>> Voiceover: Live, from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE. Covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by, IFS. >> Rebecca: 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. It's been a great day here. >> Jeff: Yes. >> We've had a lot of wonderful conversations, great panels. Last one to go, you can tell the atmosphere is getting... >> They're wheeling out all the alcohol I think... >> Exactly. Exactly. >> ...for the reception this evening. >> But we have saved best for last. We have Dan Matthews, who is the CTO of IFS and Bas De Vos who is the Director of IFS Labs. So Bas and Dan, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> So, when I talked, we've heard a lot about IFS Apps 10, and this is the big news, but what we haven't talked about too much is Arena. Can you describe to our viewers this new user experience, and what it means? >> Alright, well, IFS Arena, like you said, it's a new user experience via past applications, and that's something that's really important to us because it's important to our customers. Because what they want to do is, they want to put great tools in the hands of the people, right? And we all know when it comes to software, how great a tool is is a large part down to the user experience, so that's why we've done it. And what we've done is create something that we think is more inspired by really well-designed consumer software, but we've adapted that for these big enterprise applications like we are doing. >> It's pretty amazing in your keynote because you showed, I think five different UI's based on different devices in the prior versions, where now you're coming to kind of a standardized single (mumbles) experience across various platforms or across various devices to actually interact with the applications. That's got to be, feel good to get that down to kind of one responsive design. >> And to a degree, that's just rescinding to reality because you used to think about, you had your PC and you had a way of doing that. And then you go to your mobile app, or maybe, I mean, people are using so many different kinds devices today. So if we were to purpose build something just for your iPad, something for your phone, something for this, something for your TV, we'd be stuck forever, right? So what we did instead, is we said, "Let's build one experience that actually adapts "to all these different environments, "and get that really, really well." It's not that easy, but in the end, it's a much better way of approaching it. >> Right, and I thought the part that I liked was as when you're new to something, you don't necessarily want a high density of information in a screen or whatever, 'cause you're just not sure, you're learning, whatever, it's new. But then as you become more experienced, obviously your comfort zone goes up, you want a lot more dense information, and really, in your work platform you demoed earlier today, you have a lot of options whether you want kind of the more consumery, more picturey, less efficient way, or do you want the "I know this well, "and I want the thick content." >> And what we basically does, we flipped it upside down, 'cause if you look at Enterprise Software, and ERP, and has to management this kind of stuff, it always used to be designed for the professional, right? And then you would try to simplify it for the newbies that're coming into the business. Can we remove some things, hide some things away, configure some things? Now we've done it the other way around. So the default is it's designed for the novice person that's just coming in seeing this for the first time. And then as you learn, as you say, you can expand and grow, and they get sort of more rich in the data you're seeing. And this is really, really important right? Because people aren't staying that long in the jobs anymore. So if you think about people moving around, they know the business, but they might not know the business applications, so they basically come in, I'm a purchasing guy, come in, pick up the purchasing system directly, that's really really important. >> Needs to be intuitive? >> Yeah, make it intuitive first, and then progressively let people discover more, rather than give all the options and all the complexity and then expect them to simplify it. That's harder. >> So, Bas, I want to talk to you a little bit about the development process and how you come up with these kind of things. Can you describe how it works at IFS Labs, what approach you take? >> Yeah of course, and then perhaps Dan can add to this a little bit later as well. But because IFS Labs is just a part of the process, right? But if you look in our general development process, for us, it's very important to stay close to our customers, right? What do our customers need today? What do they need tomorrow? And we have to basically be able to deliver functionality they need for their problems right on time. And IFS Labs plays a part in that. We are basically (mumbles) for sending before that. So we approach it a little bit the other way around. So instead of looking at a customer problem and trying to find a solution for that, we basically look ahead. We look a couple of years in the future. What kind of technologies are coming up? What kind of possibilities are there, and can we find a problem for it? And that sounds strange, right? Because we're known in the business of finding problems. But it does allow us to experiment and come up with innovative solutions that might work for tomorrow. But before we actually move that into production, or hand it over to regular R&D development, well we do step back and go to our customers and say, "Hey wait a minute, this is what we are thinking Labs, "what do you think about that? "Does it work for you, does it help you?" and validate it with them. >> So it's an interesting challenge for Labs, for looking down the road, because, and Steve Jobs' famous quote, that we don't necessarily deliver just what our customers ask for. They're not asking for things that are down the road, so you got that responsibility to look down the road. On the other hand, nobody likes technology that doesn't have a problem to solve. So you got to be delicate. Because if you just build something for the sake of building something, maybe there's some ancillary value. But at the end of the day, someone's got to use it and they got to drive direct values. So how do you kind of play that balance beyond, "Yes we listen to customers, "but there's this other stuff coming "that maybe they're not too aware of"? >> Yeah that's true, totally true, I completely agree with you. And I think that is the role of IFS Labs, right? So if we look in the overall process, the fact that we have a Labs, we don't... A license to experiment with trying out stuff, validating it with our customers, we can basically... Try it out before we actually take a decision to build something that our customers are not waiting for. So exactly the problem you just sketched, I think that our interest, IFS Labs, to resolve that. >> We have seen this happening throughout history, right? So if you look at how IET started, for us, it started with a product in IFS labs, when together we want a customer learning and understanding how they should be applied to the kind of businesses and industries that we serve. And then it went into mainstream R&D development and then we have real solutions, and now we have customers, who've been live for years, using this kind of stuff. So that is exactly the process you want to have. Try it out, and when we have a grasp on how this relates to our customers, then we up the next level of investment and take it further. >> And then, similarly, we had a project in IFS Labs that, well we tried out, and after a couple of months or even longer we said, "This is not going to work "for our customers, it's actually not helping them today. "Might be a couple years from now, but today let's stop it." >> So was this how your kind of integration of AI and machine learning into the applications took place? You looked forward, this is a cool new thing we need to play, but at the same time, we're not going to name it after a smart dead guy. (group laughing) But really bake it into the applications where it makes the most sense. And that sounds like it's kind of your execution strategy. >> Yeah definitely and AIs are a very, very, very big topic, right? It's an umbrella for so many different types of applications. Dan was talking this morning about three main areas where we think AI makes most sense for our products. It's basically human-machine interaction, predictive maintenance and service, an automation. But each of those areas, they basically have their own... Own life cycle, right? So if you look at human-machine interaction, at the morning. This morning we were talking about the IFS Arena bot. We're actually in a proper development phase. So that's much further ahead in that cycle, while other AI related topics like doing mass-automation, only your (mumbles), that's earlier in the cycle and that's still in Labs. So although AI is a big umbrella topic, the different topics in there follow that same approach. >> Can you be a little more specific about the projects you're working on, or is it top secret? >> At the World Conference everybody wants to know our secrets, but luckily, at World Conference we share them. >> Jeff: This is between us four. >> Yeah nobody's listening, right? Or watching? (laughs) So yeah at this World Conference we're hosting an innovation area. And in the innovation area, we're showcasing a wide range of basically possible technologies and how you could apply them to future business. We basically took the approach of depicting an end-to-end automatous business. So basically go all the way from mining stuff, in a mine in the ground, to using that in a factory, to producing products for the customer. And we basically build all kinds of technologies in there to make that completely automatous. Might not all be possible today, but it's really there to inspire our customers to look ahead. Some examples of the things we're using, a block chain inside enterprisesque management, mixed reality with Microsoft HoloLens to do service repairs, digital twins in virtual reality, automatous vehicles. So there's a lot of interesting stuff going on there. >> That's great, those are the great buzzwords but you put them all within application, and they're just standalone. >> Dan: What it does really well, is it kind of illustrates how these technologies are used in context... >> Right. >> Dan: With all of these things. >> That's super. >> You are an IFS veteran, >> Yes. >> You came as a developer and now here you are, CTO. Tell our viewers a little bit about how the company has changed in your opinion, and also now as you are sort of making a bigger push into North America, what we can expect. >> Well, what else changed, if I go back and I've not been with this company for more than 20 years. But what I've seen is we've got a lot more professional. Of course, we're a big organization now, and the way we run things and the way the business is run is a lot more professional. If you go back to the late '90s, this was before the dot-com boom, everybody was pouring money into the IT industry, so that was not an objective. So we were doing R&D but we were also burning money. And I think after that bubble burst, we all learned to become proper business people as well. I'll tell you one that hasn't changed, though, and that really is the kind of atmosphere that is within the company, right? How close we are to our customers, and how the customers reality always comes first and how we all help each other support. That really hasn't changed despite the fact we're so much bigger and we're 20 years old and all that kind of stuff. >> So why do you think is it 'cause maintaining culture is really, really difficult and we go to a lot of shows and we often talk about if it's a founder-led, and if they're a good CEO to double benefit, to keep that culture, but when you got turned over at the top, how do you maintain the culture that you guys have built? >> I think in the beginning, I think it was a lot of that founder-led, right? It was really led by the founders and one of the founders was our CEO for many, many years. But then it kind of got ingrained a little bit, between the Scandinavia culture. That it's quite open, quite sort of friendly, helpful, lots of hierarchical. And that then sort of spread out as the business expanded into nationally. And we kept it also on the R&D side. We do a lot of R&D in Chalinka for example. Which has a surprisingly similar feeling in the culture, actually. So I think it just got so big and so strong in the company, that it just naturally, new people come in and naturally sort of carry on with that same way of being that we've had it before. >> Rebecca: They adopted and embraced it. >> Because that was the end, Dan said when he was doing his due diligence, right? The culture was a huge piece of why he came to the company. >> I think if they were the other way around, we have seen that when we brought businesses in as well, that is, right, these guys have a similar culture to us, great, fantastic business to bring into to the IFS family. >> Jeff: Sir, you were going to say? >> I was going to say, in the end also, you're attracting people to your company and the people that are staying are also the people that feel at at home, and that feel comfortable, and that feel, I'm a little bit shorter than Dan inside the company for two years now. But basically, I feel the same with the culture, right? And it fits me as a person, and therefore I think I'm inclined to stay longer at IFS than if the culture would not fit me. And as you attract people with the same mindset together. It only gets stronger. >> Right, well Dan and Bas, thank you so much. This has been really fun last panel of the day, so we appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Good luck on your keynote on Thursday. >> Bas: Thank you very much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. This has been IFS World Conference 2018. We will have more after this. (light techno 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 Conference 2018 here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a three-guest panel with us today. We have Mark Boulton who is the CMO, Antony Bourne, vice-president Global Industries Solutions, and Brian Sommer who is an analyst at TechVentive. Thank you so much for joining us, gentlemen. I really appreciate it. >> Happy to be here, thank you. >> Happy to be here, yeah. >> So this is a big, big event for IFS, WOCO, as it's known. So talk a little bit about what you're hearing already from customers and feedback that you're getting. >> Sure, well the first thing is that everyone's told us Atlanta was a great choice of venue. >> Rebecca: This time of year in particular. >> Well, just flown in actually, from London where the weather is not this good. But, we've had really good feedback so far and still only at the end of the first morning. But the opening keynotes and the reveal of IFS Apps 10 went really well. I think most people have been really pleased with the content that they're seeing on the whole. So feedback is good. We know it's a big investment in time and time out of the office for our customers to come here. So we need to make sure that it's time well spent, that they get value. And so far, the feedback is really good. They're learning stuff, they're seeing things for the first time. They're meeting their peers and connecting. So it's good. >> And before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about the customers interacting with each other. Not only just you and telling you how they're using your product, but also interacting with each other and talking about things that they have learned and sites that they have gleaned. So can you describe a little bit about what's happening? >> And that's a key thing because we love our customers, we love getting them together, we love them talking to each other. It's not just taking it from our words and taking it for granted, we want them to share the experience, we want them to say, okay, what to do in this scenario? How did you overcome this? So these events are fantastic. I've just been talking to a customer, now, before lunch, about how they want to upgrade based on what they've already seen. And we're only halfway through day one. And it's just like, I want to talk to my account manager, I want a meeting about what we're going to do and when we're going to be doing it. So it's a fantastic event, fantastic. >> So, how about you? What are you seeing in terms of this new release with IFS 10. I mean, what interests you most as an analyst? >> Well, I've got some clients who specifically ask me to be on the lookout for some things over here at today's show. And one of them was around the new user experience on release 10 product. They're looking for something that's a richer web-based kind of mobile type of experience, or consumer-user interface experience for them. And I think they'll be happy with what's been announced over here today. It will come out in phases, obviously, but it works on everything now. Every kind of device and that's what the client wanted to see. And I'll report that back. >> Just to echo what Brian said, we've had customers already contacting us about because there is a certain functionality which we've introduced to IFS Applications 10, which they really, really want so they've actually said okay even before we announced it, which we let them have some indication of what was happening and they said, we need that, we want that. So its future is looking really good for upgrades, as well as new customers. >> One of the things that we keep hearing a lot of how customer-focused, how customer-centric IFS is as a company. The metrics speak for themselves in terms of your NPS scores and the Gartner insights. So how, as CMO, how are you going to get the word out, really? Because IFS is kind of known one of the best kept secrets in the industry. >> And it's true that we don't have quite the brand recognition that maybe some of the huge, massive competitors have. But, within our industries, we are very well known and we're known for all the right things. Great products, well-implemented and well-supported. We are leaders in a lot of the markets in which we play. Events like this is actually one of the key objectives for us. Is to have a good presence from analysts and journalists, the influencers, we call them. We like to think we look after them very well. They get the inside track on things that we're working on. So we use a lot of tools to actually spread the word. But, our biggest advocates are our customers. The people that have our software and have worked with us, they genuinely do love the products. And for those that were in the main room this morning when we launched-- Dan Matthews, our CTO, he said one of our core objectives is to design a product that people love. And so literally our customers will go out, as our NPS scores indicate as you mentioned, they will do the job for us. They tell people; they tell them very positive things about their experience. We did some studies. The majority of our customers actually are more profitable than people than use our competitor products. They're must faster time to solution and things like that. So these are the things that our customers are saying about us and these are good things to be talked about for. >> Right. Brian, what would you say should be keeping companies up at night. I mean, IFS is doing a lot of the right things. As you said, you're going to report back, the customer will probably be happy with what they hear. But what are some of the things that maybe customers are saying or customers are needing that you're hearing? That kind of feedback that maybe IFS-- what would be sort of your best advice for the future? >> Well, I think IFS plays in a bunch of different parts of the world. There is no single answer that will solve every customer in every part of the planet. And there are some very realistic problems that some companies have in areas where there's spotty electric power, or spotty internet access, and the like. They're going to probably continue to want a non-premise kind of solution. There are others in developing countries where they've clearly bypassed an entire generation, or two, of technology and they want to straight into cloud. And I know these guys, they've got a number of different cloud modules, or applications, in field services, one of those areas. And field service is a great one for the cloud, simply because that's what business is all about. It's about a bunch of people carrying tablets, and cell phones, smart phones, whatever, in and out of customer locations. That's fine. But by-and-large, what do the clients want? Well, I think what they want more than anything nowadays, they want to get out of the data-center business and more and more clients are looking at utility computing. And they're expecting vendors, eventually, to get them out of maintaining and running data centers because they have more confidence that vendors, and or partner technology provider can do a better job at web-security, maybe, than they could in-house by themselves. >> Just to echo that. >> I think one of the key differentiators from the IFS offering is the fact that we give our customers choice. We say, what do you want? We have the solution for you. Do you want it on prem? Do you want is SAS? Do you want it in the cloud? What is best for you? So that's where we can offer the customers something different than what some of competition may offer. >> Right. >> And just one more thing on that topic. And Darren mentioned it in his keynote this morning. But in North America, 50% of their customers are deploying on cloud, now. And that's core ELP. But in FSN, it's not quite 100%, but it's almost. And that's not dependent on the geography. Wherever we sell that product in the world, most people are choosing to deploy on cloud. So that is really real now, that trend. People see the benefits. I think, obviously, the majority of the industry and markets, and cloud solutions, now. But there really are tangible benefits and I think the customers have got it, now. And the move is real. >> If I can add on, I think one of the big things that is changing, is that customer after customer, client, client, I go to, they got a name for a project they want to take on. It can be the factory, the future, it could be a modernization, ERP modernization, or IT modernization. It could be a process transformation, digital transformation, business process redesign, whatever. They've all got a name for something. They don't know quite what it is, they really have a hard time defining it. But, they're on this journey and what they're looking for is more than just a basic transaction processing ERP product. They want something that will handle, like, IOT technology. They want connectors that connect up things beyond the four walls of the enterprise. They want to connect up to their assets as well as to assets that are out in the field, either with customers, what have you. And that's really where the future of this base is going right now. >> One of the things that we've also heard about in the keynote was the real emphasis on time-to-value. The customer really wants to be able to see a return on investment almost immediately. Is it difficult to keep up? It's almost an unrealistic expectation to see that value right away. >> I think it's down to what solution they're trying to solve and the ease of use; the implementation. And as we've said, from an IFS point of view, we want users to love the application. That means it needs to be easier to use. With what we've introduced today, with IFS Applications 10, does make it easier for customers and users to actually get the benefits out of their solution as quickly as possible. >> And are you able to keep up with the pace of change? How do you keep up, I mean to say? >> There are a number of different ways. Because we focus on our core industries, we belong to industry organizations, we often have customer advisory meetings at customer premises. Because we invite all the customers to it, or as many as we can so that we can talk to them, they can give us feedback about what they want to see in a product going forward, and we can channel that, in addition to the trends that we see in the industry. Because we have a lot of people that have come from the industry, they have that experience embedded in them. So they know what the industry wants. But we need to keep up with the trends to ensure we give them that benefit once they implement the solution. >> And one of the things I would add is that time-to-value is improved if the product is a good fit in the first place. If you've got to do a lot of modifications-- first you're adding in cost, you're also adding time, and complexity and risk to the project. And the industry expertise that Andy talks about, which comes in from a number of directions into our RND and it's reflected in our product. At least we've done a number of charts over the last few versions of our software. And if you go back like 10 or 15 years, you'd see that maybe, 25%, 30% of the project was going into modifying the software to make it do what the customer needed before they could even turn it on live. Today, we have a lot of clients who've upgraded from eight to nine, or now nine to ten, and they've literally-- they're running standard software. And so there, your time-to-solution is really rapid. It's as quick as you can move data and so on. But if you're not modifying it, that's key. >> That's the key, exactly. Well, Mark, Antony, Brian, thank you so much for joining us, it's been a great conversation. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> No problem. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have much more from IFS World Conference just after this. (upbeat techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE. Covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IFS World here at Georgia here at World Congress Center I'm your host Rebecca Knight and along with my cohost Jeff Frick. We are joined by Cindy Jowden, she is the CEO North America a position she has held since 2004. Thanks so much for joining us Cindy. >> Good morning, how are you? >> Good, I'm good. >> Great. >> Good. >> It's our first IFS World, it's quite a show you guys have. >> Yeah, we're very excited, you know it's such a great opportunity for us to, you know, connect with so many of our great customers. >> So, tell us a little bit about the theme of this year's conference which is Connect to What's Next. What, what is that all about? >> Well, it's about connecting to what's going on next in technology, and in business, and in the economy. You know, we've got many, you know great customers who are, you know, medium to large size industries and they're having you know, all different kinds of things come toward them around business transformations, you know, their customers are becoming more demanding, consumers are becoming more demanding, and so this conference really helps them see not only what they're facing today but what they're facing for the future. You know, we've got many levels of people that come to this conference you know, we've got CFO's, CIO's to power users and so there's something here really for everyone. So, you know if you want to talk about trends in the industry, you want to talk about what's going on with our new versions of products, that's available. If you are a power user and you're in finance and you just want to go connect with a industry expert to find out how you can do your job easier, it's all here. >> So, it's not only what is next in the technology, it's also connecting human to human. >> Oh. >> I mean that's really what the congress is about. >> Oh, most definitely, you know it's really fun because you'll see you know, customers that maybe haven't seen each other in person since the last world conference. But, they connect and they talk all the time you know via the phone or Skype or whatever, but they see each other and they run and they hug each other and they say, "oh it's so good "to be able to see what's going on" and you know our customers share so much and so that's really just a great opportunity and also for our customers to connect with our experts and you know, the people that they work with, you know from day to day as well. >> Man: So you're CEO of North America. >> I'm the president of the Americas. >> President of the Americas. >> Yes. >> Which includes the southern hemisphere, right? >> Yes, you don't want to forget our friends in Latin America. >> That's right. So it's a Swedish, founded in Sweden, so how are things going in North America or South America, excuse me the Americas, and what kind of values and things that you take from a Swedish based company that you're applying here in the Americas that's maybe a little bit different than a company that was founded in Silicone Valley or someplace like that. >> That's a great question, you know at IFS we've got you know strong you know, Swedish roots and Swedish heritage which says, you know, do what's right, work hard, stay close to your customer and you know, say what you can do and if you can't do something, make sure you say that as well. So, it's setting that right expectations, and we've taken that and that's really pervasive through all that we do. And, you know, we want to make sure that we, you know, can do, you know, say what we do, deliver on what we do, and then, you know, our employees love working with our customers and I think our customers feel you know, feel that we're partners and it's not something that you know, we're not just saying something to get the next deal. It's not unusual for us to say well, I'm sorry, you know, we shouldn't work together because what you want to do Mr. Prospect, is something different and it's not really in our focus and you know and sometimes it's hard to do especially if you're in sales is to walk away from somebody who's ready to buy business, right? >> Right, right. >> But, we want to make sure that you know, the customers that we work with are really good fits for where we're going because these are really long term relationships. >> Right, and how about that, it probably increases your probability of customer success pretty dramatically if you can actually deliver you know, what they want. >> Oh, most definitely, most definitely and you know certainly we also, I don't have the largest marketing budget depending on you know, my competitors that I deal with and so I really depend on great customer satisfaction and great customer references to help, you know, bring the next prospect on as part of the IFS family. And, you know, and our customers I think are some of our best sales people out there. It's really, it's really great. >> One of the things that the CEO talked about in the key note was really about building trust and you were just talking about your marketing budget. He also said, we're not going to market nonsense. Can you talk a little bit about how you build that trust, being honest with customers, obviously, sorry we can't do that, we can't deliver that, but we can deliver this. How, what else, what other kinds of ways do you make sure that you are building the kind of trusting, collaborative relationship with customers that you want? >> Well, it starts with listening. I mean, when you meet with a customer you got to step back, you have to listen, you have to be willing to listen to what you're doing well, and what you're, you know, what you need to improve on. And then you need to be able to take that in and then you know, synthesize it and then, you know, figure out how you're going to improve, you know and at IFS we're always striving to improve, not just with our products and you can see you know, we just released Applications 10 and that's exciting and many many things that are in Apps 10 came from feedback from our customers and from the user group. But, it's also listening with how we do service or how we work with our partners or do we need more partners? You know, we, you know, we have to just, you know be very open and communicative with our customers and I think everybody says that, you know, but you know, you don't say and say oh, I'm not going to listen to my customer. But, you really have to listen and then put it into action. >> Right, right. And, it's not easy to be maniacally focused on your customers, a lot of people say they are but when you peel back just a little bit they're more focused on their products, they're more focused on the competition, they're more focused on a lot of stuff so it is hard to be really singularly focused but you guys are kind of in services management management business so you work with those types of businesses that they themselves are really active in managing that client relationship. >> Oh, most definitely and when they're involved in that business they have very high expectations of what they expect, you know, on the other side when they're the customer as well. And I think we've learned some things from them, too and you know and how they, their service levels and things that they expect from that particular area. I also think it has something to do with the fact that, when we, you know IFS has been in the U.S. for, 20 some years now. But, we didn't come as the biggest player and so we really had to listen. We really had to work directly with those customers and you know we really needed to make sure that every one of those implementations was successful because we needed to you know have that customer ground swell of you know this is the greatest you know greatest software out there to help us continue to grow. >> Right. >> Really prove yourself. >> Exactly, exactly because I can. >> We're number two, we try harder right? >> Exactly, yeah. >> I mean it's a great its a great person to get together with versus we're number one and we're cocky and arrogant and don't care what you say. >> Exactly, exactly, exactly, yeah. >> So, so what is next, I mean we've seen the introduction of IFS 10 and I know we have some early adopters that it's already live with. You've got great scores, your NPS score, your Gartner insight scores are very high. What are some of your ambitions for growth? >> Well, certainly we want, you know, I would look to have the Americas be the largest region for IFS. I mean, that's, I think that you know we've got a great opportunity here. We've got a large market, we've got a great product and you know certainly we just want to continue to grow and so you know right now we are a large percentage of the IFS revenue but we want that to be even larger here in North America and in the Americas, so I think that's certainly very important to us. And we want to grow not only with what we're doing with IFS applications in its core, but also as we're adding new pieces with IFS, new add on products, new technologies to be able to make sure that our customers understand what we're doing there and how that can help their business. You know, I think it was interesting Dan's keynote today was talking about cloud which was a few years ago and now it's mainstream for us. Last time it was talking about IOT and now we've got more and more customers doing that, and so certainly we're looking about artificial intelligence and everybody is talking about that but at IFS we don't just want to say these buzz words. We want to really figure out as a customer what you need, how can you use this technology and monetize it, right because no one implements technology just to implement it. You want to have it help your business. And, so you know those are the kinds of things we're working on what's next and then there's going to be the next thing after you know, artificial intelligence and the next thing and that's why we depend on labs so we're always ahead of the curve and we can be bringing what our customers need. >> I thought it was interesting on Darren's keynote the other thing really is function versus experience, which he talked about time and time again and then with the Arena demonstration, kind of getting to a unified UI experience across all the different platforms. Looks like in nine you had kind of a different hodge podge of five and then you showed how Arena slowly replacing all of them so you'll have this unified experience. But, that's an interesting point of view, really to focus on the experience ahead of really the function and that seemed to be a pretty clear message in his keynote. >> Well, we've been focusing on user experience, that's been one of our you know, core things for the product road map for many years and I think Dan talked about that as well. Certainly it's a balance because if you don't have the feature and function it doesn't matter what your user experience is, you're not going to use it. But, IFS is a very feature rich product and then you need to make sure that you can make it easier to use and so certainly it is focusing on that user experience but continuing to add the functionality that we need to support that as well. And you know, millennials today, they expect to be able just to sit down, they don't want to go to days of training, they don't want to have to. It just should be intuitive and that's our, you know, really what we're trying to do is just to make sure that it's as intuitive to use as a consumer product but really has the depth that you need to get your job done because you know, our customers they have complex businesses and complex business problems that they need to solve and so we need to make sure that we can develop, you know use both and have both of them for our customers to use. >> But, historically in the ERP space was always function over experience and a lot of the historical companies had a pretty bad rap for the user experience so you know, to really prioritize that and then to add some of the automation and the AI to hide certain levels of that detail that you just don't need to see under the UI. I thought that was pretty impressive. >> Yeah, I think it is, I think it is and I think it's very special for where we're going and if you don't, people never really get to implement all the features and functions underneath it. And what my hope is, is that with a good user experience people will use more of the product and then they'll be able to use more of the features and functions that are there today and that we're adding for the future, and they can use that to make their businesses even better. >> So are you working with the customers in the labs, too? I mean, how, how, at what point, 'cause you said that's why you have the labs so you can experiment and iterate and then, but then how do you know what the customer, what is intuitive to the customer and then what the customer needs, how closely? >> Well we'll bring customers into the labs. We will do a labs tour, we did last year that we did that and you let some customers see that. Then our customers know that everything that we do in the labs doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to come out, right? Because you know, we want, we don't want them to fail, but they have the right to fail in the labs because you learn a lot about, you know, what didn't work as well. So, it's making sure that when we have events like this, you know, there's the innovation center over there and making sure that, you know, getting feedback on what they're doing there and letting customers see there and get their input. It's all, once again, about we've got ideas, we need to bring those ideas to the customer, listen to them, get their feedback, listen, and then take it back, synthesize it and go to the next step. >> Deliver it. >> You talked about growth, being a big objective. Are there any particular market segments that you're, that you're looking at? >> Well IFS has had an industry focus for quite some time and we don't expect to change that industry focus. You know, we're very focused on customers who make products and who can, you know, maintain and service assets and so you know right now we're very strong in aerospace and defense, we're extremely strong in service. You know we're ranked highest on those. We've got a great customer base in industrial manufacturing and process and in those particular industries and so we're going to continue to focus on those. I don't see that we're going to go outside those industries because there is more than enough market here in the Americas for us to focus on those and to be very good at it and we need to focus and be extremely good at what we do. Therefore, we can keep the good customer satisfaction. >> All right, and then we just had Tobias on too talking about IOT and really starting to integrate multiple data sources you know a lot more stuff into your existing application to expand on your capabilities. >> Cindy: Oh, most definitely, that's certainly the point. >> You don't need to build a bunch of new stuff necessarily. >> Cindy: Yeah, yeah exactly. >> Great, well Cindy thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. We've had a great time talking to you. >> Cindy: Great, it was a pleasure, thank you. >> Thanks. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick, we will have more from IFS World, theCUBE's live coverage just after this. (techno music)