the 1Spatial software can help build trust in data. We continue to win and look at new opportunities with our partner Version1, which is providing promising new business opportunities.

Our Michael Baker relationship in the USA continues to bring new customers.

We continue to work on new partnership opportunities in all geographic markets and to provide more focus on this key growth pillar we hired a new global partner manager in April 2021.

European re-structuring

Post year end, we announced the final stage of the integration of Geomap-Imagis, which was acquired in May 2019. Our European operations now operate under one regional management structure, focus all our resources on maximising our Esri relationship, and delivering the growth opportunities in our extensive European customer base.

Corporate activity

We will continue to identify strategic and bolt-on acquisitions to complement our organic growth.

Strategic priorities for the year ahead

We will continue to focus on the three pillars of our growth strategy. Key initiatives will be investment into our delivery resource, marketing and sales teams, particularly in the USA, to capitalise on our successes in FY21 and deliver on the data governance opportunity. We will work closely with Esri, particularly in France, where we see great opportunity to expand our customer base and continue the successful migration of our customers onto the new Esri platform and our Esri based business applications. In the UK, we see a growing opportunity to work on large government contracts, building back post-Covid-19 and as they and other partners embrace the sharing of data to meet Environment and Social initiatives. We see a growing opportunity to cross-sell our business applications, developed France and the UK, into our other territories and offer our 1Integrate and 1Data Gateway solutions into France. We will continue to expand our capability and expertise in our Tunisia centre of excellence, providing increased development support and cost-effective delivery capacity to the Group.

We are on track to launch our multi-tenant SaaS platform by the end of the current financial year, increasing our addressable market, meeting existing customer demand for web-based solutions, providing more flexible “pay as you go” pricing structures and lowering the price point for entry for new customers. We believe the launch of the platform can be transformational for the Group in future years.

Our financial goals will be to increase revenue growth underpinned by growing annual recurring revenue and continue our trajectory of increased profitability at adjusted* EBITDA level and higher cash generation over the long-term.

COVID-19

At the date of this report, most sites continue to work on a remote basis, providing outstanding support to our customers. We anticipate a phased return to office working through the course of 2021, in line with local government guidelines in each territory, providing our teams with the opportunity to once more interact with each other face to face, while retaining the benefits of increased digital connections across the business.

We chose to maintain all of our skilled workforce during the Covid-19 period, receiving no support under the UK Government job retention scheme, although, we received financial support of £0.3m in some overseas territories, where there was a greater impact. We increased our funding from corporate lenders in H1 2021 by £1.8m. We controlled expenditure tightly throughout the year, deferring some discretionary spending. However, we benefited from our extensive customer base, healthy levels of recurring revenue and growing contracted order book, to prove resilient during an unprecedented year.

1Team

We are passionate about looking after our staff and have actively promoted the importance of mental health and happiness during the year. Taking the time to be kind to yourself is something we urge all our staff to do and as part of our commitment to their well-being, we rolled out initiatives such as well-being months, mental health awareness training, mental health first aiders and internal events and initiatives to encourage staff to take time out from their working day.

We are always looking at ways to ensure equality and diversity across our company and an inclusive, welcoming working environment for everyone. Over the past year, we have created global initiatives to celebrate: International Women’s Day, World Food Day, Diwali, Thanksgiving, Mental Health Awareness Week, Earth Day and Health and Happiness month.

The teams have shown extraordinary ingenuity and commitment, really stepping up in this challenging time, for which the Board and I thank them wholeheartedly. We believe one of the positive impacts of this year has been the increased connectivity across our geographic regions, with the increased use of digital communications bringing us closer during our shared challenges.

Current Trading & Outlook

There is an increasing need for clean, accessible and up to date location data to support many new initiatives. These include investment in infrastructure, building new greener initiatives, such as an enhanced electricity network to support growth in electric vehicles and helping governments to achieve their sustainability goals.

Trading in the new financial year has begun positively and in line with Board expectations, with several new contracts secured and growth in the sales pipeline. New customers won since the year end include: