(synth music) >> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's the Cube. Covering IFS World Conference 2018, brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to the Cube's live coverage of IFS World here at Georgia World Conference here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm you host Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost Jeff Frick. We're joined by Tobias Persson. He is the IoT Services lead here at IFS. Thanks so much for joining us, Tobias. >> Thank you, it feels really nice to be here. >> So, I want to start out by having you explain to our viewers what you do at IFS as an Innovation Service Lead. >> Yes, I'm heading up the IFS Innovation Services Team that came to official existence in May last year. It's there because of the fact if we want to get the IoT message out there, we want to be out there to mission about IoT. Actually helping our sales and presales to do the business discussions with people, with our customers, that is. As well as actually implementing solutions, rolling them out. So, we're kind of like from idea, talk to the customer, to real roll out, that's what my team does. >> So, you said you want to get the IoT message out there. >> Yeah. >> And what is the IoT message, from the IFS vantage point? >> Well, coming from a tech background myself, I've been involved in IoT space for quite some years, and the biggest challenge or difference between normal IoT and IFS IoT is the fact that you can actually do something with the data itself. Typically, when you're talking about IoT historically, it's driven by R and D. It's not a strategic effort at all. It's mainly done to figure it out. And IoT has taken some steps since then. And we're providing a way to actually short cut your IoT data directly into your most business critical system. And doing something with it, providing huge efforts and benefits off the bat. >> And you guys are really integrating IoT into the existing applications, existing workflow, so trying to grab that value, not as a stand alone science project, or something that's on the side-- >> Tobias: Yeah. >> But really integrating it into your existing applications and the existing work-- >> Tobias: Correct. >> That those existing applications are managing. >> Tobias: Yeah, that's true. >> What are some of the impacts that you've seen? Or, I guess, some of the customer impacts that they've seen? >> Well, it's all about automate step, in a sense. At least, that's the first step. I mean, we have seen customers just taking the data out and getting the running rs out, for example. That has huge implications on the amount of time you spend entering stuff, as well as having the data with quality so you can do something with it. But the biggest thing is, really, to automate stuff. Like send out a work order, for example, automate that. Or send out the replenishment for some consumable or whatever it is. So, anything you can run or post or trigger in IFS applications, field service management is actually triggerable by IFT observation. >> So, can you describe to our viewers how the process works. I mean, I know that IFS really prides itself on being so customer centric. >> Tobias: Yeah. >> So, how do you work closely with customers, from the very beginning, from the idea to the actual product and implementation. >> Well, taking it from the start and from the top, we obviously have a full set of IoT industry directors that are really skilled and seeing what's next for the market, being out there to communicate the message. Serve the station is obviously one. Digitalization is another one. So, we're talking about this in all kinds of places, right? My team comes in, kind of like the second stage, where the sales and presales have done a demo with the generic tools that we're providing them with and taking the discussion from there. And we're usually building something that is quite specific for the customer, using their data, really any kind of data to prove the point. Some kind of power BI dashboard, some kind of of actual IT observation going out. And the thing is, when we do that, they tend to really get it when they see things coming in from the physical world into their, this will be your FSM or applications environment. And they see an observation comes in and suddenly, boom, that's an action going on. So, that's what we're trying to do. And we're involving ourselves quite heavily in how to define what's your IT use cases, running workshops with customers, and pinning it down. It's not rocket science or anything, but it's kind of our own methodology to pin down what's your first step? What's your IoT use case that you aim for? And how do you plan to get there? That's what we're trying to achieve with our team. >> Has it been an integration challenge to go to devices and sensors and kind of the IoT world and to plug that back into the application? >> Well, that depends a bit. I mean, our application, our solution is really dependent that it's getting sent the data. Or actually picking up the data from a API or a database. We haven't seen a project yet where we're actually picking up stuff directly from the assets. >> Jeff: Okay. >> What we usually see, though, is that the customer has taken that step already, so they're getting data into some kind of... It could be a printer management system, it could be a whatever management system, and we're getting it from there. We are talking to partners that would allow us to get the data strictly from an industrial context, and industrial protocol, a specific machine, whatever it is. But as of now, we are reliant on the fact that somebody is sending stuff to the IoT hub-- >> Jeff: Right. >> Which is the official usher component. >> So, you're just really taking advantage of that data flow that's already there and really adding an extra layer of value-- >> Tobias: Yeah. >> That they can extract by pumping that into your application. >> Operation allows the whole thing, yes. >> But that is really the key-- >> Yeah. >> The differentiation, is that you're not just seeing the data, you're now saying, okay, what is this data telling us and now what do we do next? What do we do with it? >> Tobias: Yeah. >> So, can you give us a real specific example with Anticimex, and what-- And this is the rodent control, pest control company. And how this company is using your product. >> Yeah, I mean. >> Rebecca: And seeing a real return. >> Yeah, from what I know, Anticimex Finland has deployed this, they have about 3,300 traps in effect out there, at the moment. And they're using this for, well, the traps are connected, obviously, so they send the data, for shots fired, how full it is, battery levels, stuff like that, to do the IoT solution. >> Rebecca: Shots fired, I love it. >> Shots fired, yes. (laughs) So, it's not like a single off, you have to empty it directly, it's kind of a pressurized air container, doing all kinds of killings in a row, if you will. And you need to know how are my traps doing? >> So, it's really, again, just a another layer of efficiency improvement-- >> Yeah. >> By, not just setting and coming back after so much time, but actually having the data for the activity in those traps. >> Yeah, no, they are really, in a sense, they have opened their eyes. They know how their assets are doing. They know when they're full, they know when to pick it up and even if they don't have to go there today. That's also good information for which they need. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So, they're doing this to optimize their service visits and doing like a full automated work order flow. I think the statements from Jussi Ylinen, the managing director of Anticimex Finland that will be here as well later on, they have been doing something like 6,000 automated work orders in the last six months. Which is a huge productivity advantage. >> Jeff: 6,000 automated ones. >> Yes. >> So these are ones coming directly out of the system, based on the feedback from the IoT. >> Tobias: Yeah, not passing any employee at all. >> Wow, that's a huge number. >> How revelatory is that, for a company to have all of the service visits be automated? How much of a change is that? >> I think it's huge, actually. I think it's quite easy to imagine that would be a good idea. However, until now, it's been kind of a hassle to get there. I personally do think that there our solution provides that gap and services as a short cut, as I mentioned before, to get there. >> But I'd imagine, too, it's a process flow on the customer's side, too. Because they got to, now, accept the fact that they don't know exactly what the schedules are going to be for the next several weeks or for those days because they have to allocate some portion to the automated process, or they're feeding that in at some level, upstream, to make sure that gets integrated into all the rest of the activity. >> Well, you could have, if you wanted to, manual intervention in all stages, if you want to. You need to, probably, if you need, if you're on an oil rig or something, that you have a critical part, automated order coming in, that should be accepted by someone along the way, that's perfectly fine, as well. So, it doesn't have to be fully automated if you don't want to. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> But it can be. >> So, I know that you're not only an IoT evangelist within IFS, you're an IoT evangelist in general and in your professional life. >> Yeah I hope so. (all laughing) >> So, can you talk to us, big picture, big strategy, where you see IoT going in the world but then also as it relates to IFS? What does the future hold? >> Well, the easy answer is, you may have seen the old commercial where they state, well, we need to be on the web. Why? It doesn't say. Well, that kind of, you know that you need to consider this. But you don't really know how to get there. That kind of approach is somewhere along the line where we are right now with IoT. I mean, we used to be something like a buzz word. People tried to figure it out. Nowadays, it's more like people have taken steps, they have the data somewhere. It's usually stored somewhere in some database or some system or whatever. But it's the actionable part that's missing. I don't think people actually tend to look for the actionable part in a ERP company. But that's actually what we're providing. So, I think in a few years to come, it will be seen as suspicious not to have your stuff connected, not to have your open data. Instead of being the other way around. I think this will be a very natural part of not being blind to how your assets are doing. >> Jeff: Right. >> Why would you like that? That's the old fashioned style. So, I think this will be a very natural step in any kind of of product development of all service centric company in years to come. >> And do you think it's indicative of people accepting a lot more data sources into their decision making processing? >> Yeah. >> And adding that layer of automation? 'Cause a piece you didn't talk about, that's obviously part of that, is AI in some point in time, right? >> Yeah. >> 'Cause now, you got the automation, you got all this stuff coming in, you can't send the entire fleet out tomorrow if you only have x number of vans and you got x number, 6,000 service requests. So, then you add that AI component, the machine learning component, the prioritization component in, again, moving more of this manual scheduling process or routine, scheduled maintenance-- >> Yeah. >> Into a much smarter way to execute the details. >> Yeah, it's all in the step of going from data collection, data acquisition, figuring out the technical stuff behind connectivity, getting the data out. And now with the next step when the revolution comes. How do we approach that? With AI, with machine learning, with actionable insights, whatever. And to be quite frank, I don't think people necessarily don't want to see that. They want to see what comes out of it, but they don't want to see behind the curtains on that. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So maybe, just maybe, in the near future, people will need to bring in someone that knows machine learning from A to Z in the companies. Or at least use someone that does their insights for them. >> Jeff: Right. >> So, how will IFS expand it's IoT offering, at the next World Congress next year? >> Well, as you know, we have had a few early adopters adopt the program for IoT, yeah. And they seem excellent and they're actually being the first ones out, they're live right now. They have a really good story to tell. So, that's good. In a sense, we are taking it from the heavy asset centric, from our rig, that's one part. We have taken some steps. Service is the next one, being Anticimex in Kucera. We believe that connected field service is the main thing to go for. The real good IoT use cases is for connected field service with assets, or sending data throughout. And, to me, the next strategic step, since we are having a whole lot of revenue coming from manufacturing, is actually connected manufacturing, or connected manufacturing lines. Industry four point zero, whatever you like to call it. That's our next strategic move with IoT, as I see it. >> The lines have been connected for giving data, but not necessarily for actionable data back into the lines, right? That's where the really big change is. >> Yeah. >> For the automation, automation back into it. >> Yeah. Automation, you have the full scale automation, pyramid where you have the POC that runs the low level control system. Then you have the scale down, the many systems as well. The thing with IoT is not only do you get the data for specific assets, you also get the full picture of like, how are my factories doing? On this level to this level? So, we come small, like a less operator, more kind of strategic view on the whole thing. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> But you need to be able to get the data out from different levels. And actually access it and make sense of it. >> Jeff: Right. >> Which factory is doing best? For example. >> Jeff: Right, and what are you managing, too? You're managing to the device you're managing to the whole output. >> Yeah. >> So, maybe based on economic factors, you want to run things hard, which is maybe not optimal for maintenance but because of the economic situation-- >> Yeah. >> You're going to press it. So it's really, that variable management opportunity-- >> Absolutely. >> Is a very different way of kind of looking at your output. >> And one way, one view really-- >> Jeff: Right. >> A scalable view, really. There is a stand just behind us, where we'll show a an industrial demo, together with Accenture, which will actually trigger a service request from a physical device, an engine, in this case. That goes into the system, the IFS system, that is actually scheduled, sent the repair guy that comes out, wearing a whole lens and fix the issue. >> Jeff: Right. >> So, that's an end to end thing. It's actually manageable and doable with our solution. >> Jeff: Great. >> And that was one of the things that the CEO talked about during the keynote too, is that it is automating certain tasks, but then really leaving the more unique tasks up to the human and the human connecting. With machines and also with other humans. >> Tobias: Hmm. >> So, tell me a little bit about differences that you've seen in the market. So, IFS, based in Sweden, many of its senior leaders in London, but of course, you have places all over the world. Do you see any differences, in terms of the customers in Europe versus the US? And how you're thinking about maybe making a bigger push into the US? >> That's a really good question. I'll have to think about that for a while. (All three laugh) I think what we are seeing in my team, at least, that's kind of on our horizon, is that Germany in general are heading toward industry four point zero, that's kind of a really hard driving fact. That's stated even by the government. So, we need to get into that, as well as pushing for field service management as a solution. US, I think, we should be doing more in. Let's put it that way. >> Great, great. Well, we look forward to hearing more about what you are doing in the US. (All three laugh) >> Jeff: More. >> Exactly. >> Jeff: That's a good thing. >> Tobias, thank you so much for coming on the Cube. We've had a great time with you. >> Thanks for having me. >> Jeff: Thank you. >> It was a pleasure. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. We will have more from IFS World here in Atlanta, Georgia just after this. (low energy techno)

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live, rom Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE. Covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference 2018 here in Atlanta, Georgia, I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Jeff Frick. We are joined by Darren Roos. You are the CEO of IFS. Thanks so much for joining us Darren. >> Great to be here, thanks for making time. >> So the conference is buzzy, we're really picking up a lot of excitement here. But I wanted to talk about you, just starting as CEO in April, brand new to the role. What what drew you to the role? >> You know as I did my due diligence on IFS what you found was there was a customer base that was super engaged with what we were doing. If you look on Gartner Peer Insights' website as an example, we're the top-ranked ERP solution amongst our peers. If you look at our NPS scores, we have a 34% bump on our top five competitors. So, when you have the opportunity to lead a business, of scale, we're half a billion Euros in revenue, with a super happy customer base, that's a great opportunity, so you know, I couldn't pass it up. >> And this is something that you also talked a lot about in your in your keynote. And and the number, the metrics speak for themselves- >> Absolutely. >> but it's the customer focus, the relentless customer focus, how do you maintain that? What is the secret sauce? >> Yeah, you know, I think it's not one thing, it's loads of different things. You can think about the business model that we have, but another data point that I love about the business, that the average tenure of our employees is nine years, right. And to really understand ERP, to understand how our customers are using the technology, you have to have tenure, you have to have account managers, and pre-sales people, and consultants, who've had the time to engage with the business, to go on this journey with them, to understand how the technology works, how the industry works, and really be able to move the needle in a meaningful way. And you know, most of our peers just don't have that tenure. They're focused on other things. And I think that the fact that we're able to bring in young talents, like we saw Tyler on stage this morning, talking about the technology, but with great people like Amy on stage, who have had great experience with our customers. That balance of tenure, and experience, and innovation, is really how we've managed to drive those results. >> It's really hard thing to maintain, because they've got to feel engaged obviously, with their customers and feel good about helping their customers, but they've also got to feel really good about the management and the company behind them, that enables them to deliver the innovation, to be engaged, and have that institutional knowledge. If you lose the institutional knowledge, both the customer's institutional knowledge, as well as your own organization, it's really hard to replicate and expensive. >> Yeah, it's difficult to do, and the reality is, it might be expensive to replace the people, but you can't replace the knowledge, right. You just can't do it. So you know we've been nominated as a great place to work for the last nine years, I think it is. So you know the fact that we were able to maintain that status, together with the customer satisfaction scores, are really the reason why we have the buzz that we do here today. >> So this is your first World, WOCO, World Conference, as you're calling it. What do you hope attendees come away with? >> Yes, we're not as big as some of our our peers, and I think it's really important that our customers come away from this understanding that they've bought the best technology that there is in the market. And really, when when we talk about the Gartner Peer Insights rankings, that's the validation for me. I'm not talking about some nebulous metric that I invented. If our customers say we're the best, or the customers in the market say we're the best, that's a good validation for me. So the customers that come here, and the partners that come here, can be proud of the fact that we are the number one in this industry, when it comes to the quality of solution that we deliver. So that's one thing that I want them to know. And then another thing that is really unique about IFS, is that we don't sell software. We sell an outcome. When we engage with the customer, they have a specific business benefit that they're wanting to derive, and we stick with them, we really partner with them to deliver that outcome. And again, I say that in a very meaningful way, because a very large proportion of our business are the services to implement our own software. So we work very closely with our ecosystem of partners in order to deliver it, but we're always on the hook to deliver that customer's success too. So you know, those two messages for me are, you have great technology, be confident in what you've bought, it's recognized as the best on the market, and know that IFS will always be in your corner. >> Go ahead. >> I was just going to ask about the culture, because you also talked about that being one of the things that really drew you to IFS, and then the need for candor too. So how do you make sure that customers are telling you things, even sometimes things you don't necessarily want to hear? Because you also made a point of saying that on stage, come up, talk to me, I want to hear it. >> Yeah, look I think, you know, how you encourage that and this is my leadership style, is not to become defensive, and to show customers that when they give you that feedback, that you value it and you take action. And I think that's a very self-fulfilling approach to take. So you know, I'm a straight shooter, I always have been. It's what my reputation is. And I think that it's a good match with the IFS culture because that just, tell it how it is approach, is how IFS typically does things. I think it comes from the fact that we're a Swedish company, and you know, it's a very open culture, a very straightforward and honest culture. It's not hierarchical, and that's a good fit with the way I like to run the business. >> It's still hard though, 'cause nobody wants to tell the boss bad news, right. So, I mean the fact that you have that, and it's, the right thing is to actively search out the negative right. >> No one, no one told them that they don't like to tell the boss bad news. >> They didn't know. >> People are quite happy to tell me the bad news when there's bad news tell me, no no. >> Well, that's the only way you can fix it right? >> Absolutely. >> So I want to kind of talk about digital transformation, and I could probably drop about 100 buzzwords, with IOT, and cloud, and AI, and dead smart people that get branded interesting things. But really it comes down to something you talked about in the keynote, and that's getting closer to the customer. Getting close to the end user. Whether that's you and your customers, or your customers and the consumers of their products. How do you see, I mean is that really the essence of digital transformation? Is the enablement of getting closer to the end customer? >> I think that proximity to the customer is a major trend that we see in, whether it's through servitization or product, or whether it's through, the example that I gave on stage this morning, with just you know, all companies, whether they're B2B or B2C, getting to know their customers better, I think it's a trend that we see. But really, the IFS philosophy is, don't worry about the buzzword. Don't think about AI, or about IOT, or about any of these things. Think about the business problem. Think about the business pain that you're experiencing and then let's figure out a way to leverage technology to solve that problem. When you have the business pain in mind, whether that's an inflated cost base, or whether you're trying to drive incremental revenue, trying to launch a new product, whatever it is, then it's much easier to come up with a tangible benefit that you're trying to achieve, and specific metrics. And that's what IFS is focused on. So on the on the Did You Know slides before the keynote started this morning, we spoke about the incredible, tangible benefits, that our clients have recognized, in terms of their improvements in profitability, their improvements in revenue, and these are specific metrics. And we track them, because we're engaged with customers focused on that outcome. So you know I think from my perspective, forget about the buzzwords, really focus on what the business pain is that you trying to solve, and then leverage technology to solve that problem, and measure whether you've managed to solve the problem. And that's how they should focus. And very often today, in a disproportionate number of cases, that's about somehow getting closer to the end user customer. Understanding what they're looking for, how they want to transact, and we see that in every industry. >> I'm just curious from a historical perspective, you've been in ERP for a long, long time, and I remember when kind of the first big ERP wave hit, I don't know 30 years ago, 40 years ago, you know better than I, right, there was this huge leap in productivity and efficiency. Are you amazed still today, that there are these giant opportunities for efficiency improvements? It just staggers my mind that there's still so many big opportunities, to squeeze so much more value out of processes and assets. >> I think the reality is that technology, while it is the enabler, it's also very often the inhibitor. So you know, what we see is, we see as these new technologies come on board, that we're able to unlock new capabilities that the technology just simply didn't enable before. We have a great customer, Anticimex, who are in the pest control market. And the way pest control companies, Anticimex are an example, is that they would put rodent traps out and then they'd have to send field service agents around to go check whether the traps had been activated. And now they put sensors in the traps, the traps report back when they've been triggered, and they only send field service agents out to go and check when a trap has been triggered. Clearly, that's a level of efficiency when, pre-sensors, and pre the IOT connectors that we have today, simply weren't possible. So it's really about the way in which innovation is, technology is enabling us to do things that simply weren't possible before. So now it's, you know, you can understand why happens. >> Yeah, and then the other piece that you talked about there, is really kind of this API economy, with you know, connecting the very disparate databases. So that's a big piece. Then the other pieces we're surrounded here, is the ecosystem. I wonder if you can speak a little to, you know, how the ecosystem plays in helping you deliver value to your customers. >> So IFS, as I've said before, have always had an approach which is, that we want to own the value, the outcome for the customer, the value delivery, the value assurance. And I think now what we're looking at, is how do we leverage the ecosystem to do a bit more of the work so that we can make sure that we can scale? Because as we win bigger and bigger customers, with global footprints, doing bigger roll-outs, they're wanting to engage with partners who perhaps have a bit more experience from an industry perspective or from a horizontal, functional perspective. So you know, as we engage with partners like Accenture, or like PWC, or other partners like that, it really gives us the ability to scale the business to a greater extent. So the ecosystem are critical for us in doing that, but for us, we can't compromise on the quality. It is always quality first. It's always a case of making sure that our customers will still realize the benefits while we give them some more options on how they can deploy. >> So the theme of this conference is Connect to What's Next. So we want to know what is next for IFS. Particularly as you were talking about doing your due diligence, and it has these great metrics, it's kind of this best kept secret, really, in this industry. >> It is an incredibly well kept secret. >> So how are you going to get the secret out? >> Look, I think, from my personal planning perspective as CEO, we have some work to do around standardizing our operating model. At the moment we're a fairly fragmented business. We have eight regions, and those eight regions don't all run in the same way. So we have some internal homework to do, and we'll get through that pretty quickly. After that it's really about leveraging the global partnerships that we have. You know Microsoft are here as an example, Accenture are here as an example, as platinum sponsors. And leveraging those partners, to get better known in the market, and those are some of the discussions that we've kicked off. And I think there's lots of ways for us to, to try and leverage the secret, to try and kind of open, open the box a little, and show people the power of what we've got. But I think we're going to, we're a relatively small business still, and we're going to have to leverage those partnerships as a springboard to get to more people. >> And this is your first US world conference, right? You guys have had other conferences in North America, but not your big one. >> Darren: I think they've done one here before. >> Darren and Jeff: I think there was one in Boston a couple years ago. >> But I don't know, I think that was more kind of a North American one, maybe or Americas, then the world conference. >> What I'm saying is that when we nearly twice as big this year at the World Conference as we were at the last one. And I anticipate the next one will be twice as big again. So you know, we're seeing phenomenal growth, we're seeing strong growth in our revenues strong both in our headcounts, and we're seeing strong growth in the number of people who are interested in our technology, so, you know, things are good. >> Great, well Darren thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. We've had a great conversation. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. We will have more from IFS World Conference 2018 in just a little bit. That was terrific. (techno music)