(calm music) >> Good morning from Miami. Lisa Martin here, live with The Cube, on the floor of IFS Unleashed. We are thrilled to be back with them after not seeing them for three years, of course, of obvious problems. But I'm very happy to be welcoming back one of our Cube alumni and the CEO of IFS, Darren Roos. Darren, it's great to have you back on The Cube. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. >> I was telling you before we started, it must have felt amazing, exhilarating this morning, walking out on stage, seeing that sea of people, of live bodies, and actually getting to engage with your customers and your ecosystem in person again. >> Yeah, it's great. You know, I think we've all dealt with all of the challenges that Covid have brought and I think just going back to something that feels very normal and, you know, getting to interact with people again at this scale is really unique and a great feeling to be back, back in the throes of normality. >> Exactly. In the throes of normality. Well, so much has changed since The Cube last caught up with you. I think it was 2019 in Boston. Talk to me about some of the specific things that you've learned during the pandemic that IFS has done 'cause there's a lot of momentum which we're going to uncover on the show today. >> Yeah. Look, I think when we met last in 2019, the focus then was really on building out our Field Service Management offering. We'd always been a contender in the ERP space and with some asset management capability, but the focus was really on establishing ourselves as a leader in the field service management space. And today we are the undisputed leader in field service managements, both from an analyst and customer recognition perspective and what we've also done is we've really focused on building out that asset management capability and, you know, today, again, we're the number one player in asset management. And when you think about how you bring those two things together and the way that asset and service-centric entities have to orchestrate their organizations to create what we call amazing moments of service for their customers, then you need a technology platform that can provide all of that and we do that, really best-of-breed capability across field service management, asset management and components of ERP, but on a single platform. So customers don't have to deal with the integration complexity that they would in a more heterogeneous environment. >> Which is critical for getting time-to-market, product-to-market services, new revenue streams, et cetera. But you're also the top three ERP vendor. One of the top three. >> Yeah, we're one of the top three ERP vendors. You're growing north of 20%, way more than the big guys. How are you doing it and and where do you win? >> Yeah, you know, I think, for so long, customers have had to choose, as I said, between this best-of-breed and best-of-suite and making compromises either on functionality or on integration and I think that, you know, we are very focused from an industry perspective. As I said, just now, we only focus on capabilities and in service and asset-centric industries, think utilities, aerospace and defense, et cetera and in that space, you know, we have a very compelling proposition, as you said. We can help customers go live faster. We can de-risk those implementations 'cause we have more depth of functionality that's suited specifically to their needs and that makes it compelling and that means that, in a world where we're competing against vendors who are very much horizontally-focused and that best-of-suite offering that they have means that the functionality's compromised or in a best-of-suite, best-of-breed world, that the integration is compromised. That's why we're winning and that's why we're outgrowing the competition and, you know, I think we, we just stay focused. We stay in our niche, we stay focused on our customers and creating value and, you know, that's our reason for being. >> So north of 10,000 customers so far. Has IFS always been vertically-focused or is that something that's come on in the last few years, maybe since you were tenured. >> Yeah, in the last five years we've really homed in on those assets and service-centric verticals and it's important, because when you think about what we do from a development perspective, you know, as we build the technology and we think about those emerging use cases around, you know, asset investment planning or asset performance management or asset monitoring or all of the things that our customers are thinking about, IOT, AI, augmented reality, all of which we're showcasing at the conference, you know, you want to do that with a very specific use case in mind because I've talked a little bit about field service management and asset management but none of our customers consume technology in that way. You know, if they're in oil and gas, then they're thinking about shutdown and turnaround and they're thinking about plant maintenance, they're thinking about specific use cases that are industry focused and that's how we build the technology. So, you know, I think that's the differentiator for us and, you know, there's a bunch of customers here and, you know, you'll see all of the, you know, the solar arrays and the wind farms and all the different things where we're demoing the capability that we have that is very industry focused. >> The industry focus is so, like you said, very differentiating, but also it's not just, "We're going where customers are." It's, "We're listening "and we're actually speaking the language "that our customers speak." That's differentiating from the many, many hundreds of tech leaders that I talk to, just so you know. >> A hundred percent. Well, look, I think the thing is, is that what we recognize, is that for us to be able to really create value for them in the specific vertical that they're in, it can't be that we stick a marketing label on it. And that industry flavor has to be ubiquitous from, you know, when we meet them and we're able to understand the problems that they're facing through to the way that we build the technology to address the problems, all the way through to the partners that we're working with who are then going to deliver that solution. They need to understand the industry and I think that, you know, it's a not a particularly level playing field because so many of our competition don't operate that way. They have a horizontal application, they have horizontal partners, and then a lot of the rest is marketing blurb. But, you know, I think the customers that we have here today are great, global, international brands. You know, we told some of the stories from the stage this morning, with companies like Southwest and the MRO solution that we delivered for them and we're immensely proud of that. And, you know, our focus is on just telling more of those stories and creating more of those stories and being able to point towards tangible value that our technology's created in record time. You know, that's the focus. >> Right. It's all about the business outcomes. We've got sitting across from our set here is the Aston Martin F1 car. Darren and I were talking before, we're both big F1 fans. I love hearing the smart factory from an F1 team's perspective, or hearing about aerospace and defense customers because you get to understand the commonalities of these businesses and how similar they are to other industries. They have some of the same huge challenges but getting a race car built between now and February of 23 for the next race season, the amount of manufacturing that has to go on, smart manufacturing, and knowing that IFS is really underpinning that, is fantastic. >> Well, it's more complex than that even, because they're not building a new car by February, you know, they're rebuilding the car every week and, you know, it's that kind of attention to detail and the speed and sense of urgency that is a great opportunity for us to showcase the technology and that's why we love the relationship with Aston Martin Racing, but, you know, being able to then leverage the learnings from that environment, which is super high paced and the cycle times are so much quicker, into, you know, industries which maybe don't move as fast, but are, you know, perhaps more mission critical, you know, like an airline or, you know, something equivalent to that. >> Well, if we think about the industries that that you're focused on, so many of them were the hardest hit during the last couple of years, where they're really arterial industries and IFS has really been focused on helping these folks transform digitally. Talk to me about IFS as really a catalyst of those companies' digital transformations. >> You know, interestingly, we, didn't see a ton of impact during Covid to our business but that's because, as you say, that they were hit but hits almost in a positive way because they were the ones that kept things going. You know, think about our customers like telcos or utilities or, you know, unfortunately our aerospace and defense customers, commercial aviation aside, but we have a bunch of defense organizations that are customers and, you know, they've had to keep going and what we've really focused on and it continues to be our focus, is how do we help those businesses to be more efficient? And this is increasing, especially with what's happening in the world today, is increasingly important to them. How do they drive operational efficiency? And I talked a lot about the power of IFS's capability on a single platform and how do we bring the orchestration of the different parts of their business, whether that's their customers, their assets and their people. How do you orchestrate those things in order to create operational efficiency and in IFS language, create those moments of service? And that's what we do, and because we are focused on creating those moments of service and we're helping those customers to be more efficient, you're helping them to drive loyalty and, you know, repeat business and increase value in their customers, you know, that's, we just became and become, more important to them. You know, it's not a system that they can turn off and go, you know, "We'll do without this for a while." You know, we're really underpinning that value creation for them. >> You're integral. You're mission-critical, really. Let's double click on the moments of service. I love that from a tagline perspective. It's also the title of your new book. Congratulations on the book by the way. Define that for the audience. I think they can get a sense of that but what is, and it's really IFS enabling its customers to deliver moments of service. Talk to me about that. >> You know, it's funny. As we were discussing it, it tends to get used as the moments of service that we provide for our customers but that's really not what it's about. Every industry, every business, when you talk to the CEOs of those businesses, they're thinking about how do they impact their customers. What are the things that they need to do? And every business, when you talk about this concept of a moment of service, every business has multiple moments of service and everything that we do is about helping those customers, irrespective of whether they are a utility and the service they're providing is a broadband service, or, sorry, a telco providing a broadband service, or a utility providing electricity. That customer flicks the switch and the power is there, or they, you know, they dial their phone and the phone call is there. That's one of the moments of service that they provide. It could be, you know, the engineer going in and activating that service and being able to let the customer know that they're arriving at a certain time and then that broadband being activated so that the customer can actually, you know, plan around their day. But those moments of service are what we enable and it does, it takes a tremendous amount for an organization to come together. We all, as a consumer, had an experience where, you know, we've had an expectation and we've been disappointed and that moment of service wasn't provided and almost in every single case it comes down to a fragmented selection of systems that weren't integrated, that weren't inter-operating. You know, the wrong technician shows up, he doesn't have the right equipment, he didn't know that your house, you know, didn't have a certain capability or piece of equipment in it and that's where it starts to fall down and that's the customer disappointment and that leaves the sour taste in their mouths. So everything that we've done, whether it's our customer satisfaction monitoring tool, Customable, or whether it's the asset management capability, the field service management, managing those techs, so that you get the right technician with the right parts, when they said they were going to be there. All of those things are really focused on those moments of service, and you know, as you said, what resonates with people is that everybody, as a consumer, you know, interacts with companies where they've been disappointed by a poor moment of service and they've had great moments of service. So it does resonate with everyone. >> It does, and I actually think moments of service, probably, in a hopefully post-pandemic world, are probably even more important, because I think one of the things, and you talked about this, we've all had these disappointing experiences in the last couple of years, that were magnified to some factor of X and I think patience has been in short supply. Probably not going to rubber band back. So being able to, through your technology, enable customers to deliver those moments of service that are critical to reducing churn, increasing revenue, turning revenue into recurring, is really a differentiator for your customers. It's an advantage for them. >> Well I think that, you know, the consumers, in general, are becoming more demanding. That's a trend that isn't going to change. Covid certainly accelerated that. That's one element and we think about kind of big macro trends that are impacting, you know, businesses today. The other thing is this big move towards servitization and we think about companies like Rolls Royce, who are a customer of ours, who, you know, they used to manufacture and sell engines that went on aeroplanes and other engines. And today they don't. They rent those by the hour. And at the point that you flip that dynamic from being, you know, making a product and selling it, to, you know, providing it as a service, the world changes completely because all of a sudden you have to think about, you know, "How well are we making these assets? "How are we going to monitor those assets? "How are we going to continue to service those assets?" And obviously longevity and quality becomes so much more important and your customer experience becomes so much more important because if they're not putting a big capital out there and they're just renting it from you, if you don't provide, you know, quality of service, then they'll simply go somewhere else, and our technology underpins those motions. So you've got these big trends of customer expectation going up and of course the servitization trend. >> Right. And we've actually got Rolls Royce's Nick Ward for Rolls Royce coming on the program later today, so we'll talk about the big pivot they've made and how IFS has really been transformative in that. Talk a little bit about, in our last few minutes, about supply chain. Obviously we know it's been quite a mess the last couple of years. I saw some research over the summer from IFS that said 66% of organizations are keeping more stock on hand, more organizations are increasing supplier numbers. How is IFS helping in that sense? >> Yeah, so I think it's all about visibility and I think if we can give customers visibility into their supply chains and their stock levels, their inventory, and of course, you know, what's required from a customer perspective, and again, it's this orchestration of different pieces, which in a heterogeneous non best-to-breed and suite world, means that customers maybe have to try and figure out how they're going to manage all those things across the different systems. In IFS it's all in one system. We give them visibility and control that they wouldn't ordinarily have and I think that's a huge point today when you know everybody's under pressure. You know, how much money you've got tied up in inventory. You know, what your supply chain cash levels look like is a huge challenge for businesses with increasing debt costs coming up now. So, you know, I think that being able to manage that more efficiently, having better visibility, being able to plan more effectively, so that you're, you know, if you're building up your stock supplies, it's because you need those stock and you know what order's coming and that's where, you know, having integrated capabilities is so important and that's what we provide. >> Visibility and control are absolutely critical. I know that energy is one of your vertical specialties. Talk to me a little bit about how you're helping customers in Ukraine from an energy perspective. Is IFS there helping organizations to navigate those headwinds? >> Yeah, so we're not in Ukraine. It's not a market that we operate in, but I think that what is, you know, ubiquitous now in the world, is energy crisis, given what's happening in Ukraine and I think that, as an industry, we see the utilities industry investing heavily in two areas. One is that continuity of service and being able to make sure that, again, it has predictability around what the requirements are and how they provide quality of supply and continuous supply, but the other thing is of course is, you've got this whole move towards sustainable energy and that's an area in which we are increasingly involved and again, like I said, you see a bunch of sustainable energy demos going on around here in being able to help companies make the transition as well as manage that new infrastructure and we've got a bunch of innovation around that coming in the next six months or so. >> Well, you're coming off a fantastic first half. We saw the results over the summer, ARR up 33%. I can only imagine the trajectory in second half. >> It is strong. >> Continuing to go up. >> We'll release our Q3 results soon and, in fact, all the numbers are improved on our half-year numbers, so really happy with that development. But it's, you know, it is a testament to our customers. It's a testament to the way in which they work with us to make sure that we can build differentiated capability and, you know, we continue to try and work with them and reciprocate that loyalty and, you know, that's our story. >> Synergy. Love it. Darren, thank you so much for coming on The Cube, sharing with us the great momentum that IFS has been having during your tenure, also during the pandemic, the great customer stories that really articulate your value. We appreciate your time and we look forward to unpacking more on the program today. >> Thank you Lisa. >> My pleasure. For Darren Roos, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube live from Miami on the show floor of IFS Unleashed. Don't go away. My next guest joins me in just a minute. (calm music)

>>live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the Q covering I. F s World Conference 2019. Brought to you by I. F. S. >>Welcome back to Boston, everybody. You're watching The Cube. The leader in live tech coverage is Day one coverage of the I. F s World Conference. Darren Russo's here is the CEO of F S Darren. Thanks for coming back in the Cube. Great TV again. So last year was your first year. He was kind of laid out your vision at the World Conference. How's progress? >>Yeah, Look, it's going incredibly well. We were really focused on how we go from being a pretty fragment of global business to being, you know, an integrated business where we were able to operate. You know, its scale globally in a very homogenous way, where the customer experience was the same, irrespective where they engaged with us. And, you know, we've made a tremendous amount of progress with it, So you know, the business is growing really strongly. Net revenues up 22% year on year. I lost its revenues up 40% year on year are clouds up in the triple digits, so you know it's tough to be critical of how it's going so far. >>That's great, Great. You're growing faster than your peers. I think the stat was you gave us three Ex factory except in the industry would be awesome. Is that means that your primary benchmark do you want? You want to gain share? You want to go faster than the big whales, I presume. I >>think two things One is customer satisfaction, we believe, is the key indicator of long term success. S O. You know, we're the number one ranked European efforts. Salmon gotten appearance sites. That's that is and always will be my number. One metric. Can we be way the number one from a customer satisfaction perspective? And then I believe the revenue stats will follow and you know that's where we are. So certainly, if you look at our our core peers, the big G R P vendors, all of them are flat on. Dhe were growing 20 ships since >>one of the things you mentioned in your Cube interview last year was one of the things that you wanted to focus on was I'll call regional alignment. Paul and I used to work for I D. G. I worked for I. D. C. You were editor in chief of Computer World. We work for a company, had more offices overseas and IBM, and it was really hard to herd the cats. And that was one of the things that you cited. Have you been able to get people generally poor or at the same time? And how has that affected your business? Yeah. Look, I >>think the big challenge before I arrived was that there wasn't really a strategy of global strategy for the business. My face had a way of working and there was a strong culture, but there wasn't really a strategy. And obviously it's difficult to be critical of people when they not following the strategy when there isn't one s o. You know, Step one was really making sure that we had a strategy on DDE that was really about being focused on the five industries that we focused on, focused on three solutions on dhe focused on the six segments of customer, which is half a 1,000,000,000 to 5 billion. So now, globally, you know, irrespective the office that you go to, um anywhere in the world, they're focused on those five industries they focused on those three solutions and they're focused on their customer segments. So it helps me. P. M >>I said during our preview video video this morning that I've been around this industry as long as I f s has, until last year had never even heard of it. Is that just me being clueless? There's something there >>that we were just saying before we started that we're the definitely the biggest software business you've never heard of. Um, and and and that's common, I think, you know, we were There are a couple of factors. One is that the business was very European centric. Andi didn't really engaged in a tremendous amount of marketing and media prison. So, you know, those are elements that, you know, I think we're doing a better job off now, But we have a long way to go. The challenge that we have is that where we compete, we win when we get in and were able to tell our story, and we're able to show the value we win. We just don't get into as many deals as we need to. And that's the challenge we have. >>Yeah, there was a lot of talk this morning about the importance of those five pillars of those five industries. If you're going to become the next S A P, you're gonna have to branch out beyond that. What is your thinking about diversify >>becoming the next? They say he is definitely not my ambition, You know, I think way remain focused on customer satisfaction. And, you know, I think that there's a there's a difference. Whatever it is leading them, it's not customer satisfaction. You worked >>there for four years. >>I worked there for four years. I know. I think the big thing for me is is that we've got to stay focused on their customer voice. They focused on what delivers value for our customers beyond just the rhetoric and hyperbole. You know, I think when you when you listen to a lot of the complexity that our customers are facing today, any customers are facing. Companies are facing increasingly disruptive times, and the tech industry is making life more difficult for them. The more best of breed solutions get both. The more fragments that potential the landscape is, the more complex it becomes for customers if they have to try and figure out. How do we integrate these things and derive value from this highly fragmented landscape? So you know, we're trying to solve that problem. How do we make it easier for customers to challenge in their industry? And that's where this whole for the challenges has check comes from. How do we help him to be disruptive in their industry? Have competitive advantage? >>That seems to be a sort of a fundamentally different thing about your approach, though. Is this focus on those vertical industry's most e r P companies did not do that. Is that something that is core to your values? >>Look, I >>think what we recognize is that as you move to the cloud, you have to drive to standard. That's just the reality of going to the cloud on what's happening for the horizontal E. R B vendors. So the locks of ASAP and Oracle is that they have one e r P solution that fits every industry. So if it's good for health insurance and it's good for a bank, then it's difficult to really get your head around the fact that it could be good for a defense manufacturer, but the functional requirements is simply vastly different on that means that you have to customize them. If you have to customize that, they can go to the cloud. So what we believe is that you have to have this vertical specialization, the five industries that we serve us all. A lot of commonality in the process is that they use. And that's why that vertical strategy is so key to our success. So you won't see us going into financial service is, or health care or retail worth that core application. We may in time in many years to come branch out. That will be a different solutions. >>So your tailor, that app for that module for that industry, Yes, just go deep, deep functionality. You're known for that, but at the same time you're also messaging. You want your customers to be able to tailor this for their environment. So square that circle for me. >>So I think when we talk about a choice and and I think tailoring is the wrong word, we talk about choice. We're talking about choice of deployments on Prem or in the cloud choice of customer choice of partner, rather who they're going to deploy with on Dhe, then The solution is really an industry solution that comes with that functional death. And we don't we don't advocate their customers customized that all. We really don't want them to customize it. What we explain to them in some detail is that the real value comes from adopting the solution for two standard and staying on a vanilla application. Because that vanilla application, you're going to be able to withstand future upgrades, the total cost of ownership gets lower. The processes that are embedded in that application or best of breed at the box. That's what they're intended to do, and that works when you have a vertical application. When you have a horizontal application and you're trying to have a do things that it shouldn't naturally be doing, that becomes company. >>Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that essentially the message ASAP had when it went through? It's hyper growth in the late nineties. I mean, there was a Y two k thing there, too, but ah, lot of the message was around. Do it our way and and then you don't have to get stuck in a rut, >>So I think that when it came out with that generation of application. That certainly was what they had hoped would happen. But what happened in practice is that the system integrators came in and the whole business process reengineering explosion happened on Dhe. That's not how it how it manifested itself. So what you see is, you see, he's very large, monolithic ASAP applications that were customized over in some cases decades, not not. You know, if a customer is deploying for two standard, then they should be able to deploy in a period mission. In weeks, we spoke about our deployment with Racing Point. If one team and going live in 12 weeks, you know, we're a 700 million global business. We deployed a knife s in 24 weeks. You know, if a customer's deploying for two standard, it's measured in weeks. As soon as they start to talk about two years or three years or five years or seven years there, customizing the solution significantly. Yeah, I >>mean, it became just sort of a perpetual upgrade, maintenance and up for the time it had a business impact. But boy, you think a cloud today agility, you know, getting rid of waterfall approaches, Missus. Antithetical to today's Look >>what I don't point fingers here. I think that this just maturity come with experience. The line of business applications you'll see our EMS and your HR solutions have taught people that you can, if you think about this is look at sea. Are Emma's an example? You had Siebel before people would implement stable. They would customize Siebel that would take long implementations. They were highly bespoke applications and then sells. Force came along and just destroyed them, and they destroyed them. Because what people learned very quickly was that there was a really easy to consume, really easy to use application that functionally might be inferior. But the compromises that you'd make from a functionality perspective will weigh, outweighed by their time to value in ease of use. And and the learnings from CR mnh are in procurement. Those line of business applications have now being backed into in the e. R. P >>world. So in terms of capital allocation, you're owned by private equity, which is actually a public company. I'm interested in how you're allocating capital R and D, where you're where your emphasis is. You don't have to you have to do stock buy back, but, you know, describe the P relationship. >>So look, one of my learning's to see survive this is that not all private equity firms or equal they have different strategies are very fortunate to be with Ekiti, who are a growth investor. They're known as a growth investor on dhe, and they buy companies that are strong growth tech firms on dhe. They've been hugely supportive of us investing because they understand that the investment in technology is important. So, you know, just looking at some detail today we invest twice as much in R and D as we did three years ago, just to give you, you know, one data point. So there's a big focus on technology, and the thing is, is that we we have to invest in technology to drive those attributes that are discussed earlier. How do we How do we enable customers to adopt a solution? It's a standard so they can go alive quicker. How do we enable customers to be able to sit down in the front of the application like we do with the mobile phone and intuitively know how to use it? How do we reduce the total cost of ownership through automation. Those are capabilities that you know that they don't come for free. We have to invest in them. So big investments in technology. And >>I think the private equity guys, at least the modern ones, have realized Why should the V. C's have all the fun they realize? Hey, we can actually put some money in tow and the transforming we can have a bigger exit and actually make much better returns than sucking the company drive. Yeah, well, look, I think the other >>thing is is that you know, in public companies, you have the downside off. You know this this courtly metric Ondas quarterly cadence. Andi, you see very compromising decisions being made because you know, people can't afford to miss 1/4. There's no long term planning that's done on dhe. That's fundamentally not the case and the private equity world, you know, not unusual now for four p firms to hold companies for 5678 years on, and that allows you to take a very long term strategic view. If if if a shift from perpetual to subscription is the right thing to happen, they can do that without worrying that, you know, because of the definite earnings are revenue that you're going to get caned by the market next quarter. Andi. I think that that needs to, I think, better decision making for the long term. >>A lot of companies are struggling. >>If you have the right P for because you get bought by the firm of events, you want to go public. But the the you said something this morning that 50% of your customers each year or net knew, How are you pulling that off >>That 50% of our license revenue? Eso way we went about 300 odd new customers a year. Obviously, that's growing, as I said, you know, 40%. But you know, it's ah, I think, having done this for 25 years, there are companies that are or good at extracting revenue from their installed based. One of the analysts here has as a hashtag wallet Fracking is what do you think It's such a great So you know, they're good at Wallick fracking and and I think the customers that that our customers off those vendors know exactly who they are and you know I think that for us to that the fact that we're able to go out and win 50% of our license revenue from net new name customers, I think is a really strong indicator of the health of the business. It's much harder to do than just extracting revenue out of the install base. You know, we don't have a compliance practice. We've never charged a customer for you in direct access. You know, these are principles that we stand by, and it's easier to say that your customer centric on get 80% of your revenue, have your installed base because you're doing compliance rounds. But, you know, we put our money where our mouth is, and that's not that's not how we do it. >>Are these net new customers? Are they? Are they migrating from QuickBooks or they migrating from a Competitors >>know, because of the segment that we're in this half a 1,000,000,000 to 5 billion? I would say the majority of them are what I would call first generation the Rp solution. So you know you're talking about you know, the original generation of Microsoft's acquisitions, the divisions and the eggs actors and the Solomon's and so on on. And then, you know, it's a P R two and our three customers you're talking about customer sitting on, you know, the solutions that in for hoovered up the matrix B picks type customers, ace 400 customers. So they're you know, they're first generation your P solutions that simply don't have the flexibility to deal with the complexity and demands of modern business world. >>From 2009 about 2017 I f. S was pretty inquisitive and then just actually, I was gonna ask you >>when I started, you stopped >>it, right? But then, you know, today you announced an extra small acquisition, But how should we think about M and a >>look? The first year for me was really about trying to build a functional business. You know, we spoke about how fragmented this really hit to Jenna's business. Andi just occurred to me. You know, if we go out and we start to buy things, how do we integrate them into a business that's completely fragments? And you know, it had no identity or culture. So, you know, the last year has been focused on how do we build their common understanding of what it is that we're doing. We now have a very clear strategy. Five industries, three solutions, one segment. And you know, when you when you have that clarity of vision that it's really easy to guard and do him and I because you know what fits and what doesn't fit, you can understand exactly how you're gonna build value for customers on dhe. That's why the S t a deal is so good for us. Because we're now the undisputed leader in field service management, you know, 8000 our customers globally, which is way more than anybody else. Scott, Andi, you know, you should absolutely expect more from us. But it will be in the five industries, three technology segments and one customers. Isaac. >>Well, in the A p I enablement should obviously facility. >>Absolutely. I mean, I was just with a partner of ours now, and they have this amazing augmented reality solution. You know, it will be a combination of off going out there to build market, share a cz well, as finding you know, really innovative solutions that can help us advance the technology that we provide customers. >>You have a new slogan this year for the challengers, which seems to be aimed at companies that that imagine themselves as challenging the Giants, which is great. But if you're not a company that season sees themselves that way. Are the studies level home with I have s Look, >>I I think I was with a group of CEOs from one of the big analyst rooms, and they had the portfolio companies and their private equity firm and analysts that CEOs of the companies are having a conversation with him about digital transformation. And I I made a rather provocative statement which, you know, got unanimous agreement, which is that all of the CEOs there with either in an industry that was being disrupted and we're trying to figure out how they respond to that disruption or they would soon not every job and they all acknowledge that they absolutely fit into that category. In other words, all of them were being disrupted. All of them were facing a challenge. It was kind of like, you know, if it is happening to all of us at a more rapid pace than we have ever had before. So my view is, is that you know if if you're in the room and you're going, you know, if it's might not be for us because we're not a challenger. Yeah, The lights may not be on >>for Long s o double click on that. What role does I s play in terms of digital transformation? >>If I could just hold on there because the thing is, there are leaders in Mama, there challenges. And there are leaders. The leaders typically are gonna go with seif solution. They're gonna go with one of the legacy our peace. So I'm not suggesting that everybody necessarily is a challenger. There are leaders, you know, Nokia was a leader until they weren't because they were complacent. Andi, I think they you know, they didn't run on I office. So, you know, I think there are two segments. There are leaders and there are challenges, and we're there for the ones that are ready to disrupt. Sorry. >>Please clarify that. No. Good. So So get back to it. Sort of digital transformation and disruption. What do you see? Is the role of AARP generally, but specifically I f s. >>Look, I think we digital information. A lot of discussion about it on the stage this morning. I've just touched on it now. I think that it takes very different forms. What most industries are finding is that they're facing a lot of non traditional competition and they're having to innovate around their business models. They can't going to market in the same way as they did before. They're having to innovate because of this non traditional competition. Andi. Understanding your your customer's understanding, your your staff, understanding your supply chain understanding your financials are all critical parts of being able to respond to whatever their changes, and that's where the RP solution comes into it. I think there's an interesting challenge now, which is that as those applications have become more fragmented and you've got more based debris cloud applications Ah, lot of the value often E. R P was that you had this integrated set of applications that you had this one source of the truth andan. Fortunately for many customers today, they don't have that because they've got import all of these best of breed applications and they don't have one source of the truth that multiple invoices made it multiple versions of their customer in the databases. Andi we still stand for a single integrated the r p. So, you know, I think understanding those elements of your businesses key. I was with a customer of ours in Nebraska a short while ago, and they were talking about our existing office customer. They were talking about the steel import duties that were imposed through the trade war with China. And they were saying, Look, that they had been able to respond to that in a way that they had good visibility of the supply chain, who was improved, imposing the tariffs, how they were going to impact them when they were going to impact them. And because they had this integrated Siara AARP. They were able to pass those pricing changes onto their customers, and they survived this. What could have been a cataclysmic event for their business had they not had an integrated your pee? They not being able to have this visibility into the supply chain and the customer base. They may well have gone out of business just because of that one change >>to meet all day and all comes back to the data, putting their putting data at the core of their business. That integrated data pipeline is essentially what they get out of that last question. So thinking about the next 18 to 24 months, what are the milestones that observers should look for? One of the barometers that we should be watching. >>So look, in the next two years, it's it's really about us building incremental scale. We have, ah, four year plan, which I built when I came in. We're halfway through that plan. We've hit all of the metrics and exceeded most the metrics that we had on their plan. It's really continue to focus on the strategy. As I said, we focus on those five industries, continue to build market share, continue to focus on those three solution types and build market share and market dominance on those three solutions. Andi in that segment that I defined before, so no change from a strategy perspective. I think there's really value in the consistency that we bring on on their talk track and, you know, along the way we passed the $1,000,000,000 mark, which we will do, I think, in 2021 organically if we accelerate, some of the money will pass the 1,000,000,000 before, but you know business. The margins continue to expand. We focus on customer satisfaction and, you know, it's a It's a pretty straight, you know, traditional prey book that we have to execute on now. >>Well, congratulations. It's a great playbook, and you're growing very nicely. So love that. Look, we really an honor to the last couple of years. Learn a little bit about the company in your industry. So appreciate meeting you guys. Thank you. All right. And thank you for watching over right back with our next guest. Ready for this short break day Volonte with Paul Gill in. You're watching the Cube from I f s World Conference from Boston 2019 right back.

(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. 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(soft music) >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage from Miami of IFS Unleashed 2022, Lisa Martin here with you. We've had great conversations today with IFS execs, customers, partners. Our ecosystem is quite robust and quite strong. And we've had some alumni on, I've got another alumni who's back with me, Michael Ouissi, the group's COO of IFS. Michael, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us, my pleasure. >> It's great to be back in-person. >> Absolutely. >> It was great to walk into the keynote this morning and see a full room. I was talking with Darren Roos, your CEO earlier this morning and I said, it must have felt great to walk out on stage and actually see a sea of people and customers and partners who want to engage and get that relationship with IFS just turbocharged. >> Absolutely, I mean, it's been three years, we haven't had this buzz, this energy, and the opportunity to actually see all our customers and also show our customers who we are, how we are evolving and how we're becoming a different company over the past four years. >> And it's impressive what IFS has done in that timeframe. All the conversations I've had today, really reflect the strategy, the strong strategy and vision that this company has. But I was looking at some of the financials and saw that your first half of 2022, which ended in June, there was tremendous growth. ARR up 33%, I think they're recurring revenue is in the 70 percentile now. Lot of new customers, a lot of of trust that existing customers are showing to the company. >> Yeah, absolutely. Look, and I think the secret sauce is that we have focused on where our strengths are, we haven't gone astray, we haven't tried to actually capture growth in any other vertical. We are really very religious about where we're going and there, where we are going, we are going deep and we really are trying to be the best version of ourselves for our customers and for those customers' business transformation needs. >> Talk a little bit about that vertical specialization. It's something that we don't see very often but throughout all of my conversations today with your executives, IFS executives, with customers, with partners, that domain expertise, really the granularity of the domain expertise is really resonant that IFS has achieved that in those five key verticals in which you have such specialization. >> Yeah, look, I mean, I would love to take credit for having been the person who has done that, but IFS has over the past 35 years, really had this very strong focus. But what actually was important when you try to double a business in the space of four years, not to be tempted to go away from that but actually double down on exactly that and see the opportunity in those verticals and make sure that our customers actually are getting the attention and the functionality they deserve. >> Let's talk about customers. Over 10,000 customers right now. I was also in the keynote this morning where Christian Peterson was sharing that, in its first 18 months, IFS Cloud has over 400,000 users. So the growth is tremendous. The customer loyalty is ostensible in those verticals. Talk about customers and their influence on the company, the direction the technology goes, the evolution, that kind of stuff. >> Yeah, I mean, look, as I said, we are all about the depth of the functionality and that means that we need to listen to our customers, We need to listen what's going on in the industries. We also need to not just listen but we need to think forward. >> Yeah. >> We need to have some thought leadership on what we think is going to emerge and then test that with our customers again. So our customers are at the core of everything we do. When we engage with a customer, we start with trying to understand their business in depth. We've got our own methodology around that and we don't just try to push technology onto them, but we are trying to understand what are their business drivers and then actually try to apply technology to what enables them to deliver on those business transformation objectives they've got. >> What are some of the changes or the waves that you've seen, especially the last couple of years during the pandemic when we saw so many customers pivot, we need to transform digitally to stay alive, and then those that did that well enough to be competitive and to thrive, talk to me about some of the changes as the group's COO that you've seen. >> Yeah, so when you go back, I mean, there's two types of transformation, business and digital transformation but they are the same thing, they're just a different side of the coin. And when I talk about business transformation, what we're seeing a lot is, and there's this big buzzword overtization out there, but customers going service and customers trying to build an end to end business that is more viable, more sustainable, more successful in how they develop great moments of service for their customers, that is something we are seeing a lot. And during this business transformation, digital transformation has become a means to that end. And that is something where customers have matured a lot, where in the past we have seen a lot of the IOT, AI, machine learning, cloud, everything was a means or a purpose in itself and that has changed. It's now become actually a means to an end. It's become a means to actually deliver a business transformation and a business outcome that is meaningful for their customers. >> Has to be meaningful for their customers. I love how IFS talks about enabling your customers to deliver those moments of service. And when we think of, in our consumer lives, many of us flew here, and you think about what's the moment of service for an airline? Well, it's being able to get on that plan on time, have it leave on time and meet my expectations as a demanding consumer. But regardless if we're talking about aerospace, energy, manufacturing, engineering, the customers on the other end expect to have an integrated seamless experience that's not fragmented, that is able to deliver moments of service that then help drive up their revenue. So what IFS is doing is so embedded in what your customers are able to deliver to their customers. >> Yeah, absolutely. And look, if you look at all the things that have to come together to actually have a plane taken off at the right point in time or if you take any other examples, but there's so many things that need to go right. Crew scheduling, you need to have the right crew at the right point in time. You need to have them actually with the right experience to fly the right plane. You need to have airplane maintenance going right to have the plane available at the right point in time and no technical failures and so on and so forth. And we look at that as between customers, the people, and the assets that an organization has, you need to coordinate between all those dimensions in everything you do to make sure that this one moment of service where your plane takes off on time, you actually catch your connecting flight at the other end, that this actually is being delivered. And that's what drives us, that's what customers are driving into our product development, into how we embed AI, machine learning and so on in our technology to make it relevant to exactly that moment of service. >> That's what we as those consumers want. We want relevance, we want personalization, we want that relationship to know who we are and how to serve us best. Let's dig into the Jotun case study. He was going to join us, our CEO was going to join us, couldn't make it. Talk to me a little bit about Jotun, what type of business is it and then let's kind of start unpacking how they're leveraging IFS technology. >> Yeah, so Jotun is the seventh largest paints and coatings manufacturer in the world. And they've got obviously a home decoration part of the business, but they've got an industrial part of the business where one large part of the business is also a marines part. So they actually provide paints, coating, for all sorts of large ships and it's quite astonishing what you learn about that customer. I mean, we are now partnering with them for more than 20 years, so we are very intimate with that customer obviously. But when you see all of a sudden, three, four years ago, they started going onto a journey where they looked at apart from paint and coating, what actually can I provide to my customer in the marine industry to actually make their business more efficient, to actually make it easier for them to get a ship from A to B in an efficient way, in a timely way and so on. And they developed something called Hull Skating Solutions and those Hull Skating Solutions are integrating all sorts of weather data, all sorts of other data and provide them to the marine companies that actually then help them drive this... Well, actually get this ship in a more efficient way from A to B. And at the same time, also where there's predictions as to when you need to clean that ship, and they've got Hull Skating Solutions, which then actually clean the ship automatically as well. So it's quite an astonishing thing for a paints and coating manufacturer to then think about what do I need to know about my customer's business to provide that additional service to my customer? Great solution and great way of dealing with or delivering that great moment of service to their customers. >> Absolutely, the evolution of that business from paint manufacturing into the marine industry is not a stretch based on how you described it, but it's very innovative. How is IFS enabling them to do that and do it well? >> Well, one, they went on a modernization program for all their factories for all these kinds of things that they need to integrate then deliver to their customers. And we are in the central part in being that agile partner that actually delivers those technology solutions that enable them to, well, first of all think about that service, provide that service to their customers and make sure that they run a very efficient, very integrated version of IFS and can actually harmonize globally to make sure that wherever the customer is, they can deliver on that promise. >> Fantastic, let's talk a little bit about from your team's perspective, the go to market. We talked about the five verticals in which IFS specializes energy, aerospace and defense, engineering, manufacturing and there's one I'm missing. >> Utilities. >> Utilities, of course. >> Yeah. >> In terms of the domain expertise, are there vertical teams that are focused? I imagine that there are, talk to me a little bit about that specialization from that lens. So obviously, I mean, there are so many dimensions. There's our sales teams, there's our pre-sales teams, there's our industry teams which actually are working with the customers on receiving their feedback, on actually providing thought leadership and then organizing the feedback loop into our development teams who are providing these solutions then that hopefully our customers will cherish. So we are very specialized in that respect. We are driving the industry specialization. We've got a complete aerospace and defense business unit. We are in the market unit, specializing in the industries where we work in the various different territories with just those industry teams. We've got specialization in the pre-sales teams. So we take that really deep down and very seriously to make sure that whenever we talk to a customer, we also have the understanding and we have also got the curiosity to understand more of the customer's business, and that is something that is part of the IFS DNA. >> It's a differentiating part of IFS' DNA that not only having the domain expertise, and a lot of people talk about, well, we got to meet the customer where they are, wherever they are digitally, wherever they are in business transformation. But you're actually talking the customer's language. >> Yeah. >> By industry, which I would imagine really helps to not only solidify that relationship, but you actually get to really do a double click and get much more tightly connected with the customers and the outcomes that they're wanting to achieve so that those moments of service happen. >> Well, that's so true. And actually this is not just while we are selling to the customers, but it's actually throughout the whole life cycle of this application and the technology in Jotun's case more than two decades. And we've got a lot of customers who are actually that long with us because we don't run away once we've implemented a solution, but we actually stay close to it because first of all, we want to learn from our customers continuously. We want to actually give to our customers also what we are learning outside of the conversations we have with these customers. And we make sure that these customers continuously evolve how they think about their business, how they think about the application of our technology and then in turn, we can actually develop technology again, for their use cases. >> It's a flywheel. >> It's a complete flywheel and that creates loyalty. >> Yeah. >> That actually creates the longstanding relationships we have with many, many of our customers, yeah. >> I was speaking with a number of your executives, Marni Martin was here and we were talking about brand recognition and the loyalty, but that intimate customer knowledge that IFS really works hard to gain with its customers. 'Cause as consumers, we bleed into our business lives and we have very little tolerance, very little patients. I think that was one of the things in COVID that went away. People were just not tolerating this rapid change and we had no choice. But I don't know that patience is going to come back at the level in which we experienced it before COVID. So customers expect businesses and brands to know them and help anticipate what's next for me, how do I get there? And it sounds to me like IFS has really nailed that from a customer relationship perspective. >> As I said, I mean it's really part of our DNA and we try to preserve that culture while we're doubling our business and hopefully, doubling our business in the next three years again, because that is really the secret sauce to being that successful, and not only with our existing customers, but also with the net new customers. And we are driving almost 50% of our revenue, which is very, very much a benchmark in the industry from net new customers that we're winning while we're actually keeping or staying close to our existing customers and try to apply that knowledge to our net new customers. >> Yeah. >> But it's something that we absolutely have to preserve to be as successful as we've been in the past four years, also in the next four years. >> So coming off a great first half in the summer, when I teased Darren, "Any nuggets you want to say?" He said financials for Q3 are coming out in the next couple of weeks. And I said, I imagine that trajectory is up and to the right. >> Yeah. >> What are some of the things, Michael, that excite you for where you've seen this company go in your time there and the rocket ship that it seems to be on today? >> Yeah, look, I mean, what's amazing to me is... And if I look back, I joined four and a half years ago, and only the first one and a half years were under normal circumstances. >> Right. >> The other three years were a major pandemic, now a major war and recession and we've got all sorts of economic and macroeconomic headwinds. And what what impresses me about the company, about our customers, about our employees is the resilience we've got to just carry on with what we're doing. And I mean, I don't give too much away when I say we had a pretty good Q3 as well, and we are looking forward to a really good 2022 as a full year, and there are no excuses that actually the organization makes, it has just taken along. And we are facing the economic headwinds and we are going through that time hugely successful. And I'm very optimistic about the year and about 2023 as much. >> Fantastic, it's kind of hard to believe that calendar year 2023 is literally around the corner. But Michael, it's been great having you on theCUBE. Thank you for coming back, talking about what's going on at IFS from the overall COO's perspective, the customer synergies that IFS has, the work that you do to really get granular in those industries, it's impressive and congratulations on the success. We'll have to have you back next year to talk about what else is new. >> Thank you very much, Lisa. >> All right, my pleasure. >> Thank you. >> For Michael Ouissi, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE's coverage live from Miami on the show floor of IFS Unleashed. We'll be back with our final guest in just a minute. (soft music)

(soft electronic music) >> Hey, everyone. Welcome to Miami. I feel like I should be singing that song. Lisa Martin here live with theCUBE at IFS Unleashed. We've been here all day having great conversations with IFS executives, their customers, their partners, lots a... You can hear probably the buzz behind me at the vibe here. Lot of great folks, 1500 plus here. People are excited to be back and to see what IFS has been up to the last few years. I'm pleased to welcome back one of our alumni who was here with us last time we covered IFS, Marne Martin joins us. The president, Service Management, EAM and Global Industry at IFS. Marne, it's great to have you back on theCUBE. >> Yeah, I'm so happy to be here, and thanks for joining us in Miami. Last time it was Boston. >> That's right. >> So definitely much warmer climate this time. >> Much warmer. (Marne laughs) Yes, much warmer. And people here are just smiles on faces. People are excited to be back. There's... But I shouldn't elude that IFS slow down at all during the pandemic. You did not. I was looking at the first half, 2022 financials that came out over the summer and AR are up 33%. So much recurring revenue as well. So your... The business is doing incredibly well. You've pivoted beautifully during the pandemic. Customers are happy. There's a lot of customers here. You guys talk a lot about the moment of service. I love that. Talk to the audience about what that is, and how you're enabling your customers to deliver that to their customers. >> Definitely. So, you know, it's amazing when you have these inflection points and it's a good opportunity, world conference to world conference to celebrate that. We've grown a lot, and the number of customers we've brought in, in tier one global customers as well as in our variety of the various regions around the world and different industry verticals is amazing. And, you know, the participation is what's making IFS be a better company, a better technology vendor as we focus on these industries. So is understanding moment of service. You know, we talk a lot, and certainly CIOs and IT buyers will talk about technology, but putting the technology to work has to be meaningful, not only to the returns that go to shareholders, but what it matters, what matters to the end customers, of our customers. And when we started thinking about the new branding of IFS, because we also rebranded in this time, we thought, "How does that mission crystallize in what we're doing for our customers, and how do we really start put bringing technology to life?" And that is where moment of service came. So it's very rare in our world that you actually come up with a sort of slogan or an objective as a company that not only mobilizes what we do internally here at IFS, delivering great moments of service to our customers, but also that tells a story of the customers to the end customer. You know, service, an area that I work in a lot, it's very obvious that you... We all know when we get a great moment of service, or sometimes a bad moment of service. So if you talk to service organizations, field service organizations, they understand what a moment of service is. But it's also thinking about how we enable the people delivering that great moment of service. Not just like doing a survey or what have you, but what are the digital tools that help them to deliver better moments of service proactively. >> Right. >> One of my pet peeves was always that even like, if you have a voice of the customer program or what have you, that you may get that reactive feedback perhaps to a CMO in an organization, but the insights don't really get actioned. So here, across the line of business applications that we sell, ERP Service Management, EAM, ITSM, or ESM, we're really thinking about with that moment of service, the objective of putting the technology to work. How do we facilitate that alongside the business growth of our customers, but also how do we take the insights they get from their end customers into the business models as well as the functional design, what we develop. So moment of service has become, say the heart of IFS as well as a way of understanding our customers better. >> Really understanding them at much deeper level- >> Correct. Correct. >> And a lot of organizations. Give me some examples of some of the insights that IFS has gleaned from its customers. How you've brought them internally to really evolve the technology. >> So I think what's important is a lot of times technology vendors may say they know their customers, right? If you think about what technology vendor we know with the 360 view of the customer. You know, understanding the customer is a lot more than understanding their renewal date as a software vendor. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> So we have to really think about the moments of service on what matters most at that point of service, right? And it will vary certainly by industry, but there also will be certain things that are very much the same. Like for example, if we, as a customer, can have an asset or a piece of equipment that never breaks, we're a happier customer. If it does break, we, of course, want it to be fixed the first time someone shows up. So those are the obvious things. But how you then fix or manifest that into a different way of utilizing and implementing the technology. Thinking also about taking the operational insights that you have on driving, what we call preventative or predictive maintenance, or maximizing what's called a first time fixed resolution. You know, being able to marry best practices with at times artificial intelligence and machine learning information, with also the operational and personal insights of the people doing the work really enriches the quality of the insights you have around that moment of service and how to recreate a great moment of service, or lessen a poor moment of service. >> Yeah. >> And it also changes a view of what are often IT-driven projects into what's the user feedback that also matters most to enable that. You know, with the talent shortage that we're seeing, you know, customer expectations have only increased. >> Yes. >> So we all know, and customers want great moments of service, but how do we enable the frontline workers, whether they're field service workers or others, to deliver against these expectations when they might be harried, and you know, having to do a lot more work because of talent shortage. So we want to think about what their needs are in a way that's more focused towards delivering that moment of service, that great customer experience. And of course, that always feeds back into brand loyalty, selling more profits, but really getting into it. And you know, the advantage of IFS is that we understand the domain expertise to do things from a UI UX, a business process, but also thinking about how we're developing, to answer your question, the artificial intelligence machine learning. Even thinking about how you put IoT to work in ways that really matter, because there's a lot of money spent on IT projects that actually don't deliver great moments of service, let alone actual business value. >> Right. I love the vertical specialization that IFS has. I was interviewing Darren Roos, your CEO, a little bit earlier today and I said, "You know, we see so many companies... So many vendors, like some of your competitors in the ERP Space, which whom you're outgrowing or growing faster than, or horizontally focused. And the vertical specialization that he was kind of describing how long it's been here really allows IFS to focus on its core competencies. But another thing that I'm hearing throughout the interviews I'm having today, and you just said the same thing, is that you're not just, "We need to meet the customer where they are." Everyone talks about that. You've actually getting the... You're developing and fostering the domain expertise. >> Yes. >> So whether you're talking with an energy company, aerospace and defense company, manufacturing, there's that one to one knowledge within IFS and its customer, or based in that industry that it can only imagine is maybe part of what's leading to, you know, that big increase in ARR that I talked about, the recurring revenue being so high. That domain expertise seems to be a differentiator from my lens. >> Well, let's even talk about how people build relationships, right? You know, we're having a conversation, so we're already having a higher value relationship, right? And that comes through with how vendors engage with their customers. You know, when you have seen your executives like Darren and myself, and Michael and Christian, who still care and really focus on what is most impactful. What is that moment of service? I'm sure Darren talked about the great moment of service book that we just released. >> Yes. >> So understanding at a more visceral and may I say, intimate moment with the customers, what matters most to them. And really working with what are developing, what we call the digital dream team within these customers that understand enough of where they're going in the objective, enables us to do a better job. And it's also where then, it's not only how we're partnering in the sales process implementation in the conventional ways, but product management. What is the most meaningful? How can we prioritize what makes the most impact? Obviously, there's cool stuff we want to do too, but you know, we really think about understanding the verticals and understanding where they're going. And you see that, for example, we're an absolute leader in mobile workforce management specifically, where we have what's called real time optimization. Super hard to do. No one else does it anymore except us. Great. There's other things where you'd say that, "Hey, some of the other vendors talk about this, right?" APM as a performance management or other things, but because they lack the true vertical specialization and the use cases and the ease to put it in, the adoption rate is low. >> Yeah. >> So, you know, in that case, APM might not be something we do only, but if we can actually help commercialize this, something that has a great deal of value in a superior way in that focus verticals, that's what it means to have industry specialization. Because if you spread yourself too thin, you know then, you'll end up with an AI or machine learning platform or something like that that you know, most companies don't have five years to try and configure, build out a Watson or something like that. I mean, most companies in this day and age, with the requirements of competitive pressure and supply chain pressures have to be nimble and have to be getting results fast. So the closest with the customers, the domain expertise, the understanding of what matters most, helps us to be faster to the value outcomes that our customers needs. It helps us to be more focused in what we're developing and also how we're developing. And ultimately, that does benefit us that, you know, we want to make sure that we're not only leading today, but you know, staying ahead of the game in the next 5 to 10 years, which will help us to grow. You know, we're certainly not a small company anymore. We're at a billion in revenue looking to be 2 billion and eventually 5 billion in revenue. >> Okay. >> So that already, you know, puts us well beyond unicorn status into one of the very few. But, you know, we want to take a different track even of how a service now or a sales force or SAP or even, you know, to some degree workday grew by making sure that we remain focused on these key verticals and not lose our focus. And they're plenty big enough verticals for us to achieve our growth goals. >> Well the growth has been impressive, as I mentioned the ARR app in the first half, and I was chatting with Darren earlier as I said, and I said, "Can you gimme any nuggets for a second half?" I imagine the trajectory is up onto the right. And he alluded to the fact that things are going quite well, but the focus there that you have with customers. Also, you talked about this and I had several customers on the program today. Rolls-Royce was here. Aston Martin was here. And it's very obvious that there is a... There was a uniqueness about the relationship that I saw- >> Yes. >> Especially with Rolls-Royce that I thought was quite, I mean, you talked about kind of that customer intimacy and that personalization, which people used to tolerate fragmented experiences. We don't tolerate those anymore. >> No. >> Nobody has the patience for that. >> No. And it's also, you know, this business isn't easy for a lot of these customers to stay ahead, right? You know, especially if you think about a tier one customer that's at the top of their category. How did they continue to innovate? And Rolls Royce and Aston Martin are really cool customers. You know, but we're also thinking about, you know, what are the up-and-comers? Or you know, we also get customers that have come to us because they've started falling behind in their sector because they haven't been able to digitalize and grow forward. You know, we work a lot with SAP customers. Darren, of course, came from SAP. But in that ecosystem and especially in the areas I work in a lot with service management, SAP customers, you know, that are focusing on ERP, you know, SAP hasn't been a great enabler of service management for them. So the SAP customers have actually fallen behind. And the ability to come to a lot of these new type of digitally based value-based service offerings really make aftermarket service revenues a lifeblood of their company. So even there where, you know, we might have in a different ERP choice, we're able to provide what's really the missing link for these tier one companies that they can't get anywhere else. And we see this also, you know, you've obviously Salesforce and CRM. A lot of Salesforce CRM customers. Microsoft with Dynamics also primarily ERP. But the focus and the specialization that we have is rare in the industry, but it's so impactful. >> Yeah. >> And you know, I would even venture to say that there's not a tier one company that has a lot of aftermarket service revenue, or attention on service revenue, or even that is trying to monetize their connected asset or IoT investment that can ignore IFS. >> Yeah. >> Because we are unique enough in our focus verticals that if they want to continue growing and that is a cornerstone of their growth, their customer, their moment of service, then they definitely need to look at IFS. >> Absolutely. Does IFS care that it's not as well known of a brand? I mean, I mentioned you guys are growing. Maybe I didn't mention this, number three in ERP, you are growing faster than the top two biggest competitors, which you mentioned SAP, Oracle as well, but those implementations can be quite complex. Does IFS care that you're doing so well? Darren talked about where you're winning, how you're being competitive, where you went. Do they care about being a big name brand, or is that really kind of not as important nearly as delivering those moments of service? >> So, you know, it's a mirrored question that you asked me, and therefore, I'll give you a multifaceted answer. (Lisa laughs) You know, ERP, we're very proud to be a top three vendor and I think over time we'll continue to dislodge SAP and Oracle in ERP, where companies want to make a different ERP choice, or they're consolidating or whatever. I think already in field service management, we're by far the number one and will continue to be that. And you actually see a lot of our ERP competitors that are dropping down and you seem a... There's not really a lot of what I'd call best-of-breed options other than IFS as well. So... And then enterprise asset management, I really think the opportunity for IFS is how we put technology to work in some of these advanced capabilities in ways that can be automated that is, for example, in IBM Maximo or Watson or what have you haven't been able to be. And then you have some other best-of-breed EAM customers that have kind of not continued innovating and things like that. So the lines where we are really building the brand recognition with the largest companies in the world might be anchored for now more around field service management, enterprise asset management. But of course that brand recognition comes back into ERP. >> Yeah. >> And there will be, you know, as we continue to innovate, as people make ERP decisions every 5, 7, 10 years as those buying cycles are, then it's important that we're using the leadership positions we have. And especially, you know, thinking about these verticals where the asset centric service nature is paramount to them either to meet their moment of service, or to meet their aftermarket service revenue goals that we get the recognition of IFS as being the leader. And all the, you know... And this is where I'll go to the next layer of your question that building that is something I pride myself on and I'll say that we're building the IFS brand recognition at three different levels. >> Okay. >> There's the C-level and the board level, which I'd say my top participation in Darren's keynote this morning was more targeted to messages that would go, you know, "How are you a smarter digital business? How does IFS help you to be that?" >> Yeah. >> Okay. Then we have the operational or kind of the doers in a digital dream team that are below C-level, maybe VPs or directors or SVPs, that actually have the objective of bringing in the new business models, the operational change, the new technology, putting it to work. And there, you know, you have aspects of what do they need now versus how do they change and how do they continue innovating in a way that is easy as possible. >> Yeah. >> And then you definitely need to focus also on the people that are hands-on with those end customers. >> The practitioners. Yeah. >> The people that not only are told about the moment of service, but live the moment of service, right? The actual users in the field. Maybe the dispatchers, you know, the people that are doing the maintenance or the service or things like that. So the domain expertise in how we build the brand recognition has to be in all those three constituencies. We want to make sure that the CEO and the board members know who IFS is. We want to make sure that the operational leaders and the IT leaders who actually are delivering the project trust us to deliver. >> Right. >> And are confident in our ability to deliver with our ecosystem. And then we want to make sure that we're delighting those users of the software that they can deliver the moment of service, not just the business value that we all want from technology, but really that we're enabling them to have a solution that they love. That they can enjoy doing their job, or at least feel that they're doing their job in a way that's helpful to them. >> Right. >> And that ties into the end customers getting the moment of service that we all want. >> Absolutely. Well, very much aligned with what I heard today. It sounds like there's a rock solid strategy across the board at IFS and you... Congratulations on the work that you've done to help put that in place and how it's been evolving. I can only imagine that those second half numbers are going to be fantastic. So we'll have to have you back on the show next year (Marne laughs) to see what else is new. >> Yeah, I can't wait. It's an absolute pleasure and- >> Likewise. >> You know, and really, we're so passionate about what we do here. >> Yes. >> You know, I think just as a final note, as we grow, we want to make sure that doubling the company, doubling the number of customers, that our customers still feel that intimacy and that care. >> Yes. >> Right? >> Yes. >> That they can access senior executives that aren't clueless about their used cases and their vertical and actually have the ability to help them. You know, one of the things I pride myself on is that we... Okay, ideally people choose IFS in the first instance. We have successful projects and move on. Sometimes though, we're taking failed projects from other vendors. >> Yes, right. >> And what I pride myself on, and we all do here at IFS, is that we get those projects live, with those customers live. You know, we have the grit. We have the domain expertise, we see it through. And that even if customers have failed to get the business value or the transformation, you know, in the areas that we specialize at IFS, they can come here and we get it done. >> Right, you got a trusted partner. >> And that's something- Yes, and that, you know, I know every vendor says that- >> They do, but- >> But the reality is that we live it. >> Yeah. >> And it doesn't mean we're perfect. No vendor's perfect. But you know, we have the dedication and the focus and the domain expertise to get it done. And that's what's ultimately driving us into these leadership positions, changing how IFS is viewed. You know, we have people now that are coming to IFS that are saying, "IFS is the only choice in service management if you really want to do this work." And, you know, again, we have to keep earning it. But that's great. >> Exactly. Well, congratulations on all of that. That customer intimacy is a unique differentiator, and it's something that is... It's very... It's a flywheel, right? It's very synergistic. We appreciate your time and your insights for joining us on the program today. Thank you, Marne. >> Absolutely a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming. >> Mine as well. For Marne Martin, I'm Lisa Martin. No relation. (Marne laughs) You're watching theCUBE live from Miami at IFS Unleashed. I'll be back after a short break, so don't go too far. (soft electronic music) (soft electronic music continues)

>> Announcer: Live from 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 here in Atalanta, Georgia. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. It is late in the day here, the reception is about to start, the drinks are flowing, but we are still interviewing guests, and we've got a great panel right now. Joining us is Scott Helmer. He is the Senior Vice President at the Aviation and Business Defense Unit at IFS, and Henry Canaday, who is a contributing editor at Aviation Week. Thank you both so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having us. >> I wonder if you could walk our viewers a little bit through the idea, where does aviation and defense sit within the IFS business strategy? >> I'm happy to answer that. I think our new CEO of IFS, Darren Roos, has been very clear that there are three things that IFS will be best at. Number one, we will be best at mid-market ERP in those vertical markets that we care about. We will be number one in field service management. And we will be number one in maintenance management solutions in aviation and defense. So aviation and defense is one of the pillars on which IFS's strategy is currently based, and we have formed a global business unit inside of IFS that is specifically responsible, it's a 300 person strong team that is responsible for distributing a comprehensive portfolio of A and D solutions to the A and D market globally. >> What are the some of the biggest challenges that you're setting out to solve for your customers? >> Also a good question. We address the full range of management solution capability across A and D. So whether you're an operator in commercial or defense sector, or whether you're an inservice support provider, we provide solutions and support, all of your MRO capabilities, some of your performance-based logistics requirements, some of your supply chain requirements. Basically leveraging the core processes that IFS is differentiated around. Those being manufacturing, asset and service management, supply chain and project management. >> What's special about aviation and defense that's not been marketed or service delivery, which captures a lot of industry verticals, but the fact that you guys got carved out as a separate vertical, what are some of those unique challenges? >> What is chiefly unique about aviation and defense is the overall complexity in the marketplace. You're talking about very very complex capital intense of mobile assets, where managing the maintenance obligations in order to maintain the availability of the aircraft is under the scrutiny of compliance and is required to be done efficiently, without compromising safety. >> Not to mention the fact, your assets are flying all over the world, so they might not necessarily be able just to roll into the maintenance yard at the end of a bad day. >> And they're large and expensive, that's for sure. >> (laughs) Large and expensive. >> Henry, you've been covering the aviation industry for more than 20 years now. What do you see as the biggest trends, biggest concerns that a company like IFS is trying to grapple with right now, in terms of servicing its clients? >> Well the interesting thing about the airline industry is that it technically in many areas it's extremely advanced and very fast moving industry. In selling tickets, the industry has been going through a continual IT revolution for the last 20 years. Things like giving you notices about when your planes arrive and stuff like that. Very fast moving, changing all the time. But this is stuff, it's just money. There's no safety involved, so they can take chances, if they get it 99% right, they make enough money, they can solve the one percent errors. The problem with maintenance is it's messy, it's complex as Scott says. It's also safety critical. They can't screw it up one tenth of one percent of the time. They've been very, very cautious and very, very slow, and they look sluggish and stagnant on the maintenance side. But fortunately, now, especially the U.S. airlines are making some good money, so there's actually an opportunity for companies like IFS to come in here and really reform the maintenance program. >> We cover a lot of autonomous vehicle shows. Autonomous vehicles are coming. Obviously, a big element of autonomous vehicles will ultimately be safety. One of the things that comes up over and over again, if you look at the number of accidents, the fatalities that happen on our streets, compared to what happens in aviation, if a week on the streets happened at a week in the aviation industry, the planes would be shut down. >> Scott: There'd be no aviation. >> The threshold that you guys have to achieve in terms of safety is second to none. I don't know if there's anything even close, especially in terms of volume of people, and then, oh by the way, everyone globally is getting richer, so the amount of passenger flow. I don't know if you can speak to that in terms of the growth of passenger miles, I imagine is the metric, continues to explode. >> You've had basically 18 straight years without a fatal crash by a major American airline. That's unheard of, that's unheard of. We used to have one crash a year up till around 2000. Every time somebody annoys me with customer service in an airline, I think of this, they're doing the important stuff right, so I don't care. (laughs) >> Very well. >> Right. >> And, then do you think the efficiency, right? At least here domestically, I always think of Southwest, 'cause they were the first ones that really had fast turns, and they raced to the gate, they raced back out of the gate, in terms of really trying to get the maximum efficiency out of those assets. The pressure there, in translating to the other airlines is pretty significant to make sure you're really getting a high ROI. >> That's absolutely right. Again one of the levels of complexity that we were discussing. Certainly airlines are being forced to finally introduce some change into their maintenance operations, as the increasingly complex assets are part of the re-fleeting, as that faster traffic continues to grow. It's about both achieving greater efficiency in maintenance operations, not only without compromising safety, but ensuring the availability of that asset. Because revenue dollars still matter greatly, and those assets are your revenue producing assets that an airline has. >> Can you describe your approach in terms of of how you work together with your clients, the airlines, in terms of developing new products and new features. >> One of the unique characteristics about aviation and defense is not only the size of the client, but the length and duration of the relationships. So, we have a long and rich history, both at IFS and through the acquired MXI technologies, of working with our partners in their programs over the very long term. As much as we have domain expertise and a sizable team of domain experts inside of our business, we're able to recognize our partners that are visionaries in the industry, and we have established multiple levels of collaboration to involve them in the shaping of solution capability to support their businesses going forward. We are just launching today two new planning applications that were not only being launched with American Airlines and LATAM Airlines respectively, but were co-developed with subject matter experts at each. So they're tremendously valuable inputs into shaping our vision of what solutions are going to best drive business value for our customers over a very long relationship horizon. >> So, what have you unpack at MXI acquisition, what did that give you that you didn't have before and what's the total solution now? >> Certainly, I joined IFS through the MXI acquisition. I was previously it's Chief Operating Officer. MXI was focused on best of breed MRO capability for both defense and service port providers, as well as commercial airlines. In combining with IFS, that had a rich history in A and D, we now have the most comprehensive solution portfolio available on the market today. We are the only vendor that can provide best of breed capability, integrated into an end to end enterprise landscape, and we've got the team of subject matter experts or domain experts that are capable of delivering that value, not just the product, but the solution to the customers across all the segments of A and D. >> Just to be clear, your defense is more than aviation. I saw a military truck over on the expo hall, so it's assets beyond just airplanes when it comes to defense. >> Correct, we support on the defense side of things. We support multiple platforms, whether they're fighter jets, whether they're cargo carriers, whether they tanks, whether they're ships, we support for the operators, the offset optimization, performance based logistics, security, et cetera. For the in-service port providers, we similarly support supply chain requirements, MRO requirements, et cetera. >> Henry, as you look forward, you've been covering this space for a while, what are some big, new things coming down the road in the aviation industry that we should be looking for, 'cause we haven't seen a lot of big things from the outside looking in. I guess we had the next generation fighter planes, and then we had obviously the A380 and the 787 on the commercial side. What's new and coming that you're excited about? >> Well, technology changes slowly in commercial aviation, because of the safety aspect. The big, new things are the new aircraft, the 787 and the A350. They are really new generation aircraft, lot more composites, plastics if you will. They're using that instead of aluminum. The other things that's happening is additive manufacturing, this whole printing parts. That's real big, and I've been telling everybody the new Boeing 787 has two printed parts, one made by GE, $120 billion a year. The other made by a company called Norsk Titanium, with 140 people coming out of Norway, which is not exactly the center of innovation in aerospace programs. >> Jeff: With a printed part, like a 3D printed part? >> Yeah a printed part. Those are the two big changes in the aircraft. I mean, customers aren't going to see it, but these planes are now made largely of plastics and the metal parts are going to be more and more printed. Much more efficient way, lighter aircraft, less fuel use, more efficient, less environmental effects, etc. That's a big deal. More important than a huge airplane. >> Right, well I can imagine, we hear about the impacts of 3D printing. I haven't really seen it yet, but this vision where your ability to print parts on demand will have significant impacts on supply chains and inventory and huge, huge impacts down the road. >> And the airline industry is the most demanding. They've go to go through really massive proofs of concept and proof of materials, and it's starting to happen. >> Henry, what would you say is the most important area that IFS should focus on. If they can solve one problem in the airline industry, what do you think it should be? >> Availability would be one. Just aircraft availability, that's what. The airlines are concerned about two things. Dollar cost per flight hour to maintain and what they call a technical dispatch reliability. They want to get that plane launched 99.99% of the time. Get rid of the unpredictive maintenance problems. Schedule everything, make it quick, I want to get the planes off on time. >> It's amazing that unscheduled maintenance, regardless of industry, still continues to be such a bug-a-boo to productivity and profitability. It's one of these things that just has huge impact. >> I would completely agree with Henry. I think asset availability is the number one focus for commercial operators. Our focus has certainly been around trying to remove the impacts of unscheduled maintenance. One of the applications that we launched today allows you to react very, very quickly to unplanned or unscheduled maintenance events, and to do some what-if modeling, so that you can implement the best plan for your fleet, in order to maximize the availability of that asset. Not just in terms of bolstering or producing a better plan. We're attempting to do that even with line planning, where we're adjusting the traditional planning perimeters away from what must be done to what should be done in order to maximize the availability of that aircraft. Of course, as Henry said, everybody's focused on faster, tighter turnaround times. All of our software is designed to try and drive tighter turnaround times and greater efficiency. >> What percentage is scheduled versus predictive versus prescriptive? Maintenance. >> I think it varies by airline. The great majority of maintenance is scheduled, I mean, there's no doubt about that. They put these aircraft down for a week or a month. It's a massive amount of money. It's not the amount of maintenance, it's when unscheduled maintenance happens, it really throws things off. It may only be one or two percent of the maintenance tasks are unscheduled, but that's what throws the aircraft off the schedule. That's what leaves passengers sitting in the departure lounges, ticked off. Not getting there till the next day or the next week, whenever, so it's a very, very small percentage, these unscheduled maintenance events, but it's crucial to the airlines' economics. >> Exactly. Crucial to our itineraries, as well, as the economics. Exactly. >> Making sure that the airlines continue to do what they do best, which is get us from place A to place B. >> Precisely. Well, Scott Henry, thank you so much, it's been a really fun conversation. >> I enjoyed being here, thank you. >> Jeff: Thank you. >> Thanks, Henry. >> Thanks. >> We will have more from theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference just after this. (digital music)

>> Live, from Atlanta Georgia, it's the Cube. Covering IFS World Conference, 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to the the Cube's live coverage of IFS World 2018 here at the Georgia World Conference Center in Atlanta. I'm you're host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. We are joined by Peter Scheltus, I hope I'm saying that correctly. He is the global strategy and sales director enterprise operational intelligence here at IFS. Thanks so much for joining us, Peter. >> Yeah, thank you for having me over here. >> So let's start this interview by having you tell our viewers a little bit about what you do at IFS. >> Well, our product actually is a very cool product if you want to improve your business. And, I'm talking business, not IT. We use an IT tool for doing that, but we are supporting managers to make better and faster decisions. 'Cuz in the current environment, current world, change is everywhere and change is coming more rapidly than ever, whenever. And what we do with IFS here, why we create a kind of a digital twin of your organization and to support all the managers in your organizations to make better and faster decisions, connected to each other. >> It's interesting the digital twin concept 'cuz we see it a lot, like G.E. uses it a lot. We make a digital twin of say a 737 because one of those operating say out of Dubai is very different than one of them operating out of Alaska, so they can run tests and stuff. I've never heard anyone say a digital twin of an organization. That's really a novel approach. So, how do you do that and what are some of the benefits that come out of doing that. >> Well, yeah, that's a good question. When you talk about a digital twin, there's a reason for having that. And you think about complex assets, and what you'd like to do is not only look at the asset, but would like to do predictive and even prescriptive. And the question mark if you're looking to organizations, they are complex as well, but they are not that visible. And they are not tangible. It's about people, it's about organization, it's organization charts, it's about processes, it's about systems, it's about risks, it's compliance, finance, whatever. Everything, projects, programs, so I can continue with that. But the question mark there, and all those elements are connected to each other. But how can you as a manager, if you have to manage that all, how can you make a good decision then? If you don't know how it looks like? And, what we do is, I actually visualize those complexities and bring that to the end-user, and the end-user in this case is the business owner or actually a business guy working in an organization, so he's capable of making those better decisions. >> That's the enterprise operational intelligence, or the EOI. >> Yeah, this is how we call it. >> That's what we call it. And then when you're looking at this complex organization, the digital twin model, can you kind of switch what you're optimizing for, 'cuz that's always the big question, too. What are you optimizing for, because then you might turn your levers very differently depending on profitability, speed, there's a short-term opportunity, a lot of complexity. in what are you actually optimizing for? >> Yeah, for sure. I mean there are so many elements connected to each other, so it is complex. And what you do see is that you have the classic BI tools and the classic data discovery tools, and what they do is they create pictures out of the data, because there are so many sources, where's so many data, but we do it a different way. We do it a different way for a reason because it's not about the target to make the data better, it's about making your business model better or your company better. And then we start actually modeling your organization, and plotting actually the data, not only financial, but also strategic and operational data, and even also risk and compliance data to the business model. And then, we have the platform, with having included three different engines, which is actually a model engine to create the model of the company. We have a data engine to work with all the data coming from all the different sources, and we have an execution engine, but it's all embedded in one platform. And it is integrated by design, And with sorry, but one more thing to add, which is realLy cool, is in the end, it's not only backwards looking, but due to the fact that we have the execution engine, you can even put basis rules on top and algorithms to go to predictive and even to prescriptive decisioning. >> I'm reacting because you keep talking about the visualizations. I'm always struck by the beautiful visualizations that come out of a lot of these tools. And they're pretty pictures, and they're kind of complicated, but so often you look at them, and you're like, so what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do now based on this beautifully complex picture, and it's not usually very obvious, so delivering actionable incites is very different than just creating a beautiful visualization of a bunch of data. So, what are some of the ways you help people actually make decisions? >> Well, there are two elements in and one element is of course, I'm talking about role-based cockpits, so per role is different, so you get actually what you see. I mean if you are the CEO or the CFO or you are team leader or whatever, you know what your work is, I assume. Then you give them the picture they want to see, so we have multiple pictures we can show. That's one thing. But in the end, it's about people. People have to do something, and people have to change. And what we have experienced over the past years is if you give somebody a tool, just a cockpit, and nothing hasn't really changed. So what we are a big supporter of is also to bring in and kind of a performance coach. And a performance coach is different role, and sitting next to whatever, a manager, and explaining and working with him together, what is it what we see? What can we do about it? How can we improve? Where can we lower costs? Where can we improve value? Where can we find it, so, kind of a performance coach is really important in the implementation approach. >> Do you see that there will always be a need for a performance coach? Or does the performance coach help the user understand, oh these are the questions I should be asking when I see data that looks like this? I mean, what's the evolution there? >> Yeah, it's really interesting. It's not always necessary. Of course every organization does have it's own majority, and if organizations is already quite performance centric and know how to work with metrics, the performance coach is not even needed. But you have all kinds of different organizations. So most of the time we just advise to use it as well. But again that's step by step. Think big makes more steps. So it's a agile approach as well. >> I'm sure the performance coach will eventually get baked into the software where it tells you if you tweek this lever here, it's going to that impact. If you tweek that lever here, it's going to have this impact. We see some of that in kind of the sports fitness devices where now there adding a smart, software driven coach beyond just telling you that you ran four miles or whatever. So, I would imagine that's got to be something you guys will implement because you've got the data. You know what the factors are, you've got the digital plan. So any good examples that you can share of customers who are starting to put this into practice and some of the results that they're getting. >> Well, we have quite some customers over the world, actually all kinds, well not every country in the world, but or region, yeah, definitely. We have them from power plants up to financial institutions, up to airlines and everything in between from manufacturing, et cetera. What we do see is that when you start with the EOI concept, we start most of the time with the board, because if you want to improve your organization from strategy to operation, that should be really bundled so that people do the right things. But if we don't get a clear view on strategy, how can you expect that all the operational people can do the right things? So that's how we start and you work with that and you have those first benefits, which is already after a couple of hours. While having the most nice example, if I have board, and I give them all a white piece of paper, and ask them, can you write down the strategy of the company and I get five different back. And we just say, it is important to have strategy connected to operations, how can we start change there? So, that's the way we start it. And then you already see benefits there. But during the process, and with the model capability of the platform, by bringing more and more into the connect cockpits, the more you see and the more benefits you'll have. So we have examples of total productivity of a company in a power plant of increasing 20% productivity. >> 20%, wow! >> Yeah, absolutely. And we even have performance where we have 90% savings, 90% savings of getting all the reports in place. Yeah, that's a really interesting numbers, I can tell you. >> It's amazing how much inefficiency there is still in so many places that can be wrung out with the right kind of application and the right focus. >> Yeah, definitely. And there is a reason why there is that possibility because when organizations grow, they will be impacted on different, how do you say it? >> Departments? >> Departments, yeah, different departments. So, then you're lacking an in twins view, if everybody is looking in his own silo, which is a common nature of grow, but while having the connected cockpits and connecting the dots there, you find really money. >> That's what were lookin' for. >> I know one of the big objectives is for customers to be able to see results right away and to see benefits right away and that was also a point that was made in the keynote by CEO Darren Roos, is this real time to value the customers are looking for. Do customers have almost unrealistic expectations though because of this 24/7 world that we live in, that they are going to see something right away, this return on investment. And is that ever a challenge that you're trying to meet? >> Well, not really. You can expect it, but up so far, and we're quite busy for several years right now, it was always the other way around. So, the customer was like, "Uh? Wow! Ooh!" (hosts laugh) >> So, they didn't expect us, and that's what I like then see you coming, and then bang, the result is there. But as I said earlier, "Think big, but make small steps". And then the old implementation approach, and the model-driven nature of the product, gives us the opportunity to work work in sprints, because I don't believe in waterfall approaches, or blueprinting organizations because what happens today or tomorrow, we don't know, and well, how can I handle if I have to do blueprinting up months, you don't know what's happening. So that's why we have a very agile approach and the sprint methodology in the implementation, and every sprint is actually a business case in itself. As one example, we have now, with a service customer in the UK, we even have a cost-savings of 27 million pounds over a couple of years, and it's not my mats, but there were their own figures. So, they figured out like that, so that's good. >> It's a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. >> It is isn't it? >> It's such a simple concept of a lot people are still baked into this, "I need to define it, I need an MRG, "and a PRD, and we're going to put this big implementation" and that's just not it. Just do, right? Just move a little further, 'cuz you're never there anyway, right? >> Exactly, it's a transformation path, but it's a daily transformation. >> I'm wondering if you've observed any ancillary benefits of this digital twin concept in the sense of encouraging more experimentation in companies? As Jeff was talking about, "If I move this lever this way, "and this this way, if I make this tweek, tinker here or there, are you seeing that in the sense of companies, and individual employees, just being more willing to try things? >> Yeah, but it's very depending on the type of organization. I have to be honest. But yes, I do see, of course, people are used to get their information. The early newspapers, less and less newspapers on paper are there, and so, which is helping to use cockpits on a digital way. But the thing is, and that's very interesting, if we all walk the same way, and that's the funny thing is if you do it on the approach like the EOI approach, from a strategy to an operation approach, instead of making pictures out of data, then you direct everybody in the same way. And in every organization, you have people, they walk like this, people they do like this, and it's a combination, but the interesting thing is, if you all walk the same direction, then the benefit is bang, it's massive. And that's really interesting because if you have people that walk the other way around, yeah. And that's actually the digital twin, and I think EOI in this case, if you talk about digital transformation. For digital transformation, you need a digital twin, you need IFS EOI. >> I need a digital twin. (hosts laugh) >> It's a great concept, again we hear it all the time in industrial devices as a really interesting way to model and test, and like you said, "Be predictive and prescriptive", but I've never really heard it applied to the application of an organization which is at least as complex as a jet engine. >> It is, it is! For people it's the blue worker and the white worker, and the color in this case, and now this is the next step. And it sounds logic, isn't it? >> Yeah! >> Absolutely! >> Yeah, especially when you start testing and tweeking things. >> And in the end, you have reality, and reality is changing. And then you have the digital twin. And of course, so the digital twin should be changing of course. If the real world is changing, and this digital twin should be changed. They're both connected, but if want to make scenarios and predictive elements in the digital twin, then the real organization has to change. And that's absolutely the next step, and we're just good at it. >> Well, thanks so much for joining us, Peter. It's been a really great conversation. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick, We will have more from the Cube's live coverage of IFS World in a little bit.