>> 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 2018, here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a three panel guest with us today. We have Eric Schaeffer, the Senior Managing Director of Accenture, Paul Maher, GM Industry Experiences at Microsoft, and Yasushi Yagyu, Assistant Manager at NEC Corporation. Thank you so much for joining me. >> Guests: Thank you. >> So you're on this panel because you are all platinum sponsors and close partners of IFS. We've heard a lot today about IFS's passion for customers. It's a customer-centric, customer-focused company. I'd love to hear from you, your experiences as being partners with IFS. If you could describe a little bit about what you've experienced. I'm going to start with you. >> Thanks, Rebecca. I think, we've been, Accenture and IFS have been partners for many many years, and what I've appreciated in the relationship is the customer focus, but really the focus on delivering value to both IFS and Accenture customers. It's a value-driven approach, very industry specific. So understanding the industry issues, leveraging IFS products and solution to best meet these, having Accenture come in and help tailor the solution to the industry imperatives, and also leveraging digital technologies and combining these with the IFS foundation, which I think was a key term used this morning. >> Yeah, I mean so... Microsoft and IFS have had a very long and prosperous partnership over the last 20 years or so. What's great here, from the keynote this morning is obviously the announcement of IFS Applications 10. And so Microsoft obviously, being a Cloud provider, we've most recently been working very closely with IFS on their move to the Cloud and moving their solutions to the Cloud. So you know, this thing called digital transformation is really, sort of the boss and it's great to see, you know, as you had probably this morning in the keynote, you know, really disruption is really driving new innovation and so we're really glad to partner with IFS in response to that disruption, thinking about Cloud and bringing the IFS Solutions to the Cloud, and really delivering innovation to really address the digital transformation needs of industry. >> And I'd love to talk about you, Yasushi, about innovation. I mean, I ask all of you, but this is a company that really is known for having a history of innovation. How do you come together and collaborate and come up with new creative solutions? >> Uh huh. For example, we have independently, we have AI engine. Namely HML is our engine. And our customer has already implemented that kind of AI solution to predict the demand forecast. And then... Our solution is connect to the IFS Production Control Module, or master schedule module. And then, now our AI can generate forecast data and send it to the master schedule module. >> I know that Accenture has innovation centers around the world. Can you talk a little bit about how you innovate with IFS? >> Well, so we have four innovation centers across the world. We have one in Detroit, one in Munich, Shanghai, and Tokyo. And what we do with IFS is look at industry use cases. And then by combining IFS solutions, plus some of the digital assets, which are proprietary to Accenture, combining the two to deliver new levels of efficiency. And so helping out clients, walking through these innovation centers, they get the "Wow" moment where they see how IFS plus Accenture combined can deliver more value and unlock the value which is trapped in their enterprise. >> Can you talk a little bit about that "Wow" factor? I mean, what are sort of... What are a lot of the challenges that your clients are facing, that you're partnership with IFS has helped them solve? >> Well, many of our clients and I think the term digital transformation of industry was mentioned, it is how is digital transforming the industry. I think the question is not the why. Everybody's convinced and has understood that it is happening. The question is more of the how to. And this is where the combination of IFS plus Accenture really focusing on the how to, how to leverage these technologies on very pragmatic use cases, demand forecasting we heard. It's all about artificial intelligence and visual and computer vision for visual quality inspections, analytics on the shop floor. So it's working with IFS and our clients, the team of three, to identify these use cases and see how to leverage digital to respond and provide a solution. >> At Microsoft, what kind of benefits have you seen with some of the IFS products? >> Yeah, I mean so, from a Microsoft perspective, of course, you know, we are the vendor, the technology vendor. Most recently we've been working very closely with IFS around the move to the Cloud. So I mean, certainly as I think about the partnership that we've had, it really is multi-faceted in terms of, of course we work very closely around how do we think about driving new opportunities and sales motions. And IFS is one of our highest ranked managed partners so we partner very closely there. But suddenly if I was to focus on the technology innovation perspective, what we're really excited about is really that digital disruption and using the new IFS applications, in particular, IFS Applications 10 that's been announced at the conference, working in partnership there to really look to see how do we start to move the needle and move new customers to really achieve to their digital transformation needs and demands, in partnership with the IFS solution running on the Microsoft digital Cloud. >> What are some of the most exciting new features in IFS 10 that you're most excited about? >> Yeah, I mean you mentioned before about the buzz words and the on-trend technologies and I'll kind of quote the keynote this morning, but what really excites me and excites our joint customers, IFS and Microsoft, is things like artificial intelligence, so what that can do around things like machine learning, cognitive services, things like IoT and making that a reality, so thinking about things like predictive maintenance and really being able to integrate the IFS solutions on the Microsoft digital platform, leveraging IoT to really help in those sort of scenarios is great. And then, really super excited about some of the new innovation opportunities. So thinking about things like block chain and what that can do, as you think about the broader opportunity around supply chain and payments and so on. So I think that closer together of the platform but also we've had such a close partnership with IFS, so thinking about really sort of a business problem-led approach, followed by how can the technology and innovation help our joint customers, I think is really helping us as we're looking to innovate in the world of digital transformation. >> And I know that NEC has recently come out with an announcement about AI and heterogeneous, mixed learning technology. Can you tell our viewers a little bit more about that, Yasushi? >> Yes, we have an engine, engine model. And our customer has implemented that kind of AI solution to demand forecast or machine failure prediction operations. And some of our AI solutions do collaborate with IFS predictions. For example, at NEC booth we can demonstrate our demand forecast solution. And information from each product comes from IFS master schedule or inventory transaction as input data into AI engine. And then AI generates forecast data automatically and sends it back to that module, yeah. >> So here, IFS, we've heard a lot today too, about the metrics, how it measures its success, and we've heard that it has very high NPS score, its Gartner Insights score is far above competitors, and yet it is kind of this best kept secret in the industry. What would your advice be to IFS in terms of getting the word out about its products? >> Yeah, I mean I think everyone's looking for opportunities to further their market share and drive that new innovation and sales pipeline. I think the best guidance I would give is that IFS really is a first-class company and has first-class products. I think it's continued to innovate and be true to the core and you know, just work with partners like good friends here to really get the word out. But it's really not about doing unnatural acts. I think it's really about building an empathy and understanding of what's needed in the industry and I think the story telling and brand awareness will grow. And I think, from what I was hearing this morning, I mean the conference even this year has already grown by 20 percent, so I think you'll see those sort of leading integrators of the word getting out and the brand profile out there. So I think it's a cautious approach, a strategic approach by using partners and not doing unnatural things. Let the innovation that's happening at IFS and with those partnerships, almost do the story telling and the brand awareness, and just be true to the competency and listen to the customers. >> Well when you think ahead at what we're going to be thinking about and talking about at WoCo 2019, 2020, what are sort of the big trends that you see? I mean we've hit a lot of the buzz words with AI and machine learning. What else do you see on the horizon? What's keeping you up at night or are you thinking about? >> Well what I do see is that, so we mentioned all these digital technologies, they will force manufacturers, I believe, to completely reinvent their products and services. And so the products of tomorrow will be with a lot of AI, a lot of digital technologies inside of products, also outside of the products. So products will be very different from today. And so you can easily imagine that the way you engineer, the way you manufacture, the way you support these products, will also be completely different. So I think next year, 2019, will be a lot about how digital is reinventing the products and services of the manufacturers. >> Right, we keep thinking about how it's reinventing our workforce and changing the way we're doing things, but it's actually going to be reinventing what's coming out, too, of these processes. >> Yeah I mean, you've touched upon some of the buzz words. I think it's also the maturity of the technologies. So I mean, I think that's certainly what excites me, is that the maturity and the capabilities has grown. So things like machine learning isn't necessarily new but with breakthroughs around the algorithms, that's kind of bringing the pragmatic reality of it being able to drive the innovation needed, you know? Capabilities such as the Cloud is providing that ability to scale up, scale down, the ability to provide processing power that wasn't there, previously possible in their price-performance way. So I think it's great to focus on some of the shiny things that are coming up, but I think it's also important to look at saying the things that are of yesterday isn't that far off, it's the maturity that they're reaching and so it's really making sure that they are taken advantage of and really taking that pragmatic approach of, it's got to be business-led versus technology-led, bringing that innovation into industry. >> Yasushi, do you see any big trends on the horizon that you're thinking about at NEC? >> I'm sorry? >> Big technology trends? Things that you're thinking about, maybe you're worried about, concerned about? >> Ah yes, I think IoT technology is helping reach to early maturity stage already. And at this rate, many users successfully gather, collect biased kind of data and revitalize the data to improve actual business operations. As a next step, I believe AI technologies will be widely applied for demand forecasting or that kind of failure prediction and that case of success in each industry will become solution models or templates, which will accelerate the progress of AI introduction. >> Great, well thank you so much. I really appreciate Yasushi, Eric, Paul, I really appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from IFS WoCo 2018 just after this. (upbeat electronic music)