(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE, everyone. This is Lisa Martin, live in Miami. I'm at IFS Unleashed 2022. We've had a great day talking with IFS executives, customers, partners. We're going to be having another great conversation next. I have two guests here on set with me, Sarah Nicastro joins us, the founder Future Field of Service, and VP of Customer Engagement at IFS, and Roel Rentmeeters, the VP of Digital Transformation at Munters. Welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, here we are surrounded by about 1500 or so people. The buzz in here is, people are ready to come back. They're just ready to come back, have these conversations with their peers and their colleagues at IFS which is great to to see and to feel, right? Sarah, let's start with you, your role, founder Future of Field Service. Talk to me about what that is and what the genesis was. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, a lot of what I do is actually what you're doing and interviewing folks, creating content. I was in the media before I joined IFS, almost four years ago in service specifically. So service, you've probably heard a lot today about moment of service. Service is a huge focus area for IFS and Future of field service is thought leadership resource that IFS allowed me to come on board and create, not only for customers, but for the broader service community. So, I write articles related to service trends host a weekly podcast. Over time with the company as I got to engage with more and more customers, and there's so much value in them connecting with one another. You see that here, like you said, people are so excited to be together, but fostering those connections within our customer community, allowing them to get to know each other, share our best practices, as well as making sure that we're bringing the voice of customer always into IFS. So, that's what I do on the customer engagement side. >> I love it. The voice of the customer is invaluable. And of all the conversations that I've had today, it's so clear how strategic and strong the relationships are that IFS has with its customers. Roel, talk to us a little bit about Munters, you're a customer and talk about the relationship that you've established with IFS and the team. >> Yeah, with pleasure. So, Munters is a Swedish company. We are a global leader in sustainable air treatment solutions. So, think about deunification, cooling, but in big industrial applications. I am the VP of digital services or digital transformation. Prior to that, until very recently, I was a VP of services. And we started that standardization roadmap five years ago, six years ago. We work very closely with IFS. We're implementing a new apps version as an ERP for Munters. And so that servitization moving from additional services to outcome-based services has the digital aspect. So, my move is a natural flow with that. >> How long has Munters been in business? >> It's founded in 1955. >> Oh wow. >> It's a Swedish company, quite traditional still in their manufacturing and delivering services. But the shift is there. >> Talk to me about that shift and how IFS has been an accelerant of that. It's challenging for legacy businesses to evolve and transform. Obviously in this day and age, you don't have a choice. But talk to us about the digital transformation of the business so that you can deliver more to your customers and how IFS has been foundational to that. >> Yeah. So, so that servitization roadmap eventually it is something that our customers want. We captured it. Customers want remote management, they want connected devices, but that alone will not bring you servitization. You need to have your strong foundation in the back with a good process, a good system that can support that process. And that's where IFS came in for us. We are a long time IFS user, so, we are on the eighth version in Europe of app eight, but we are doing a new implementation to 10, and this way, a global implementation with clean data that needs to be cleansed, new processes, end to end processes. And so IFS is our partner to support us in this roadmap along with other developments and things IFS is doing, think about remote management, something we've implemented during COVID and that perfectly aligns with that road towards servitization. >> Yeah, I was just going to say Roel and I were on a panel discussion earlier today with two other customers, and all different industries, but when we said what is the focus of the business they all said servitization or outcomes based services. Me too. Me too, me too, right? So, it's a journey that a lot of our customers are on looking at how they differentiate through service, how they move away from being a provider of products or things, and someone that their customers can trust to provide peace of mind, uptime, outcomes, experiences, things like that. >> It's all about outcomes. And we're hearing more and more about servitization. It's not a new concept. The term is somewhat newer to some of these conversations. But we're seeing a lot of businesses especially in light of COVID pivot in that direction and they need a partner that they can trust like IFS to help them get there. Sarah, let's talk more about customer engagement. What are some of the different facets that need to be considered? You guys, IFS has expertise in five verticals which I love the vertical specialization there. But talk to us about some of those facets that make customer engagement successful. >> Yeah, so I think you're absolutely right. So we have our five industries that we focus heavily on, and that is where most of our customer engagement has and does reside, right? So each industry has its own group of customers that get together weigh in on how IFS is innovating, what they need from the company and their respective industries, etc. What I'm focused on, and probably a lot of it is just based on my background. I mentioned on the panel there was a lot of head nods and me-too, me-too. That's because there are also elements of innovation and change that are happening across industries that our customers care a lot about. So what I'm working on at the moment is introducing sort of another layer of customer engagement where we're also fostering those cross industry more innovation-centered conversations so that we can not only better understand what our customers are focused on there, but also allow them to connect and learn from one another. >> I love that. There's so much power and potential. Roel, talk to us about that from your perspective, the opportunity. You mentioned, Sarah, the panel that you guys were on earlier today, but talk to us about the opportunity that IFS is giving you to engage with your peers in other industries, but also for you to learn and get takeaways from them. That's got to be pretty unique from a technology partner perspective. >> That definitely is. And the Future of Field Service, it's one of those four where I think we share so much knowledge, not just while we are sitting together and having our talks with Sarah, also individually we connected with each other. Companies that are also Swedish based like Tetra Park, etc, So, there's kind of bonds that we can see. But it's true, we are learning from each other also because some are maybe a bit more advanced than others in this area. So we can learn, not just around how they do their processes, how they find technicians on the market which is very scarce today and very difficult. How do you retain them? But also, what are you experiencing during your implementation?? What is your partner that are... What are pitfalls that you have discovered since you were there? Would you go to cloud or would you still wait in APP 10? So we share that knowledge to each other and we learn a lot from each other, which is something I like. I also like the fact that IFS is a very customer-centric company, as we mentioned before, the fact that you have changed advisory boards where the voice of the customer is going to be important, where you can feed back or IFS feeds back trends and things they see going forward where we can also say, but, "Would it not be better that the user interface for a technician who just wants to do this and this and this is simpler than what you offer today. So, it's a win-win situation for both of us. >> It's a collaboration. >> Yeah, I like it. >> It should be. And I'm really passionate about what what I do, but to be on sessions with a group of customers and have them say, "I'm going to call you later because I want to know more about how you did this, or can we connect?" And to see those connections happen, it's great to have events like this and they have been on hold, but ideally happen every year or year and a half. But to keep those connections going continuously is really important to me. >> Well, the innovations that IFS can span from just those connections alone is infinite, right? I mean, your mind can wander with all of the different things that can come out of that. Sarah, talk a little bit more about... We often talk about the voice of the customer. It's incredibly powerful. I always think it's the most objective opinion, but one of the things that I think I was learning earlier today is it's not just about the voice of the customer. It's taking the insights from those customers into the company, into the development of the technologies to then be able to fuel customer-driven changes. Talk about that as a one of the focuses that IFS has. >> Yeah, I mean, not only we, but our customers are talking a lot more about outside in innovation, right? An inside out model does not work today. And so, that's really what the focus is. And there's so many parallels between what we're focused on, what our customers are focused on, right? And so, I think voice of the customer, it's always good to have a quantitative measure where you're doing surveys, you're understanding what is your NBS, how do your customers feel, are they satisfied, etc? But it's also very important to have more of a qualitative or more intimate forum to have those deeper discussions to really get into some of the details that, to Roel's point, can then influence. Okay, well, we haven't quite thought about it that way. The more you have those discussions, the more you can notice what those common challenges or opportunities are so that when you are putting effort into our own evolution and modernization, we can make sure that's geared toward the the impact our customers need. >> Right. That's critical. It's all about outcomes. Customers need to move faster and faster and faster these days, right? I think one of the things that was in very short supply during the pandemic was patients and tolerance. And I don't know that it's going to come back. I think we are... >> I've never had it personally. (Lisa and Sarah laugh) >> I had a little bit of it, but I think the consumerization of tech, we expect these experiences in our professional world to be as easy as going on Amazon and buying whatever we want. We also want the brands to know enough about us where it's not creepy, but make it personalized to some degree, have that intimate relationship with me that's good enough to get me the outcome that I'm looking for. We all have that in our personal lives, but it flows into our business lives as well. So you're dealing with customers that probably have gotten more demanding as a result. >> I think you're absolutely right. And at the same time, not all customers want to go into that entire outcome-based direction. So, but what I like about it is, if you can do outcome-based service, you can also accommodate those customers and the service they want without having the outcome, think about as a lay based service or those kind of things because your organization and your systems and your processes are ready to do this. It's actually part of it. So, that voice of the customer is for us important enough to know it's not one thing that we should create. It's not one service offering. It depends on what kind of customers you are. Look at data center customers for which we do a lot of cooling, they are scared to hell that that thing would be brought down because it would endanger their entire data center. They don't want to connect, but they want to have certain data that they can see inside their environment and that they can pass on to us. So, you need to accommodate all those things. So, your voice of customer is extremely important. >> You mentioned, Lisa, that we've been talking about servitization for quite a while, right? And it's because it involves so many layers of change within a business, right? And so, it's really more of a journey, a continuum. And to Roel's point, companies need to be able to address what their customers need at different points. Some may want to remain on a CapEx model and some may want to move to an outcomes model. We also need to be able to address what our customers need on a bit of a continuum, which is what we're working toward with IFS cloud, is being able to meet people where they are and give them what they need that can grow with them as they grow with their customers. >> And that's absolutely essential for a good partnership and that makes for those moments of service to happen at the end of the day to that end user, whether it's an airline or whatnot. IFS cloud, and we have a couple minutes left, but IFS cloud was launched only 18 months ago and I was in the keynote this morning and Christian was actually here on the show with me too, 400,000 plus users in 18 months, that's growing pretty quickly. What's been some of the feedback from the customer side, and we'll get your perspective, Roel, as well? >> I don't have cloud yet, so we are implementing APP 10. Why? Because we signed up with IFS two years ago. At that time it was not yet there. And we think now let's first do this and then we can move to cloud. But it's not that we will not move to cloud. It's something we will do eventually. I like the fact that IFS thinks of having everything in one rather than having the different pieces, which made it also for me personally very difficult to make a choice. Do I go for the standalone version of the field service, or do I take the one that is embedded in the ERP? What is the difference between those two? Is there functionalities that I'm going to miss if I choose one or the other? So, the fact that it will be all together, it makes it easier also to add on later on like customer service or the customer ports or all those kind of things. So, I like that concept. So, I'm very curious to hear from peers here that have done the implementation like the Tetre Pack, how's it going? What is their feeling? I'm very curious. >> Well, I imagine at this kind of event, you're going to learn just that. >> Yep. (Lisa chuckles) >> You were going to say something, Sarah. >> Yeah, I was just going to say, I think it's a really good point that you mentioned with all of the things we're used to in our consumer lives, we want simplicity. Having complex technology stacks is at odds with delivering simplicity to the customer, right? And so, so that's the goal really. I was just in a session before this with Yotin who's on the journey to Evergreen with IFS cloud. And it's really the idea of eliminating some of the manual effort that exists in maintaining a system, making it a lot easier and faster for organizations to adopt innovation that comes out and give them more agility really in focusing on meeting their customer needs instead of focusing on managing their technology. >> Absolutely. Nobody wants to be doing that. Thank you so much, both of you for joining me on the program today, talking about what IFS is doing, the Future of Field Service, how you're partnering, truly partnering with customers. It's impressive. We talked to a lot of vendors and a lot of customers and I definitely am seeing some unique differentiation here. So, thank you so much for sharing your insights with me today. >> Thanks, Lisa. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching theCUBE live from Miami. We've been here all day. We thank you so much for watching. We will see you next time. (soft music)

(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)

>>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.

>>Hey everyone. Welcome back to Miami, Miami Beach. Specifically, not a bad location to have a conference. Lisa Martin here with the Cube live at IFS Unleashed. We're gonna be having a great conversation next about Ization moments of Service Rules. Royces here, as is the C of IFS for aerospace and defense. Scott Camani. Nick Ward joins us as well, the VP of Digital Systems at Roll Royce. Guys, excited to have you on the program and welcome back. >>Thank you very much. Nice to be back. It's >>Been three years since the last IFS show. I love How's Scott? I was talking with Darren Roots earlier today and I said, Well, didn't it used to be IFS world? And he said, Yes. And I said, I love the name. I would love to, to unpack that with your cheek marketing officer because it, there's a lot of, of, of power behind Unleash. A lot of companies do such and such world or accelerate, but we're talking about unleashing the power of the technology to help customers deliver those moments of service. Yes. Love it. So Scott, start us off here. Talk about ization. That's a relatively new term to me. Sure. Help me understand what it means, because IFS is a pioneer in this sense. >>We are. So one of the things that IFS is always trying to do is to try to find a way to help our customers to realize a moment of service. And that moment of service is really when they found the ability to delight their customers. And when we look at the way in which we're trying to drive those business outcomes for our customers, ization seems to be at the core of it. So whether it's the ability for a company to use a product, a service, or an outcome, they're driving ization in a way where they're shaping their business. They're orchestrating their customers and their people and their assets behind a val value chain that helps them to provide a delightful experience for their customers. And with IFS being focused on Lifecycle asset management, we no longer have customers that have to choose from best of suite or best of breed. They can actually have both with ifs. And that's something we're really excited to provide to our customers and more excited for our customers to realize that value with their customers, their partners. Along the way. >>You, you mentioned customer delight and it's a term that we, we all use it, right? But there's so much power and, and capabilities and metrics behind that phrase, customer delight, which will unpack Nick bringing you into the conversation. Talk to us a little bit about what your role is at Rolls Royce. My first thought when I saw you was, oh, the fancy cars, but we're talking about aerospace and the fence, so give us a little bit of a history. >>Okay. So yes, we don't make cars is the first point. So we are, we are power, we do power as a service. So we are most well known, I guess for large aircraft airliners. You know, if you've, if you've flown here to Miami, there's probably a 50 50 chance you've flown on a Rod Roy powered aircraft. Our market segment is what we call wide bodied aircraft where you go on, there's two aisles. So the larger section of the market, and we, we provide power, so we provide the engines, but more importantly, we've been a ization company, a service company for at least two decades. We, we have a, a service relationship we call total care. And the whole idea of total care is, yes, I have my engine, it's on my aircraft, but I take care of it. I make sure it's available to fly when you need to fly it. And all of the things that have to come together to make that happen, it's a service company. >>Service company. Talk to me a little bit about, and I wanna get got your perspective as well, but the relationship that Roll Royce and IFS have this is a little bit unique. >>Well, I can start, but I I think Nick's gonna be better served to tell us about that as our customer. Nick and I actually started this journey about four years ago, and what we did was, is we were working closely with our perspective customer Rolls-Royce identified what they were looking for as a desired business outcome. And then we found a way through the technology and the software that we provide to all of our enterprise customers globally to find a solution that actually helped to provide a, an outcome not only to Rolls-Royce, but also to our collective downstream customers, commercial operators around the globe. So that's where we started the journey and we're continuing our discussions around other solutions, but that's how we started and it's been an incredible partnership. We're so happy and proud to have Nick as a customer and a advocate of all things ifs and I'll let him kind of continue from his point of view how he sees the partnership in the relationship. >>No, thank you Scott. I think we've, we've always, we've valued the kind of relationship that we have because I think IFS has always got Rolls Royce in terms of strategic direction. What do we try to do? I said, we're a service company. You know, we, we are, we have to have a service relationship with our, our customers, our airlines. To have a service relationship, you have to be able to connect to your service customer. And ifs is a big part of how we connect for data. That's how do we understand what the airline is doing with the engines, but it's also how we return data back into the airline. So we are, we're get a very close integrated relation between us, our airlines, through a bridge that, that ifs create through the maintenance product. Got it. So it works really well. >>I I think I'd make one other point. One of the things that we've always focused on is quantifiable business value. The only way a partnership like this could possibly work is if we have a desired business outcome, but if we're providing value, So the value work that we did in conjunction with Rolls Royce and really identifying that helped to support the business case that allowed this partnership to really begin and flourish. So I I, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that business value element that's really core to everything we do and all the, the conversations that Nick and I have. >>Well, it's all about outcomes. Absolutely. It's all about outcomes. It >>Is, it has to be about, it's about moments of service, right? That's why we're here, right? So perhaps a moment of service for Robs Royce is every time you're a passenger, you're going through the terminal. You expect your aircraft to be there, ready, waiting for you to get on and depart on time. And our moment of service is every aircraft takes off on time, every time we live. When we die by the quality of that statement, how well we live up to that statement, I think I checked this morning, there's something alike, 600 aircraft in the sky right now with Rolls Royce power carrying passengers. All of those passengers have relied on that moment. Service happening regularly like clockwork. Every single time you don't get any forgiveness for a delay, you get very little forgiveness for a cancellation that has to happen. And then so many things have to come together for that to happen. >>Those 600 aircraft, that's maybe 200,000 people right now in the sky, Wow. Those 200,000 people are trying to connect, They're trying to connect with friends, they're trying to connect with loved ones, family, colleagues, whatever the purpose is of that trip. It's really important to them. And we just have to make sure that that happens for us. We've had something like a million flights so far this year, 300 million people relying on that moment of so is happening. So I really resonate with, with the language that Scott users about the importance of sort of that focal point on when does it all come together? It comes together when as a passenger, I get on the plane and it goes and I get no issues. >>Right. Well people don't tolerate fragmented experiences anymore. No, no. I think one of the things that was in short supply during the pandemic was patience and tolerance. Sure. Not sure how much of that's gonna come back, right? But those integrated connected experiences, as you described so eloquently, Nick, those are table stakes for the customers, but also the brands behind them because of customers are unhappy, the churn rates go way up. And you see that reflected in obviously the success of the business and what you guys are doing together is seems to be quite powerful. Now then when you were on the cube with us three years ago in Boston at IFS back then you first introduced the intelligent engine and the Blue Data thread. Let's talk about the intelligent engine. Just give our audience a refresher of what that actually entails. >>So perhaps if we just step one one step back for that, just to understand how this fits in. So Roro is a service organization. We talked about that. What that means is we take a lot of the, the risk and the uncertainty away from our airline customers on the availability, the costs and maintenance effort associated with having a, having a chat engine. These are incredibly complicated and complex and sophisticated pieces of equipment. The most expensive, most sophisticated pieces of an aircraft. Managing that is, is difficult. And every airline does not want to have to focus on that. They wanna focus on being able to get the passenger on the air after, fly it, look after the airframe. So our role in that is to take that risk away, is to manage those engines, look after their health, look after their life, make sure they're available to fly whenever they need to fly. >>So for us to understand that, we then have to have data, we have to understand the state of every engine, where it is, the health of the engine, the life of that engine, what do we need to do next to that engine? And we can't do that unless we have data and that data flows into a digital platform. The intelligent engine, which is our cloud based ai, big data, all of the iot, all of the big buzzwords are there, right? So the data flows into that, that lets us run the models. It lets us understand, I can see something maybe it's a, it's a small issue, but if I leave it alone, it become a bigger issue. And maybe that will cause disruption further down the line. So we need to understand that we need to preempt it. So preemptive predictive maintenance is a, is a big part of the intelligent engine, but it's more than just that. >>It's also, we can understand how that engine is being flown. We can understand is it having a really intense flight? Is it having a more benign, gentle flight? Wow. That change time after the flight, typically after the flight. But what that means is we can then understand, actually we can keep that engine on the wing longer then you might otherwise have to do, If you have no data, you have to be conservative, safety rules, everything. Sure. So data allows you to say, actually I'm being overly conservative in this space. I can get more flying bios, flying hours from my product by extending the interval between maintenance and the intelligent engine has a large part to play in us justifying that we're able to do that. And then the final part that it does is eventually the engine is gonna have to come off from maintenance. >>These things fly 5 million miles between overhauls. You imagine you try to do that in your family car. It's, it doesn't happen. It's incredibly sophisticated thing can fly 5 million miles and then we take it off for a major overhaul. But there are thousands of these engines in the fleet. We have to understand which engine is going to come off when for what reason, and prepare our maintenance network to then receive the engine and deal with it and get it back to the customer. So the intelligent engine has a massive part to play in understanding the maintenance demand that the flying fleet is then creating. >>Wow, that's fascinating. And so you talked about that three years ago. What's next for that? I imagine there's only more evolution that's gonna happen. >>It keeps growing. It keeps growing. It's driven by the data. The more data we have, the more that we can do with that. I think as well that, you know, one of the big places that we've we've gone is you can do as much predictive analytics as you, like, there's a lot of people we'll talk about doing predictive analytics, but if you don't do the hard yards of turning predictive analytics into outcome Yeah. Then what did you get? You, you got a bit of smart advice. So we, we take that maintenance demand, we then have to understand how that drives the orchestration and the management of all the parts, the people, the work scope definition, the allocating an engine into a maintenance slot, exactly when it's gonna go. And what are we gonna do to, how do we control and manage our inventory to make sure that engine is gonna go through. >>How do we then actually execute the work inside our, our our overall shops? How do we get that engine back and and integrate our logistics process. So the intelligent engine is, if you like, the shiny front end of a process, it's all the buzzwords, but actually the hard yards behind the scene is just as if not more important to get right. And again, this is why I really like the moment of service concept. Because without that, the moment of service doesn't happen. The engine's not there, the part wasn't there. The field service maintenance guy wasn't there to go fix it. >>And brands are affected >>An, an aircraft on the ground earns no revenue for anybody. No. It's, it's a cost. It's it's a big sink of cost. It >>Is, it is. Absolutely. >>And you're helping aircraft only earn engines only earn when they fly. Yeah, >>Yeah. Absolutely. And what a fascinating, the intelligent engine. Scott, talk a little bit about, we talking about power, we can't not talk about sustainability. Yes, I understand that IFS has a new inaugural awards program that Rolls Roys was a recipient of the Change for Good sustainability awards. Congratulations. Thank you very much. And to Scott, talk to me a little bit about the Change for Good program sustainability program. What types of organizations across the industries of expertise are you looking for and why does Rules ROY really highlight what a winner embodies? >>So since Darren has joined IFS as the ceo, he's had a lot of intentional areas that we focused on. And sustainability has been one that's at the top of the list. IFS has a US ambassador Lewis Pew, who's our Chief Sustainability officer, and he helps us to provide worldwide coverage of the efforts around sustainability. So it's not just about ifss ability to become a more sustainable organization, but it's the solutions that IFS is putting together in the five verticals that we focus on that can help those organizations achieve a level of sustainability for their, for their downstream customers, their partners, and for their enterprises themselves. So when we look at, you know, the social ability for us to be more conscientious about leaving the world a better place or trying to do our best to leave the world not as bad as we came into it, sustainability is a real focus for us. And, you know, the way in which we can support an organization like Rolls Royce and Nickel obviously share those areas of focus from Rolls Royce. It's a perfect fit. And congratulations again for the award. Thank you. We're, we're, we're so excited to, to have shared that with you. We have some other customers that have achieved it across different categories, but it's an area of current and continuous focus for ifs. >>Nick, talk to us, take us out here as our last question is the, the focus on sustainability at Rolls Royce. Talk to us a little bit about that and what some of the major efforts are that you've got underway. >>I think, you know, very similar as, as, as Scott taught there, the focus within Rolls Royce as a strategic group level is really high aviation particularly, I mean we're a, we're an engineering company. We're a power company. Power inherently consumes natural resources. It tends to generate climate affecting outcomes. But at the same time, we are an innovative organization and if anybody's gonna help solve climate challenges, it's gonna be organizations like Rolls Royce who are able to bring different technologies into the market. So we have a responsibility to manage and, and optimize the behavior of our, our existing product suite. But we also have a, a vested interest in trying to move aviation on into the next, the next phase. We talk about sustainable aviation. Aviation has to earn the right to exist. People have choices. We've come out of covid, people are used to doing zoom and not flying. >>People are used to doing things when they don't necessarily get on an aircraft and do something. The aviation business always has to earn the right from the public to exist. And increasingly people will make choices about how they fly when they fly, how far they fly based on the sustainability footprint. So it's really important to us to help both our customers operate the aircraft in as sustainable and climate friendly way as we can. It's really important to find those, those balance points between the cost of an operation and it's the impact of an operation. If you go all over and say, I am going to be net, well, not even net to, but zero carbon by almost inference, that means I'm not gonna operate. You have to operate to get to an outcome. But how do I do that? Why I manage my cost, I manage the, the profitability, the organization doing it, right? >>So it has to be financially sustainable, it has to be sustainable for the people operating within it. It has to be sustainable for the planet, right? So we do that in lots of different ways in small places and, and in big places. So small things we do is we help the operator understand if you change your flight profile, you'll generate fewer emissions. You may avoid controls if you flying a different way, maybe you create trails, you'll lose, you'll lose less fuel while you're doing that. So it's cost effective for you. There was always a balance point there between the wear and tear on the engine versus the, the, the environmental impact. And you find that optimum place. One of the first things we started doing with, with Scott is we have a, a way that we life our engine components. And one of the very simple outcomes of that is using that data, the blue data for connection to the customer. >>If we can see, effectively see inside the engine about how well it's wearing and we can extend those maintenance intervals as we talked about, what that eventually does is it reduces the need to take the engine off, ship it around the world. Probably on a great big 7, 4 7 or maybe year or two ago on an Anson off four big engines flying a long distance trek, shipping our engine to an overhaul facility. We're avoiding something like 200 of those shop visit overhauls a year. So every year that's 200 flights there and back again, which don't happen, right? Collectively that's around about 15,000 automobile equivalent emissions just don't happen. So simple things we can do just starts to have accumulative effect, >>Right? Simple things that you're doing that, that have a huge impact. We could talk for so much longer on stability, I'm sure we're out of time, but I can see why Roll Royce was, was the winner of the Inocular award. Congratulations. Well deserved. Well >>Deserved. I well >>Deserved. So interesting to hear about the intelligent engine. So you're gonna have to come back. Hopefully we'll be here next year and we can hear more of the evolution. Cuz I have a feeling there's never a dual moment in what you're doing. >>It's never a dull moment. There's never an end point. >>No. >>Okay, >>Going Scott, Nick, thank you so much for joining me on the program today. Thank you, Lisa. It's great to have you talk through what's going on at ifx and the partnership with Rolls Royce. We >>Appreciate, and again, Nick, Nick, thank you for your continued support in the partnership. >>I thank you, Scott. We appreciate it. Likewise, thank >>You. Kudos all around. All right, for my guests, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching a Cube live from Miami. We're at IFS unleashed. We'll be back shortly after a break with our next guests. So stick around.

>>Hey guys, welcome back to the Cube's coverage of IFS Unleashed in Miami. I'm Lisa Martin. Been here half a day so far, having great conversations. It is so great to be back on the show floor and I'm getting that sentiment from the IFS execs, their customers, their partners, and the ecosystem. I'm pleased to welcome Kathy Hall as my next guest, the SVP of experience at ifs. Kathy, welcome to the program. >>Thank you. >>Love talking about the customer experience. Talk to me, but the employee experience is equally important because they're like this, but talk to me about your role as the SVP of experience and what that entails. >>Yeah, so I'm really, really fortunate at IFS to be SVP across experience. So I do a lot of work with the r and d team, but I also have a role that spans sales consulting support so I can really get involved in any part of the organization to enable us to deliver moments of service. So I'm really, really fortunate. I've got such a broad remit and really work on everything from the user experience and what the product looks like, feels like, how it interacts, how it moves, how we put our partner, the technologies in there, everything to their customer experience. So how people find it if they have to engage with support or what it's like in presales. And we are really trying to wrap that up into a total experience so that we bring all of those parts together and really productize our experience so that every customer gets a fantastic experience and the best moments of service. So yeah, it's like a short job title and it's a really kind of big role. It's fantastic. >>It is. It's very, it's very encompassing. You have so much visibility across the entire organization that impacts the customer in many different ways. I can't only imagine that having that visibility in that role really helps to create not only a great customer experience but a, a great experience for the employees. And those two things I always think of them as like this, like inextricably linked. >>Yeah, exactly. And we've done a lot over the last couple of years of really trying to make sure we've got the data so we understand both from a product point of view and a service point of view, what our users and our customers think about that moment of service. Where the friction points are, you know, what's really good and, and we can use that to coach our employees to celebrate success, to give people kudos for the fantastic work they do. And that really enables us to create a hype around the customer within, within ifs. And just last week we were celebrating CX day and we did a whole week and had our own sort of internal hashtag of CX days every day. And that was fantastic to really galvanize that spirit of those ifss, you know, Team Purple, really being at the forefront of how we deliver that, that customer experience. And it's fantastic for our customers, but it's also brilliant for our people because it's motivating and, and it empowers people to, to be able to do a great job, which is what we all want to do. >>Absolutely. Employees need to be empowered because if that's not there, then the customer experience inextricably linked will suffer. Talk to me a little bit about the evolution of the role. Has it been something that's been the, a focus of ifs? Cuz there's, you guys have so many unique differentiators for, for a company that isn't widely known, but talk to me about how that came about going, you know, what we need to be able to take to really look at the customer experience through many different lenses, take their feedback and really deliver a product experience that is seamless so that they can deliver those moments of service. >>Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, when, when Darren took over a ceo, we've been on this really kind of passionate journey to bring service to our customers, bring value to our customers, you know, we really value is at the heart of, of everything for our customers. And, and so it's our ethos too. And so we've, we've sort of woven this value into everything that we do with that focus on the customer. So my role started off sort of more in the come in and then try and understand it from a very product point of view, but in today's kind of world products and service lines emerging things need to be unified. You know, if you go back 20 years a product was built and it got shipped out and somebody picks it up and they implemented it and then there was a support and there were sort of these walls in between, but now of course it is a cloud company and those walls don't exist anymore. >>Product features are coming out regularly. The code sort of flows through the system out to customers. The way that we service has to be different. And so we're thinking all the time, how do we get that to be a seamless process and how do we enable, for example, data within a customer system to identify opportunities to create more value for that customer using technology like AI for example, and then being able to highlight that value back. But then maybe you say to the presales person, okay, this is the precise demonstration and capability that the customer needs to see because this is what the, the system's telling us is the business case. And that then flows through to the scope and it enables us to, to deliver that value. So it's really changing the way that we think about these things and unifying together that product and that service into this kind of bigger total experience and this end to end experience. >>So we're really looking at what are all the friction points along our journeys with the customers, How does it stop them getting value? How do we prioritize that value and, and therefore how do we reimagine an end to end experience? So as that thinking's evolved, my role's also evolved from being quite product centric to being very much across the organization. And I'm lucky I come from a commercial and operational background, so I've got a vast amount of experience in delivering these types of solutions. So that's really helped as well because I'm able to see that that full end to end and, and I've got a, you know, brilliant team of people and, and it comes back to the point where we said before, the people ifs are so engaged to want to deliver value, to want to deliver the moments of service that, that it's kind of easy, you know, just got to kind of focus people in the right way and, and the s comes together. >>That's nice to hear. And that's actually the vibe and the sentiment that we're getting from this. You know, talking about the end to end experience. It's so critical because people used to tolerate fragmented experiences. We don't anymore. One of the things that went away, I think or is in massively short supply during Covid and may not come back as patience and tolerance, right? So being able to deliver that end to end experience to your customers through what you're doing internally is critical for differentiation, for competitive advantage, and of course for your customers to be successful with their customers. >>Yeah, and there's so many parts of that that you could un pick. We, we could spend hours talking about it and as consumers our expectations are huge and we carry those expectations into the workplace. And in the same way, you know, at IFS we want our team to be motivated and, you know, proud and excited about the moments of service they're delivering. Our customers want the same thing from their teams and that also means they want a system where it's easy to train, easy to use, you can pick up, it looks great, you know, it gives users love ifs and it kind of gives them a tool that helps 'em get the job done, doesn't stand in their way. So, you know, all the kind of things we think about internally and how we're measuring customer experience also translates and resonates with our customers. Everything we think about how, you know, our people need to be empowered to deliver a customer experience. That's the same messages that, you know, we hear back time and time again from our customers. So there's so many parallels and we're really able to work with our customers to kind of do both at the same time, which is fantastic. >>Talk about measurement. What are some of the key indicators of success cus success in in from an experienced lens internally and with your customers? >>Yeah, so I mean there's all the obvious ones about, you know, MPS and CSAT and customer effort score. We also put a lot of value into the qualitative feedback. So we use customer A avail, which is an IFS product to collect data on our own moments of service. And you know, the numbers are great and they tell a story, but I also get really sucked into reading the comments back from the customers and there's kind of text analytics and sentiment analytics and for me that's becoming the more powerful kind of piece of data to look at because a story conveys much more than a simple number and it's also something that goes global as well. You know, different countries score in different ways. There's different kind of, you know, there's a lot of gaming that can go on with a score. It can be quite difficult to really interpret, but a but a story and understanding the sentiment behind that customer, that's gold. And if you can put those together and have a way of on scale being able to interpret that analysis, which we can do, you know, that becomes something quite special. So for me it's about a shift to understanding more of those stories as well as keeping, you know, the kind of traditional, traditional measures across the, the learning across the journey points, >>Right? The, the value, I always think the value of the voice of the customer is probably invaluable to organizations because it's honest. >>It absolutely it's honest. And I think once you've got those stories and you've got those metrics and then you're looking at your operational metrics, so what does that mean then in terms of, you know, recur revenue and what does that mean in terms of margins and the costs? And being able to put those three things together so that you couldn't understand the levers that you've got and the, and the results of those levers, that becomes really powerful. And that's really what's driving our, our customers for, for them to deliver in their moments of service as well, which ties back into when we're working within customers and engaging with customers and looking at that value story, doing the value assessments more able to use the, the evidence from industry and previous customers and, and the data sources available to help them also project, you know, an operational efficiency here will have this c CX benefit but actually also has this value benefit >>Oh, a value back to the business. I mean a a good experience is transformative. Yeah, >>Really powerful. >>Any industry. >>Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's so powerful and you know, that really resonates with our customers and that's what they're trying to, to achieve all the time. And so when they're looking at IFS cloud in particular, they're looking at how, you know, the, the software can help them achieve those moments of service and perfect those moments of service and all the technology that comes into play that can enable people to improve those moments of service at the same time as getting those operational benefits. And that enables organizations to then invest more in the customer experience, more advocacy and, and really, you know, feels growth. There's, there's no denying that now you have to have that experience and, and at your point before the expectation from as others consumers, we won't tolerate a bad experience anymore, which is a good thing. >>It is. We, we've all had met plenty of those throughout the last two and a half years. Last question for you, you, what are some of the things that are next for experience at ifs? I know you mentioned before we went live that you started during the pandemic, so you go, go get to meet your team finally, but what are some of the things that excite you about the momentum that you guys are carrying through the rest of the second half? >>Yeah, so our focus now is really bringing the component parts together. So we have several tools across our whole experience that leverage from our IFFs cloud platform in order to deliver those moments of service to our customers. But those tools have grown up in different areas of the business because there's been a specific need in that area of the business. So tools at the pre-sale stage, tools that enable us to deliver scope, more frictionlessly tools that enable us to, to identify and capture value. The next stage is bringing those all together. So this week I announced our vision for experience and the experience hub and that really being a place where you get that thread of value throughout the whole experience where everything is tied into one place and it makes it really frictionless for our customers to get the value from ifs. >>And that's critical. You guys have north of 10,000 customers, it's only growing. Kathy, thank you so much for joining me on the program, talking about the end to end experience that IFS delivers internally and externally to its customers. We appreciate your insights. >>Thank you for having >>Me. My pleasure. For Kathy Hall, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching The Cube live on the show floor of IFS Unleashed from Miami. Stick around. My next guest joins me in just a minute. I have been in the software and technology industry for over 12 years now, so I've had the.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, welcome back to theCUBE live in Miami on the floor of IFS Unleashed. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Had some great conversations. Have more great conversations coming your way. I have two guests joining me. Please welcome Martin Schirmer, the President of Enterprise Service Management, IFS Assyst. And Parminder Khosa, the Senior IT Manager at Parexel. Guys, it's great to have you on the program. >> Lovely to be here. >> It's good to be here. >> Martin, talk to me a little bit... tell the audience a little bit about Assyst so that that get that context before we start asking questions. >> Yeah. Absolutely. So IFS Assyst is a recent acquisition. It's an acquisition we made about a year ago. And fundamentally, it's a platform that takes care of IT service management, enterprise service management and IT operations management. So think of it, of managing sort of the ERP for IT and then broadening that out into the sort of enterprise where you're driving enterprise use cases for all lines of businesses like HR, finance, facilities, so on and so forth. >> Got it. And then Parminder, give the audience just a little bit of a flavor of Parexel, who you guys are, what you do. >> Sure. >> Maybe the impact that you make. >> Yeah, so Parexel is a clinical research organization. And what that means is that we manage drug trials for big pharmaceutical companies. So we're a big company. We're 25,000 people. We have offices in 150 locations all the way from Japan and the east through to the West Coast of the USA. >> Big company. >> Yeah, we are. We are a lot of people. >> And let's start chatting now Martin with some of the questions that you have so we get the understanding of how IFS and Parexel are working together. >> Yeah. Absolutely. I suppose... I mean the first thing is and thank you for traveling here all the way from the UK. (Lisa chuckles) Appreciate it and great energy and vibe. So just what the first question I had really was, you're customer of ours for the last 15 years plus. Maybe just give the audience a bit of context into your journey and how you've evolved from the sort of early years to where you're going into the future. >> Sure. So our history, I was part of a company that Parexel acquired that was already using Assyst. And as Parexel acquired us, they were in the process of also buying Assyst. So it became a kind of natural fit where I carried on with Assyst. And we started relatively small, sort of just the service desktop. And throughout the ongoing 15 years or so, we've just grown and expanded into kind of being a critical tool for Parexel right now. >> Okay, that's fantastic. I mean part of that journey, I know you started in sort of the more they call a ticketing space or IT service management space. Expand a little bit how you've expanded out of that and really moved into the enterprise. >> Sure. So yeah. So when we first rolled Assyst out, it was as I say, purely IT. And eventually we reached out to other business units to say asking questions like, Are you managing your workload through email? Are you managing your workload through Excel spreadsheets? In which case, if you are, we've got a solution for you that will make it a much better experience for your customers. They're all internal. It'll make it much easier for you because you will have official tracking going on through our system. I'll make it better for your management because we can drive metrics from all of the data that we're getting. So if you imagine finance we're getting, kind of 200 miles a day because of the size of our company. And they were just working through them one by one responding, and they becomes just a mess. So we developed forms for them to say, "Okay, Larry raise all your requests here. We will pick it up. We will manage it. We will communicate with you. And once the piece of work that you've asked for is done, we will let you know." And as we go through that process, we'll make it better for us because as I say we're getting those metrics. And we'll make it better for you because we can spot where our gaps are. If a request is taking three days, and of that three days, two days is waiting for someone on our end to respond to you or is waiting for us waiting for a customer to respond, we can iron those out and make it a much better experience for everyone. >> That's fantastic. It's really music to my ears because we always pushing the industry to say move away from just the IT side and really get into the enterprise. And it sounds like you've really gotten a lot of sort of productivity and efficiency gains out of that. >> Definitely, definitely. And it becomes kind of a happy circle. So the finance guys will work with the procurement guys. And they also look... Well, we're doing all of our work through Assyst now. So procurement's a little turnaround. So, well we're using this big spreadsheet to manage all of ours. Can we do the same? And they'll reach out to us and we'll say, "Of course we can. What is your process?" For example, they will say, okay, if someone asks for a new laptop, we need to get the approval from their line manager, from the supplier. We need to do our own internal work and then we will send it out. So imagine if you're doing that in a an email chain. It just becomes chaos. >> Yeah. >> So we will build all of that out for them. And then procurement will talk to HR and it just becomes a snowball. And before you know it, we are doing about 4,000 tickets per day in our Assyst system. And of those, 50% perhaps maybe more than 50% now will be non IT related. >> Oh, that's fantastic. Really music to my ears. And it really breaking down the boundaries or silos within an organization. It's really good. Let the teams work together. Right? >> Definitely. And that's one of the key things that we've learned is that we have to engage completely with our business partners. And our business partners are becoming more and more IT literate as well. So for example, we had a recent big HR solution provided to us. And as part of that, we know there are going to be questions, and queries and perhaps even issues to do with our HR system. So we have to work with us guys, the Assyst front end, the IT HR guys who look after the databases, all of the technology in the background. Then there'll be IT HR who are Workday experts. And then kind of not necessarily at the bottom of the chain will be the HR people themselves who are in their own way, experts in their area, experts in IT in a certain way. So all of those people have to work together. We become the front end, but we have to work with all of those parts of the business. >> That's really great. It's basically what you just said is taking business, IT processes and underpinning solutions. Effectively digital transformation, right? >> Exactly. Yeah. So HR is a great example. They used to have paper flying around with leave request, with sickness requests, with all of those kind of issues. And you said, well if you have an issue with your HR system, you can't raise a leave request, or you can't raise a sickness request, tell us. We will take care of it. We will fix it for you. We will give you the instructions. And we will get rid of all of that paper. >> That's brilliant. Just sort of turning the attention. And all of that, how do you drive the sort of, we'll talk about the autonomous enterprise. How do you drive automation in that process? >> Yeah. Of course, we have to map all of those processes out. Because we're not the experts in HR or procurement or whatever the business area may be. We have to really dig into their work methods, their working areas. What is necessary for them? What is a must have? What is a like to have? What is we don't really need? So we really drive into that processes. Once we've got those, we will automate them. We will build them out in Assyst with the process designer. It's very intuitive now. The latest version is really good to work with. We will do some pretty clever stuff in there. We'll say, okay the manager approval. If the manager is not there, then escalate it to the next person. Then we go to HR and say, okay HR have taken two days to do this. We're not particularly okay with that. So we will escalate it to the next person. And all of that process is completely automated, completely in Assyst. >> Brilliant. I mean obviously, we have a codeless workflow engine with a designer. And if you look at one of the trends from post covid is a war in talent in particular developers. The IDC says there's going to be around 4 million shortage of developers. What is your view on, how easy... Do I need developers? Is it easy, is it difficult to do these workflow extensions and automations? >> Definitely not, no. So the two key areas that you mentioned that with the customizer to develop the forms to make them available to our end users, drag and drop. Really easy to do. You can put some nice filters in there. You can put some nice variables in there. You can drive intelligent drive the forms from there as well. So if option A is correct, then don't show me option B, show me option C. And all of that is codeless, entirely codeless. I don't need to type any code. And when we move on to a process designer that hooks in nicely with the form customizer because we can say, "Okay, if option B on that form is selected, then runs this process." And all of that process is entirely codeless as well. Drag and drop. Creates some tasks. Create some decisions. >> Fantastic. >> Brilliant. >> Sounds really good. Switching gears a little bit. You spoke about experience, and that's also obviously very topical post, well, Covid becoming a remote workforce. Clearly, we need to be digitally connected to our business and organization because the hybrid workforce, as we all know, is here to stay. And that employee experience is fundamental because it is their sort of channel to the engagement of the organization. Of course, that has retention impacts and productivity impact. So just from your perspective, how was Covid, from your perspective, and how easy or difficult was it to get your employees engaged and productive and working? >> Yeah. And for us, it's a double edged sword Covid was. Because of the nature of our business. We do covid stuff. We do drug stuff. So we may have issues with some trials that are related to that. So we need to escalate those. We need to be aware of them and move them to the top of the chain as soon as possible. And then Assyst becomes a source of truth. Everybody knows that if I've got an issue with the current environment that we're living in, I can raise it in Assyst. And everybody knows that's where that information is. There's no need to have huge conference calls or huge email chains to try and follow those around. So with our Assyst platform, with our employees as well, everybody knew that this is where the source of truth was. We didn't have any dropouts. We didn't have any concerns with our system or performance. We knew it was there. We had to do some work like, as I say, around covid issues just to make sure they get pushed up to the top of the chain. But otherwise, we were fine. And great credit to our IT operations team as well who managed that pretty much seamlessly. >> That's brilliant. That's good news. >> Yeah. >> It really is. Just taking a little bit further and talking a little bit about what next. My team has been, I know, talking to your team about the whole area of asset management. Maybe talk to us a little bit about that journey. >> Sure, sure. So we're an ITOM customer as well. So all of our hardware data is stored within the ITOM platform. So we've pushed out the agents to all of our end user machines, so 25,000 agents. And we're in the process of integrating that into our Assyst platform to make that the single source of truth. And that part of that we're working on the software asset management side as well. So we've got a really good idea of where our software assets are. It comes to all license auditing, we know exactly how much we've got there. And the more complex side of it is of course server. So software management management as well. So we're in the process of getting all of that data as well. So once we've done all that, there is other all as the next step. The next step will be to perhaps do monitoring or pushing out software using the ITOM platform and getting rid of some of the disparate systems that we have right now. >> Well that's good news. And I think I saw a study. I think, every single person as an employee carries around 15 or 20 assets with him at any one time. Be it from a PC, phone, physical software licenses, so on and so forth. In that context, I can imagine the business case around it. >> Definitely. Yeah. And every, again, we map every user to their assets and (indistinct) their assets. And again Assyst as a source of truth for that. So if you want to look at my record, so, all right. Pam's got a laptop. He's got a mobile phone. We're thinking about giving him a tablet, but we'll find out. That he's in the process of getting a tablet as well. So I can have a look at my user record and know exactly what I've got with all of the asset tags and the various links that it has to the software pieces so it becomes a big tree of my assets. >> That's wonderful. Just the question I had was, we spoke about breaking down silos and the enterprise use cases and the effect that has. Do you envisage that Assyst can really get to being enterprisewide as, when I say enterprisewide, everybody in the organization effectively using this tool as their sort of source of experience, and level of automation of process? >> Definitely, definitely. As I say, we're getting... We're really pushing to get to that. As I say, 4,000 tickets a day with a user base of 25,000 kind of means that everybody will interact with the system perhaps every two weeks or so. So we're getting to that point and with the new functionality that's coming out with the Assyst product, with the team's integration, and the bot and everything that will bring to us because we are a big. We use teams. We use bots. We use that kind of technology. It will just fit in seamlessly. And trying to break down the silos, as I say finance, procurement, all of the big beasts within our company already are using the Assyst tool. And we want to bring in more and more of those processes as we mature. >> Brilliant. I think Omnichannel's critical. We want to connect from any device from anywhere. It's just the way we work. So I think that's critical. Teams is of course a a tool that most of us have become too familiar with. >> Yup. (chuckles) >> To be fair. (chuckles) It's better to be here in person finally, right? >> Yeah. >> So I think, that's all exciting news. And it's really fantastic. >> Great. >> So I suppose maybe in the time that we have left, what's next? >> What's next for us is that we're in the process of migrating our solution to the cloud, to the IFS cloud. That will open up a huge new user base for us. If we think all of our customers, all of our people who work on studies will have the ability to connect to Assyst and ask questions. That's a lot of it is just ask a question, or raise an issue or ask for something. So we're talking, it could be expanded by hundreds of thousands of new users that will meet more people on the backend to manage those requests as well. So yeah. It's just going to get bigger and bigger. And as you say, with the CMDB work that we're doing as well, that's another big ongoing stream for us. >> It's great because as you know, with Assyst we have a disruptive licensing model. >> Yeah. >> We have a t-shirt size pricing. All you can need based a number of employees. So there's no barriers to entry for you. >> There really is. And that really helps us because as I said initially, particularly when finance came on board and now they're expanding, there is no cost implication for it. The more that we use it, the better it is for. The more bang for buck that we get. >> Yep. That's our mantra. Enterprise users, right? For the price of a cup of coffee, for the price of a user. That's our mantra. >> I love it. You guys have done such a great job of articulating the synergies in the relationship that IFS Assyst has with Paraxel. You talked about the great outcomes that you're achieving. And it's all about Martin, I know, from IFS Assyst perspective, it's all about helping customers achieve those outcomes and those moments of service that are so critical to your customers on the other end staying with you, doing more business. Whether it's the end user customer, whether it's the actual employee. You talked a lot about the customer experience, the employee experience, and what you guys are doing together to enable that. And I always think that the employee experience and the customer experience are like this. They're inextricably linked. You can't, you shouldn't. Otherwise you're going to have problems. >> Yeah, no, absolutely. And there's actually a study on that saying that, 70% of customers generally don't feel they get what they want from organizations. >> 70. Wow! >> And if you take that one step further to what you said, the interconnectivity between customer employee, employee shops on Amazon, right? It's on those websites. So you can't be rolling out and digitally connect to the employee with something that is clunky and has the wrong experience. Like I said, it really affects that level of engagement the employee has with the company which happens to be largely these days remote. >> It does. Last question Martin, is for you. Talk to us about what's next for IFS Assyst. Obviously, we're back in person. There's a lot of momentum about the company. I was talking with Darren, the growth and first half was great. He kind of gave us some teaser about second half, but what's next from your perspective? >> Yeah. So what's next for us is achieving our goal. We are here to disrupt the industry. It's an industry that's dominated by one player and a fair amount of legacy players. We've disrupted the business model as I've told you. We here to do more because it's a simple thing. And that's the word simple. We want to keep things simple. We're going to keep engineering and driving our product forward, right? We've made sure that our platform is up there with the best. Yeah. We've just been certified by pink. Pink is a verification of ITIL four they call it. So it's a body. And the top level is you can get 20 out of 20. We got 17 out of 20. There's only one other vendor that has more than us and it's only by little. And after it's a big white space, the next one is 14. So we on the right track. We are going to of course drive and capture the market. So watch this space. We here to grow. >> We will watch this space. Congratulations on being that disrupter. >> Thank you. >> Parminder great work with what you guys are doing. You did a great job of articulating, as I said, the customers tour here. We appreciate your insights, your time. >> Thank you very much. >> Pleasure. >> All right, my pleasure. >> Thank you. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube live from Miami on the show floor of IFS Unleashed. We'll be back after a short break.

(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)