>>Hey everyone. Welcome back to Miami. Lisa Martin here live with the Cube at IFS Unleashed 2022. We're so excited to be here. We just had a great conversation with Ifss, CEO of Darren Rouse. Now we've got another exciting conversation. F1 is here. You know how much I love f1. Christian Peterson joins us as well, the Chief Product Officer at ifs, and Sean Edwards IT business partner at Aston Martin. F1. Guys, it's great to have you on the program. Thank you for having >>Us. Thank you >>Very much. We were talking about F one. We probably could have an entire conversation just on that, but Christian, I wanna talk with you. It's been three years since the Cube has covered ifs obviously for obvious reasons during that time. So much momentum has happened. IFS cloud was launched about 18 months ago. Give our audience an o, a flavor of IFS, cloud and some of the milestones that you've hit in such a short time period. >>Yeah, I mean IFS cloud is really transformational in many ways. It's transformational for first and foremost for our customers in what enables them to do, but also transformational for us from a technology perspective, how we work and how we do everything. And at the end of the day, it has really surfaced, served around the the, the fact of what we need to do for our customers. And what we saw our customers often do back then, or any company, was they were out looking for EAP solutions or FSM Solutions or EAM Solutions or what have you. And then they were trying to stitch it all together and we, we said like, Hang on a second, these these traditional software s, those are some that I'm guilty. You know, there's some that we actually invented over the years together with analysts. So we invented EER P and we invented CRM and EAM and all these different things. >>But at the end of the day, customers really want a solution to what they are, they are what they're dealing with. And so in these conversations it became very clear that and very repeated conclusions from the conversations that customers wanted something that could manage and help them optimize the use of their assets. Regardless of what industry you're in, assets is such a key component. Either you are using your assets or you're producing assets. Second thing is really get the best use of of your people, your teams and your crew. How do you get the right people on the right job at the same time? How do you assemble the right crew with the right set of skills in the crew? Get them to the right people at the same time. So, and then the final thing is of course customers, you know all the things that you need to do to get customers to answer these ultimate questions, Will you buy from this company again? And they should say yes. That's the ultimate results of moments of service. So that's how we bring it all together and that's what we have been fast at work at. That's what IFS cloud is all about. >>And you, you talked about IFS cloud, being able to to help customers, orchestrate assets, people, customers, Aston Martin being one of those customers. Shawn, you came from ifs so you have kind of the backstory but just give the audience a little bit of, of flavor of your role at Aston Martin and then let's dig into the smart factory. >>Sure. So I previously worked at IFS as a manufacturing consultant. So my bread and butter is production planning in the ERP sector. So we, I Aston Martin didn't have an ERP system pre IFS or a legacy system that wasn't working for them and the team couldn't rely upon it. So what we did was bring IFS in. I was the consultant there and as IFS always preached customer first, well customer first did come and I jumped to support the team. So we've implemented a fully RP solution to manage the production control and the material traceability all the way through from design until delivery to track. And we've mo most recently implemented a warehouse solution at Trackside as well. So we are now tracking our parts going out with the garage. So that's a really exciting time for RFS. In terms of the smart factory, it's not built yet. >>We're we're supposed to move next year. So that's really exciting cause we're quadrupling our footprint. So going from quite a small factory spread out across the North Hampton Share countryside, we're going into one place quadruple in our footprint. And what we're gonna start looking at is using the technology we're implementing there. So enabling 5G to springboard our IFFs implementations going forward with the likes of Internet of things to connect our 15 brand new CMC machines, but also things like R F I D. So that comes with its own challenges on a Formula One car, but it's all about speed of data capture, single point of truth. And IFFs provides that >>And well, Formula One, the first word that comes to mind is speed. >>Absolutely. Second >>Word is crazy. >>We, we are very unique in terms of most customers Christian deals with, they're about speed but also about profit and efficiency. That doesn't matter to us. It is all about time. Time is our currency and if we go quicker in designing and manufacturing, which ifs supports ultimately the cargo quicker. So speed is everything. >>And and if we, if we think of of people, customers and assets at Asset Martin F one, I can't, I can't imagine the quantity of assets that you're building every race weekend and refactoring. >>Absolutely. So a Formula one car that drives out of the garage is made up of 13,000 car parts, most of which, 50% of which we've made in house. So we have to track that all the way through from the smallest metallic component all the way up to the most complex assembly. So orchestrating that and having a single point of truth for people to look at and track is what IFFs has provided us. >>Christian, elaborate on that a little bit in terms of, I mean, what you're facilitating, F1 is such a great example of of speed we talked about, but the fact that you're setting up the car every, every other weekend maybe sometimes back to back weeks, so many massive changes going on. You mentioned 50% of those 13,000 parts you manufacture. Absolutely. Talk about IFS as being a catalyst for that. >>I mean the, it's, it's fascinating with Formula One, but because as a technology geek like me, it's really just any other business on steroids. I mean we talk, we talk about this absolutely high tech, super high tech manufacturing, but even, even before that, the design that goes in with CFDs and how you optimize for different things and loose simulation software for these things goes into manufacturing, goes into wind tunnels and then goes on track. But guess what, when it's on track, it's an asset. It's an asset that streams from how many sensors are on the car, >>I think it's over 10,000 >>Sensors, over 10,000 sensors that streams maybe at 50 hertz or 50 readings. So every lap you just get this mountain of data, which is really iot. So I always say like F one if one did IOT before anybody invented the term. >>Absolutely. >>Yep. You know, F1 did machine learning and AI before anybody thought about it in terms of pattern recognition and things like that with the data. So that's why it's fascinating to work with an organization like that. It's the, it's the sophistication around the technologies and then the pace what they do. It's not that what they do is actually so different. >>It is, it absolutely isn't. We just have to do it really quickly. Really >>Quickly. Right. And the same thing when you talk about parts. I mean I was fascinated of a conversation with, with one of your designers that says that, you know, sometimes we are, we are designing a part and this, the car is now ready for production but the previous version of that part has not even been deployed on the car yet. So that's how quick the innovation comes through and it's, it's, it's fascinating and that's why we like the challenge that Esther Martin gives us because if we can, if we can address that, there's a lot of businesses we can make happy with that as far, >>So Sha I talk a little bit about this is, so we're coming up, there's what four races left in the 2022 season, but this is your busy time because that new car, the 23 car needs to be debuted in what February? So just a few months time? >>Absolutely. So it's a bit cancer intuitive. So our busiest time is now we're ramping up into it. So we co, we go into something called car build which is from December to December to February, which is our end point and there's no move in that point. The car has gotta go around that track in February. So we have got to make those 13,000 components. We've gotta design 'em, we've gotta make 'em and then we've gotta get 'em to the car in February for our moment of service. They said it on stage. Our moment of service as a manufacturing company is that car going around the track and we have to do it 24 times next year and we've gotta start. Well otherwise we're not gonna keep up. >>I'm just gonna ask you what a, what a moment, what's a moment of service in f1 and you're saying basically getting that >>Functional car >>On the track quickly, as quickly as possible and being able to have the technology underpinning that's really abstracting the complexity. >>Absolutely. So I would say our customer ultimately is the driver and the fans they, they need to have a fast car so they can sport it and they ultimately drive it around the track and go get first place and be competitive. So that is our moment of service to our drivers is to deliver that car 24 times next year. >>I imagine they might be a little demanding >>They are and I think it's gonna be exciting with Alonzo coming in, could the driver if we've gotta manage that change and he'll have new things that he wants to try out on a car. So adds another level of complexity to that. >>Well how influential are the drivers in terms some of the, the manufacturing? Like did they, are they give me kind of a a sense of how Alon Fernando Alanzo your team and ifs maybe collaborate, maybe not directly but >>So Alonzo will come in and suggest that he wants cars to work a certain way so he will feed back to the team in terms of we need this car, we need this car part to do this and this car part to do that. So then we're in a cycle when he first gets into the car in that February, we've then gotta turnaround car parts based off his suggestions. So we need to do that again really quickly and that's where IFS feeds in. So we have to have the release and then the manufacturer of the component completely integrated and that's what we achieve with IFFs and >>It needs to be really seamless. >>Absolutely. If, if we don't get it right, that car doesn't go out track so there's no moving deadline. >>Right. That's the probably one of the industries where deadlines do not move. Absolutely. We're so used to things happening in tech where things shift and change and reorgs, but this is one where the dates are set in their firm. >>Absolutely. And we have to do anything we can do to get that car on the track. So yeah, it's just a move. >>Christian, talk about the partnership a little bit from your standpoint in terms of how influential has Aston Martin F1 been in IFS cloud and its first 18 months. I was looking at some stats that you've already gotten 400,000 plus users in just a short time period. How influential are your customers in the direction and even the the next launch 22 R too? >>I mean our customers do everything plain and simple. That's that's what it is. And we have, we have a partnership, I think about every single customer as a partner of ours and we are partnering in taking technology to the next level in terms of, of the outputs and the benefits it can create for our customers. That's what it's all, all about. And I, I always think about these, these three elements I think I mentioned in our state as well. I think the partnership we have is a partnership around innovation. Innovation doesn't not only come from IFS or the technology partner, it comes from discussions, requirements, opportunities, what if like all these things. So innovation comes from everywhere. There's technology driven innovation, there's customer driven innovation, but that's part of the partnership. The second part of the partnership is inspiration. So with innovation you inspire. So when you innovate on something new that inspires new innovation and new thinking and that's again the second part of the partnership. And then the third part is really iterate and execute, right? Because it's great that we can now innovate and we can agree on what we need to do, but now we need to put it into products, put it in technology and put it into actual use. That's when the benefits comes and that's when we can start bringing the bell. >>And I think it's really intrinsically linked. I mean if you look at progress with Formula One teams and their innovation, it's all underpinned by our technology partners and that's why it's so important. The likes of Christian pushes the product and improves it and innovates it because then we can realize the benefits and ultimately save time and go faster. So it's really important that our, our partners and certainly inform one, push the boundaries and find that technology. >>And I think one of the things that we also find very, very important is that we actually understand our customers and can talk the language. So I think that was one of the key things in our engagement, Martin from the beginning is that we had a set of people that really understand Formula One felt it on their bodies and can have the conversation. So when the Formula One teams they say something, then we actually understand what we're talking about. So for instance, when we talk about, you know, track side inventory, well it's not that different from what a field service technician have in his van when he goes service. The only difference is when you see something happening on track, you'll see the parts manager go out to the pit lane with a tablet and say like, oh we need this, we need that, we need this and we need that. And then we'll go back and pick it and put it on the car and the car is service and maintain and off go. Absolutely. >>Yeah that speed always impresses me. >>It's unbelievable. >>Shannon, last question for you. From a smart factory perspective, you said you're moving in next year. What are some of the things that you are excited about that you think are really gonna be transformative but IFS is doing? >>So I think what I'm really excited about once we get in is using the technology they've already put in terms of 5G networks to sort of springboard that into a further IFS implementation. Maybe IFFs cloud in terms of we always struggle to keep the system up to date with, with what's physically happening so that the less data entry and the more automatic sort of data capture, the better it is for the formula on team cuz we improve our our single point of truth. So I'm really excited to look at the internet of things and sort of integrate our CNC machines to sort of feed that information back into ifs. But also the RFID technology I think is gonna be a game changer when we go into the new factory. So really >>Excited. Excellent. Well well done this year. We look forward to seeing Alonso join the team in 23. Fingers >>Crossed. >>Okay. Fingers crossed. Christian, Jeanette, it's been a pleasure to have you on the program. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and how ifs asked Martin are working together, how you really synergistically working together. We appreciate your time. >>Thank you very much for having us. Our >>Thanks for having us. And go Aston >>Woo go Aston, you already here first Lisa Martin, no relation to Aston Martin, but well, I wanna thank Christian Peterson and Shannon Edwards for joining me, talking about IFS and Aston Martin team and what they're doing at Speed and Scale. Stick around my next guest joins me in a minute. >>Thank you.

>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2019. Brought to you by IFS. >> We're back at IFS World 2019 from the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. I'm Dave Volonte, with my co-host, Paul Gillen. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, get the best guest, Christian Peterson is here. He's the chief product officer at IFS. Christian, great to see you. >> All right, thank you very much. Happy to be here. >> Your first IFS World Conference, so ... >> It is mine ... >> Mine too, so ... >> Yeah, I'm happy to be here. It's just like getting an injection of customer input and feedback in a very short amount of time So, that's uh, that's awesome. I really love it. >> Yeah, these events are great to connect with customers its one to many conversations. But, give us a sense of your background and why you were attracted to IFS. Why did you join? >> Well from a background perspective, I've always been in the effects of business and technology and uh, you know my passion has always been what we can actually do with technology for businesses to innovate, to differentiate, to do new things to automate things. Really, really a strong believer in the promise of software. Because that's what software is all about. Um, so, um, I have a past with Starbucks, I've started ELP companies, I've been with Microsoft. Uh, for fifteen, sixteen years. Um, have been with SAP for a number of years. So I joined, I joined IFS last year, um, really because of the transformation and the uh, the journey I just was on and the passion that IFS has always had for the customers. And the outcomes we've created for customers. It's just a perfect environment to, to uh to realize the dream of providing value to customers, outcomes for customers, and leveraging technology in the process. >> Yeah, so see you're a challenger, hashtag for the challenger. A hashtag is started. >> Really, really I mean you were at the giant uh, SAP and going to a smaller, not much smaller, but a smaller company, What were they doing that you thought that excited you so much? >> Well the exciting thing again is the focus on the customer and the close proximity to customers in everything I.. >> Wouldn't SAP, sorry to interrupt, wouldn't SAP be the same thing though? >> Let me just, let me put it this way, I went to IFS because I (intelligible) really, really brilliantly. So, is that a, is that a nice way of saying it. (laughter) >> (laughing) Okay. >> So were here for your keynote today you sort of laid out a roadmap, a little vision uh, talked a little bit about digital transformation. But, I wanted to talk about, the, you made a big big emphasis on your API platform. Open API's, embracing that, uh its been somewhat a criticism of you guys in the past. And so, maybe it's a response to that or a response to customers, but why the platform, why, to explain it, its importance and how it fits into your roadmap going forward. >> Well the API enablement is important for many different perspectives. First of all, we use API's ourselves. To create user experiences and drive a lot of the innovation where they are merging technology and so forth. That's one aspect of it. So just for our own, our own level of innovation and the pace at which we can innovate with, going forward on the API platform, is, is, is is dramatic. The second area is really again back to the digital transformation that customers are really driving out there um, a lot of that involves, um, really most companies becoming software companies themselves. So now we have a lot of our customers that actually have developers, they're writing software they're driving new offerings to their customers. And to get value out of these offerings for their customers They really need to get access to a a lot of the capabilites that lives inside of the IFS models. They need to get access to data, to get access to processes because, on of the keys in digital transformation regardless in what shape or form it comes is, you need data, you need massive amounts of data. And you need data from within your firewall you need data from third party, and you need structure data all structure data. And participating in that world is absolutely essential that you have that open API philosophy where you expose yourself and your own data and API's. But, also so we can turn the other way and we can consume data and API's from others so we can create similar scenarios. So it's really about being apart of the ecosystem of, uh, of technologies and solutions that customers rely on. And that's why we joined also, the open API foundation. >> You also demonstrated this morning, uh Orena, your new customer experience platform. Talk about what that is and why it's important. >> Well, so it's, it's important of course again because we, um, um, we have this generational shift in people that are coming into the workforce that expect and want to work differently. And, um, if you think about how people actually work, to do and get things done today, or think about ourselves. Now, we're no spring chickens anymore, right, we've been around... >> Speak for yourself. >> We've seen DOS, we've seen DOS systems. >> Yeah my hand went up in the 3.1 question. >> When the three point, did you put the mouse on the screen as well? (laughing) I've literally seen that. So we've been through that, but the people we are getting into the workforce now they have a different mentality. They are not thinking about what they do. Like, we are thinking about, "how does the system work?" "Where do I click? Where do I go next?" The intuition that people now apply to the system when they start working with them, the systems just have to reflect that intuition. It has to be intuitive, it has to be immersive as well. And the immersive part is really based on what the users see, what they do. The contextual information, the contextual intelligence they get in the context of what they do should want them to do more. Because they can, so they get dragged in and the new type of users, they just have that natural intuition, because that's how you browse the web. You go to one place on the web, go to the next thing, You get inspired by this, you go there. And there's no reason why the systems that you get your work done, why they shouldn't be the exact same thing. Orena is a huge step in that direction, together with our mobile enablement on multiple form factors and devices. >> So you, you mentioned you know saw everybody's becoming a software company, every company is becoming, you've been in the software business for awhile you work for a software company now. You're talking about Orena, you're talking about API integration, I showed you our software. My point is, software is hard. (laughs) There's a talent war for employees, we talked about that off camera. Um, so, as you see these companies digitally transforming, becoming software companies, Mark Endrese's, "software is eating the world", Mark Beneoff, "Everybody is becoming a software company", How are they doing? And what role can you play, IFS, in terms of helping them become a software company. Because it's, it's so damn difficult. >> Yeah, I think that the role of being a software company I think the absolute differentiation they want to create through software and differentiate the offerings or other things that they really want to do, We can't really help them there, because they're differentiated. Like if you're differentiated, you can't find something standard and use for that. But we can enable it and um, as we're looking at it, a lot of the emerging technologies that we can enable them with to achieve it, that's a number of things we can do. And, we are introducing a notion of an application, of application services here, where we really, enable these emerging technologies in the context of what we do. So, while you hear about technologies or augmented realities, mixed realities, artificial intelligence and robotics and IOT and artificial intelligence, all the stuff that you have, we take that and put into context of the focus industries that we focus on and the solution categories that we focus on. So EAP, enterprise asset management, service management. And in that way our customers can focus on what they actually need to do with it, versus focus on the, on the technologies. >> And the API platform allows those customers to, whatever the build to integrate to their ERP system if in fact... >> That's correct, that's correct. And as I mentioned, we also use API's not only on the front end of what we provide and expose all we have, but we also consume on the back end. So the way we actually consume the application services and drag them in and embed them is through API, these application services. >> I understand you're working on an entirely new architecture that you will be debuting in the spring of 2020. How is that going to change the game? >> We don't really think about it as a new architecture. We think about it as a natural evolution that includes some of these things. Uh, so for instance, the introducing, uh the introduction of the application services layer that I mentioned, is more a new layer in our architecture that we introduced. So we don't think about it as a new architecture, we're just evolving what we have. And because of that evolution, that is something that our entire product portfolio will benefit from. Um, and, I already mentioned today how we are aligning the product portfolio from an experience perspective. We are bringing the arena experience through our FSM product to our um, PSO product, to our customer engagement product and so forth. So we are aligning that front end experience on the same design patterns, so forth, because you know, a good experience is a good user experience. >> You talk about Orena bot and this, this gentleman here, who's given us this talk, just through out a gardner status. That, that by, I don't know, by whatever year 2023, uh, more money will be spent on bots than mobile integration. Which is, you know, quite a prediction. Your thoughts. >> Well, I, you know, there's, there's always all kinds of interesting predictions. I think actually, um, I actually think, um, there, amount of money may go down but I think the number of bots will go up dramatically. And, I think we will actually get to a situation where, bots will be creating bots. (laughs) Right? So, That's when you get, when we talk about intelligent and autonomous systems, I really believe it. Because there is no reason why we should not begin to see autonomy in software. >> Dave: Right. >> Um, we see it, uh, I use the example this morning, that we put our lives in the hands of technology everyday, when you go in your car and you use adaptor to cruise to control, you're trusting technology. Like, when you are driving your Tesla. I mean there was an example in San Francisco, uh, I think, uh, in December last year, where the police had been following a driver for 17 miles. And the car wouldn't stop because it was driving itself, and the driver was sleeping. So, they had to, they had to, you know, call up Tesla and say like how can we manipulate this technology so the car actually stops, so the police gradually got the car to stop. And, uh, you know, finally the guy woke up and uh, he'd probably had one too many. But he claimed he wasn't driving, so they shouldn't charge him, but, they did. (laughter) >> Of course, yes. Well bots are getting better, but I still, I still often know when I'm talking to a bot, but it's getting better, wouldn't you say? >> Christian: Yeah, it's getting reallly good. >> Paul: I know, last year I was completely fooled by a fundraising bot. But, I got a phone call from a bot that I spoke to for ninety seconds before realizing it was a bot. (laughter) So it's, its getting pretty good. As you look at, at the technology that excites you, about what you're bringing with your product, you talked a lot this morning about different kinds of technology and how you want to be a leader. What technologies excite you the most about the markets you are serving? >> I tell you what excites me the most is to work through the different levels of, of, uh, digital transformation that I talked about. I'm excited about the reflection between businesses and technology. I'm excited about the reflections between people and experiences, and I'm excited about the reflections between automation and efficiency. We have a lot of technology at our hands, That can help us achieve these different things. But, at the end of the day, it's the outcomes that matter. The technologies are exciting and you know, I can get super geeky about a lot of different technologies. But if it doesn't relate to any, any, not technical vision of product, but any business vision you have on what you actually want to do with it as a business, then I think it becomes dangerous. But, of course we have our geek sessions, where we geek out on all these different things. But, we try to separate that from when we actually, uh, you know, designing and building things directly into the product. But we need the geek sessions to get inspired. And understand what is available, so we can put it in the context of what our customers need today and also what they'll be needing in the future. >> Since you have some decent observation space and digital transformation, I want to ask a question. Uh, uh, our partner ETR, they have a data platform. And I was down in New York last week just talking to them and, one of the theories is, is so spending is starting to slow down a little bit overall on the macro. One of the theories is that digital transformation in the last two years, there's been a lot of experimentation. So a lot of try and, you know, everything. And now they're going into the production with, with what they, what they feel will delivery business value. And two things are happening is their premise. One is, they're narrowing down the focus on new technologies and make, making bets for all the disruptive technologies. The other is, a lot of the legacy stuff, they are pulling out. Saying, "okay, we're moving on." Um, are you seeing that, are you seeing this sort of... That, the bell weathers anyway going heavy now into production with digital transformation. What are you seeing? >> I think its a progression. >> Dave: Uh huh. >> I think it's scenario based. I don't see, I don't see companies making like, an all out bet from one day to another. >> Dave: Just mixed. >> It's mixed and I think you need to take a cautious approach because, you know, you don't, you... When you're in the technology world, you don't always get it right in the first go, we certainly don't get it right, the first time all the time, right? So, often times its important to get something out there. Learn from it, innovate, fail fast sometimes. Um, the worst thing you can do is not acknowledge when you have mad a mistake, And I think that is a risk that some companies also, bear with digital transformation is... If you need to adjust what you, what you thought was the right thing to do, make the adjustment as quickly as possible. >> Dave: You talked in your keynote about tailoring solutions and I want to understand your philosophy. How dogmatic are you, uh, uh, about, uh, not making customizations versus allowing your customers to make those, those tailored? And, and how do you manage that from a, you know cloud and SaaS delivery, evergreen, I think you call it stand point? >> Christian: We, we, absolutely believe that customers should have solutions that match exactly what they need and so forth. We also heard from stage today that, a good philosophy, I really subscribe to that philosophy, that if you're doing things that, you know, is not really differentiating you as a company or something just use a standard process. Why do something custom if it doesn't mean anything. Then you can adjust your processes to that. But if you have things that really differentiate you as a company, you obviously want to have the technology that supports that. And since that is differentiated, you're not likely to have a standard package file. So in that process, what we need to enable is, we need to enable these scenarios where you can extend, uh, we call it extend on the inside, extend on the outside, but you can achieve what you want but, do it in a way where, you do it in a declarative way. Not by creating or modifying code. So instead we want to make sure that our, the code that we have, that is part of the standard product, can actually interpret declarative code. And that means when we have upgrades and all that stuff, we upgrade the core but the declarative code that the customer has that is, specific to them, remains there and stays there. >> Dave: And that's why the API platform is critical. >> Paul: Right. >> You said no product will be announced or shipped without API enablement, period the end. >> That's correct, We can not because, we can not create a use of front end to anything that doesn't, that isn't API enabled. So, it's very simple. >> Paul: That's a modern architecture. I am curious about you said that one of the reasons that you're at IFS is because it's so customer focused. What is it that this company does differently from companies you've worked at in the past, that exemplifies that customer focus? >> Christian: I think it goes deep um, not only into the culture but also how we actually have people in, all the way in to the individual development teams. Um, I've been in other software companies and the development teams you have developers, you have QA's, you have, you know...testers, you have, you know... Programming just to write the specifications, so forth. We actually have industry solution specialists embedded into the development teams. So, we are, we are, probably our own, you know, worst critic um, and of course then working hand and hand with customers in their processes is essential. But again, if we don't provide the out...if we don't provide the value and the output from what we create for our customers, then it's worth nothing. And that's really the philosophy. If we do not provide value, technology means nothing. >> Dave: So the intersection of domain expertise and software development. Uh Chris, the last question is sort of, what do you hope to get out of this event? Things that you hope to, to take away, or learn or convey to your customers? >> Well I always, I always, look to get feedback. I'm a sucker for feedback and input and learning. Uh, so first of all, I can't wait to walk the expo floor here and really see what all our partners are bringing to the table of innovation. Because they're doing amazing things, so I always enjoy spending a few hours on the, on the expo floor. In the process, get to meet a lot of people, uh and then during the sessions if we can or I'll always end any presentation with an email address. Any, anybody, any customer, any partner will always be able to email me, uh directly, and I, you know... Sometimes a little hard to keep up, but I will respond to every single request. >> Dave: Feedback is a gift. Christian, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, it was great to see ya. >> Thank you. >> Alright, thank you very much. >> Alright, thank you for watching everybody. Keep it right there, we'll be back with our next guest. We're at IFS World, Boston. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Atlanta, Georgia it's theCUBE covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by IFS. (upbeat pop music) >> Rebecca: Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference 2018 here in Atlanta, Georgia, I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Jeff Frick. What you're seeing right now are the hordes of people here at IFS World, and we are here to talk to our two guests Sumair Dutta, who is an analyst at the Service Council, and Mark Brewer, who's the Global Industry Director of Service at IFS. Thanks so much for joining us! >> Well thanks for having us. >> Thanks for having us, yeah absolutely. >> Jeff: How did we draw you away from the cappuccino machine of there? The-- >> I know, I know. >> Jeff: The baristas are workin' hard. >> Rebecca: It's very buzzy, it's very exciting. So talk to us a little bit about FSM six which is, which is going to be released at the end of this year. What's new, what's exciting? Right, so IFS field service management six, you know I think the first point to make is that we already have what is recognized as the most complete solution in field service management, so this release was really focused on improving the user experience. It's a common theme throughout this conference, I think you'll hear. So how do, not only our customers, but our customers customers, their partners, all stakeholders get the most intuitive user experience out of this solution, to derive the value that encapsulated in there. I think another thing that goes along with that is, we're moving to a zero customization goal. That is to say, you'll still have, you know, ultra levels of configurability in this product from a workflow perspective, from a user interface perspective, from a business rule perspective. But instead of doing that through customization, you're doing that through configuration. Which means, you can sit on an evergreen model, you're not restricted on your upgrades. You can start on the latest and greatest, in other words, our customers are able to encapsulate an excellent experience and their business rules all within a standard offering. >> Field service management you don't really necessarily think of as inside the ERP suite, right? Kind of a hang off, I dunno what the right term is. So how does that make this offering different within all the offerings that IFS has? >> Mark: Yeah, it's a great question. So one of the uniques about the IFS FSM solution, is that it is complimentary to whatever back-end systems you already have, so let's say you have something from one of our peers in the business, so you're not runnin' IFS apps for your ERP, you're runnin' somethin' else, that doesn't matter. You can still derive best in class field service management from the FSM solution, it integrates with pretty much any other back-end. So if you truly are a service focused operation of which many companies, you know, 70% of their revenue derive from service, you can get that, if you like best-in-class service capability, without throwin' anythin' out that you're already got. And that's why FSM is somewhat different to the majority of other portfolio applications at IFS. >> So talk a little bit about how closely you work with your customers, I mean that is a real point of pride for IFS is how customer focused, how customer centered you are. So describe your process, in how you collaborate with customers, in terms of what they want the end product to look like. >> Really glad you asked that question, and it's incredibly timely for this event because, when the event closes on Thursday, we actually have a day dedicated to what we call our customer advisory council. So we have 12 of our strategic field service customers gathering in Atlanta to effectively help plan the roadmap. So we're not talkin' about tomorrows feature functions, we're talkin' about a three to five year strategy from their business. So this is not, if you like, the users asking for features, it's actually C-level, and executive management level from our customers that are actually giving us insights into where their taking their service operation in the future. Not really a technology discussion, but a business strategy discussion. We can then take that away, that involves our R&D organization as well, by the way, we take that away, we augment that with our own roadmap goals, technology that is obviously, you know, within the field service space already, AI, AR, IOT, and so forth, and, you know, bringin' those three things together, that's how we ensure that we are building applications, not just for today, but for what's next, as per the conference tag-line, you know? So heavily customer centric. Just on Friday, all those customers in the room, tellin' us where they want to go. >> Sumair, what are you seeing as sort of trends in this field service market, and how are you seeing IFS responding to those? >> Yeah that's a great question. You know field service as a whole wasn't something that was talked about previously, and we see so much more interest in the field of field service and the overall equation of aftermarket service and support. You know, previously that was a bi-product of being a business, we have a product, we need to support it, so we need to maybe throw some resources, but let's do that at the lowest cost. Now you'll see more and more companies talk about you know, service as a profit center, that we need to make money as a service. And this is primarily being driven by three major themes, three major disruptors: you have technology of course, and all of the new tools, AR, AI, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, IOT, and that's driving companies to figure out what is there story in each one of those solutions? We're not all there, no one's solved the problem, but we're all trying to figure out where do those fit into the way we deliver service, and the way our customers consume service? Then you have in field service specifically, workforce related challenges, disruptions. In our research we find about 70% of companies are going to face a talent shortage in the next five to 10 years. And this is research that's done across manufacturing and other disciplines as well. So your capacity in the sense of the number of workers you have is not going up, and you have to bring in new workers, you have to attract new talent, but then you have that outgoing flow of workforce and knowledge that's leaving your organization. So you're trying to balance all of those needs. And then eventually customers are demanding more, and you might say what does that mean you know, in an industrial setting? Well we're all consumers in some form, and we have consumer experiences, you know, the Amazons of the world, the Ubers of the world, who give us an element of convenience and access to information. And that is beginning to translate more and more so into the B to B service environment. So as a service organization you're balancing: customer needs which are rising, you've got a talent pool or a labor pool that's probably declining, and all of these disruptive technologies that you have to incorporate into your business, and so as a company as IFS that has been very customer centric, IFS has done a lot around field service management to improve some of the workforce capacity challenges with their solutions around FSM, they are taking a greater stake in some of the customer engagement solutions, with the acquisitions of MPL systems, and potentially future acquisitions down the road, and then from a technology point of view, I like IFS' approach, they've been, they're not quick to jump to the end, to say, you know, here's our AI solution per se, but they're essentially trying to establish those steps for companies to get from point A to point B to point C, to say here's where analytics can help you, here's where mobility can help you, it's a little bit more of a pragmatic approach as opposed to a marketing first approach, and so IFS has done a really good job in terms of the workforce elements, the technology elements, and now moreso on the customer engagements side as well. >> You know what really strikes me, as we're having this conversation is: the way that customers engage with companies has changed dramatically, right? Certainly on a consumer side, and a business side, so much now the engagement is via an electronic interface. And I can see where the increasing importance of the field sales person in that truck is actually the face of the company, and probably quite often the only person that the customer actually engages. So that's a really different type of service level requirement not to meet an SLA delivery because of a contractual obligation, but in terms of actually being the face in the engagement, in the touch point of your company, with an actual customer. It's probably happening more and more in the field as a percentage of the total than it ever has. >> That's a great observation, you know we actually, many of our customers today regard that field engineer as the trusted advisor of the customer, he's the trusted advisor, you know. They don't see him as a salesperson, they see him as their, you know confidant, their trusted advisor. He's not only going to be the hero to fix their problem, he's actually going to tell them how they can prevent such a problem in the future, and he's also going to try and offer them, you know, I can fix this problem today, but actually if you bought into a wider service contract, you wouldn't need to care about how many visits, and how many parts you consume, it will actually cover you completely with a gold contract. He upsells and cross-sells at the same time as becoming the hero, so, perfect observation. >> So are they actively, you know, kind of retraining those folks to really start to think of themselves more as a kind of a customer engagement representative versus just a field service person? You see that in the real world? >> Most definitely, most definitely. Because more and more, we've got an educated buyer, the buyer's savvy, you know, he's done a lot of his own work before actually committing to a purchase these days, much the same in this space, so, you know, rather than be sold to, they want to be advised. And it's a different experience again, to use that phrase, from a technology perspective, you know, that mobile application that used to be about, here's your jobs, go visit these locations, it actually now is when you're there, maybe you should talk about this particular offering, we have a promotion on that particular unit, these customer uses X, Y, and Z features, talk to them about another incremental gain from that, so the intelligence has moved from just fix the problem, to actually become their trusted advisor, like I said. >> And I would add to that, it's not just about training, it's about hiring, so it's the profile of who you bring in as a field service technician, you're not only bringing someone who's technically savvy, or mechanically savvy, or digitally savvy, you're bringing someone who can communicate with customers, someone who can work as a team, so internally, your internal customers and then your external customers who can communicate, who can provide solutions, who can provide guidance. We've done some studies of field service engineers, and they say, you know, our work is 10% fixing things, and 90% of solving customer problems. So it's having that empathy, having that knowledge of what the customer's going through, and potentially what the customer might go through in the future and being able to preempt some of that with advice, potentially selling, potentially guiding your customers with information, and so it is a much more wholistic experience because they are the face of the organization. >> And as a consequence, expectations have raised in the customer base. They want more than just a fix. >> It's so wild right, this whole, this conversation about machines taking our jobs, and yet everyone that we talk to, there's not enough people to do the jobs, and so it just: A reinforces that we need the help, but B, more importantly, that it's the combination of a machine helping do the scheduling, helping decide where to go, helping to know what the opportunity is for that particular engagement with the person who's empathetic, has history with the company, history with the problems. That actually is a much better solution than either one, or the other. >> Yeah, to talk about artificial intelligence again, you know, we see, there's a couple of things: one it allows scaling of the human, if you will, not replacement of the human, we won't have sufficient, no skilled employees, secondly I think it all bends the human experience, because, I'll give you an example. We got to customer that's in, like the, breakdown recovery service for vehicles, in the US in fact, today a call center agent in their contact center they'll take a call, but the virtual assistant is actually listening to the conversation, kind of like a Siri in the background, and they pick up on phrases like tow-truck, automatically pops up on the agents screen, the nearest tow truck is 10 miles away, it's Steve, you know, in this location to the customer. They'll pick up on emergency, we can get there with a closer engineer, we can pull him off another job. That's actually going in the ear of the agent, and it's going on the screen of the agent, they are providin' a level of service, you know, that the customer is pretty, you know, impressed by, as a consequence. That's a great example of: it's not just the human experience, or the AI experience, it's a combined experience. >> It's the human empathy along with the automated knowledge that you're combining there, that's great. Well Mark and, thank you so much for joining us Mark and Sumair, I really appreciate it, it's been a great conversation. >> Sumair: Well thank you very much. >> Mark: Thank you, thanks. >> Jeff: Thanks! >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick, we'll have more from IFS World Conference just after this. (gentle dance beat)