>> Voiceover: Live, from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE. Covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by, IFS. >> Rebecca: Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference 2018 here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. It's been a great day here. >> Jeff: Yes. >> We've had a lot of wonderful conversations, great panels. Last one to go, you can tell the atmosphere is getting... >> They're wheeling out all the alcohol I think... >> Exactly. Exactly. >> ...for the reception this evening. >> But we have saved best for last. We have Dan Matthews, who is the CTO of IFS and Bas De Vos who is the Director of IFS Labs. So Bas and Dan, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> So, when I talked, we've heard a lot about IFS Apps 10, and this is the big news, but what we haven't talked about too much is Arena. Can you describe to our viewers this new user experience, and what it means? >> Alright, well, IFS Arena, like you said, it's a new user experience via past applications, and that's something that's really important to us because it's important to our customers. Because what they want to do is, they want to put great tools in the hands of the people, right? And we all know when it comes to software, how great a tool is is a large part down to the user experience, so that's why we've done it. And what we've done is create something that we think is more inspired by really well-designed consumer software, but we've adapted that for these big enterprise applications like we are doing. >> It's pretty amazing in your keynote because you showed, I think five different UI's based on different devices in the prior versions, where now you're coming to kind of a standardized single (mumbles) experience across various platforms or across various devices to actually interact with the applications. That's got to be, feel good to get that down to kind of one responsive design. >> And to a degree, that's just rescinding to reality because you used to think about, you had your PC and you had a way of doing that. And then you go to your mobile app, or maybe, I mean, people are using so many different kinds devices today. So if we were to purpose build something just for your iPad, something for your phone, something for this, something for your TV, we'd be stuck forever, right? So what we did instead, is we said, "Let's build one experience that actually adapts "to all these different environments, "and get that really, really well." It's not that easy, but in the end, it's a much better way of approaching it. >> Right, and I thought the part that I liked was as when you're new to something, you don't necessarily want a high density of information in a screen or whatever, 'cause you're just not sure, you're learning, whatever, it's new. But then as you become more experienced, obviously your comfort zone goes up, you want a lot more dense information, and really, in your work platform you demoed earlier today, you have a lot of options whether you want kind of the more consumery, more picturey, less efficient way, or do you want the "I know this well, "and I want the thick content." >> And what we basically does, we flipped it upside down, 'cause if you look at Enterprise Software, and ERP, and has to management this kind of stuff, it always used to be designed for the professional, right? And then you would try to simplify it for the newbies that're coming into the business. Can we remove some things, hide some things away, configure some things? Now we've done it the other way around. So the default is it's designed for the novice person that's just coming in seeing this for the first time. And then as you learn, as you say, you can expand and grow, and they get sort of more rich in the data you're seeing. And this is really, really important right? Because people aren't staying that long in the jobs anymore. So if you think about people moving around, they know the business, but they might not know the business applications, so they basically come in, I'm a purchasing guy, come in, pick up the purchasing system directly, that's really really important. >> Needs to be intuitive? >> Yeah, make it intuitive first, and then progressively let people discover more, rather than give all the options and all the complexity and then expect them to simplify it. That's harder. >> So, Bas, I want to talk to you a little bit about the development process and how you come up with these kind of things. Can you describe how it works at IFS Labs, what approach you take? >> Yeah of course, and then perhaps Dan can add to this a little bit later as well. But because IFS Labs is just a part of the process, right? But if you look in our general development process, for us, it's very important to stay close to our customers, right? What do our customers need today? What do they need tomorrow? And we have to basically be able to deliver functionality they need for their problems right on time. And IFS Labs plays a part in that. We are basically (mumbles) for sending before that. So we approach it a little bit the other way around. So instead of looking at a customer problem and trying to find a solution for that, we basically look ahead. We look a couple of years in the future. What kind of technologies are coming up? What kind of possibilities are there, and can we find a problem for it? And that sounds strange, right? Because we're known in the business of finding problems. But it does allow us to experiment and come up with innovative solutions that might work for tomorrow. But before we actually move that into production, or hand it over to regular R&D development, well we do step back and go to our customers and say, "Hey wait a minute, this is what we are thinking Labs, "what do you think about that? "Does it work for you, does it help you?" and validate it with them. >> So it's an interesting challenge for Labs, for looking down the road, because, and Steve Jobs' famous quote, that we don't necessarily deliver just what our customers ask for. They're not asking for things that are down the road, so you got that responsibility to look down the road. On the other hand, nobody likes technology that doesn't have a problem to solve. So you got to be delicate. Because if you just build something for the sake of building something, maybe there's some ancillary value. But at the end of the day, someone's got to use it and they got to drive direct values. So how do you kind of play that balance beyond, "Yes we listen to customers, "but there's this other stuff coming "that maybe they're not too aware of"? >> Yeah that's true, totally true, I completely agree with you. And I think that is the role of IFS Labs, right? So if we look in the overall process, the fact that we have a Labs, we don't... A license to experiment with trying out stuff, validating it with our customers, we can basically... Try it out before we actually take a decision to build something that our customers are not waiting for. So exactly the problem you just sketched, I think that our interest, IFS Labs, to resolve that. >> We have seen this happening throughout history, right? So if you look at how IET started, for us, it started with a product in IFS labs, when together we want a customer learning and understanding how they should be applied to the kind of businesses and industries that we serve. And then it went into mainstream R&D development and then we have real solutions, and now we have customers, who've been live for years, using this kind of stuff. So that is exactly the process you want to have. Try it out, and when we have a grasp on how this relates to our customers, then we up the next level of investment and take it further. >> And then, similarly, we had a project in IFS Labs that, well we tried out, and after a couple of months or even longer we said, "This is not going to work "for our customers, it's actually not helping them today. "Might be a couple years from now, but today let's stop it." >> So was this how your kind of integration of AI and machine learning into the applications took place? You looked forward, this is a cool new thing we need to play, but at the same time, we're not going to name it after a smart dead guy. (group laughing) But really bake it into the applications where it makes the most sense. And that sounds like it's kind of your execution strategy. >> Yeah definitely and AIs are a very, very, very big topic, right? It's an umbrella for so many different types of applications. Dan was talking this morning about three main areas where we think AI makes most sense for our products. It's basically human-machine interaction, predictive maintenance and service, an automation. But each of those areas, they basically have their own... Own life cycle, right? So if you look at human-machine interaction, at the morning. This morning we were talking about the IFS Arena bot. We're actually in a proper development phase. So that's much further ahead in that cycle, while other AI related topics like doing mass-automation, only your (mumbles), that's earlier in the cycle and that's still in Labs. So although AI is a big umbrella topic, the different topics in there follow that same approach. >> Can you be a little more specific about the projects you're working on, or is it top secret? >> At the World Conference everybody wants to know our secrets, but luckily, at World Conference we share them. >> Jeff: This is between us four. >> Yeah nobody's listening, right? Or watching? (laughs) So yeah at this World Conference we're hosting an innovation area. And in the innovation area, we're showcasing a wide range of basically possible technologies and how you could apply them to future business. We basically took the approach of depicting an end-to-end automatous business. So basically go all the way from mining stuff, in a mine in the ground, to using that in a factory, to producing products for the customer. And we basically build all kinds of technologies in there to make that completely automatous. Might not all be possible today, but it's really there to inspire our customers to look ahead. Some examples of the things we're using, a block chain inside enterprisesque management, mixed reality with Microsoft HoloLens to do service repairs, digital twins in virtual reality, automatous vehicles. So there's a lot of interesting stuff going on there. >> That's great, those are the great buzzwords but you put them all within application, and they're just standalone. >> Dan: What it does really well, is it kind of illustrates how these technologies are used in context... >> Right. >> Dan: With all of these things. >> That's super. >> You are an IFS veteran, >> Yes. >> You came as a developer and now here you are, CTO. Tell our viewers a little bit about how the company has changed in your opinion, and also now as you are sort of making a bigger push into North America, what we can expect. >> Well, what else changed, if I go back and I've not been with this company for more than 20 years. But what I've seen is we've got a lot more professional. Of course, we're a big organization now, and the way we run things and the way the business is run is a lot more professional. If you go back to the late '90s, this was before the dot-com boom, everybody was pouring money into the IT industry, so that was not an objective. So we were doing R&D but we were also burning money. And I think after that bubble burst, we all learned to become proper business people as well. I'll tell you one that hasn't changed, though, and that really is the kind of atmosphere that is within the company, right? How close we are to our customers, and how the customers reality always comes first and how we all help each other support. That really hasn't changed despite the fact we're so much bigger and we're 20 years old and all that kind of stuff. >> So why do you think is it 'cause maintaining culture is really, really difficult and we go to a lot of shows and we often talk about if it's a founder-led, and if they're a good CEO to double benefit, to keep that culture, but when you got turned over at the top, how do you maintain the culture that you guys have built? >> I think in the beginning, I think it was a lot of that founder-led, right? It was really led by the founders and one of the founders was our CEO for many, many years. But then it kind of got ingrained a little bit, between the Scandinavia culture. That it's quite open, quite sort of friendly, helpful, lots of hierarchical. And that then sort of spread out as the business expanded into nationally. And we kept it also on the R&D side. We do a lot of R&D in Chalinka for example. Which has a surprisingly similar feeling in the culture, actually. So I think it just got so big and so strong in the company, that it just naturally, new people come in and naturally sort of carry on with that same way of being that we've had it before. >> Rebecca: They adopted and embraced it. >> Because that was the end, Dan said when he was doing his due diligence, right? The culture was a huge piece of why he came to the company. >> I think if they were the other way around, we have seen that when we brought businesses in as well, that is, right, these guys have a similar culture to us, great, fantastic business to bring into to the IFS family. >> Jeff: Sir, you were going to say? >> I was going to say, in the end also, you're attracting people to your company and the people that are staying are also the people that feel at at home, and that feel comfortable, and that feel, I'm a little bit shorter than Dan inside the company for two years now. But basically, I feel the same with the culture, right? And it fits me as a person, and therefore I think I'm inclined to stay longer at IFS than if the culture would not fit me. And as you attract people with the same mindset together. It only gets stronger. >> Right, well Dan and Bas, thank you so much. This has been really fun last panel of the day, so we appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Good luck on your keynote on Thursday. >> Bas: Thank you very much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. This has been IFS World Conference 2018. We will have more after this. (light techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference here in Atalanta, Georgia. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. It is late in the day here, the reception is about to start, the drinks are flowing, but we are still interviewing guests, and we've got a great panel right now. Joining us is Scott Helmer. He is the Senior Vice President at the Aviation and Business Defense Unit at IFS, and Henry Canaday, who is a contributing editor at Aviation Week. Thank you both so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having us. >> I wonder if you could walk our viewers a little bit through the idea, where does aviation and defense sit within the IFS business strategy? >> I'm happy to answer that. I think our new CEO of IFS, Darren Roos, has been very clear that there are three things that IFS will be best at. Number one, we will be best at mid-market ERP in those vertical markets that we care about. We will be number one in field service management. And we will be number one in maintenance management solutions in aviation and defense. So aviation and defense is one of the pillars on which IFS's strategy is currently based, and we have formed a global business unit inside of IFS that is specifically responsible, it's a 300 person strong team that is responsible for distributing a comprehensive portfolio of A and D solutions to the A and D market globally. >> What are the some of the biggest challenges that you're setting out to solve for your customers? >> Also a good question. We address the full range of management solution capability across A and D. So whether you're an operator in commercial or defense sector, or whether you're an inservice support provider, we provide solutions and support, all of your MRO capabilities, some of your performance-based logistics requirements, some of your supply chain requirements. Basically leveraging the core processes that IFS is differentiated around. Those being manufacturing, asset and service management, supply chain and project management. >> What's special about aviation and defense that's not been marketed or service delivery, which captures a lot of industry verticals, but the fact that you guys got carved out as a separate vertical, what are some of those unique challenges? >> What is chiefly unique about aviation and defense is the overall complexity in the marketplace. You're talking about very very complex capital intense of mobile assets, where managing the maintenance obligations in order to maintain the availability of the aircraft is under the scrutiny of compliance and is required to be done efficiently, without compromising safety. >> Not to mention the fact, your assets are flying all over the world, so they might not necessarily be able just to roll into the maintenance yard at the end of a bad day. >> And they're large and expensive, that's for sure. >> (laughs) Large and expensive. >> Henry, you've been covering the aviation industry for more than 20 years now. What do you see as the biggest trends, biggest concerns that a company like IFS is trying to grapple with right now, in terms of servicing its clients? >> Well the interesting thing about the airline industry is that it technically in many areas it's extremely advanced and very fast moving industry. In selling tickets, the industry has been going through a continual IT revolution for the last 20 years. Things like giving you notices about when your planes arrive and stuff like that. Very fast moving, changing all the time. But this is stuff, it's just money. There's no safety involved, so they can take chances, if they get it 99% right, they make enough money, they can solve the one percent errors. The problem with maintenance is it's messy, it's complex as Scott says. It's also safety critical. They can't screw it up one tenth of one percent of the time. They've been very, very cautious and very, very slow, and they look sluggish and stagnant on the maintenance side. But fortunately, now, especially the U.S. airlines are making some good money, so there's actually an opportunity for companies like IFS to come in here and really reform the maintenance program. >> We cover a lot of autonomous vehicle shows. Autonomous vehicles are coming. Obviously, a big element of autonomous vehicles will ultimately be safety. One of the things that comes up over and over again, if you look at the number of accidents, the fatalities that happen on our streets, compared to what happens in aviation, if a week on the streets happened at a week in the aviation industry, the planes would be shut down. >> Scott: There'd be no aviation. >> The threshold that you guys have to achieve in terms of safety is second to none. I don't know if there's anything even close, especially in terms of volume of people, and then, oh by the way, everyone globally is getting richer, so the amount of passenger flow. I don't know if you can speak to that in terms of the growth of passenger miles, I imagine is the metric, continues to explode. >> You've had basically 18 straight years without a fatal crash by a major American airline. That's unheard of, that's unheard of. We used to have one crash a year up till around 2000. Every time somebody annoys me with customer service in an airline, I think of this, they're doing the important stuff right, so I don't care. (laughs) >> Very well. >> Right. >> And, then do you think the efficiency, right? At least here domestically, I always think of Southwest, 'cause they were the first ones that really had fast turns, and they raced to the gate, they raced back out of the gate, in terms of really trying to get the maximum efficiency out of those assets. The pressure there, in translating to the other airlines is pretty significant to make sure you're really getting a high ROI. >> That's absolutely right. Again one of the levels of complexity that we were discussing. Certainly airlines are being forced to finally introduce some change into their maintenance operations, as the increasingly complex assets are part of the re-fleeting, as that faster traffic continues to grow. It's about both achieving greater efficiency in maintenance operations, not only without compromising safety, but ensuring the availability of that asset. Because revenue dollars still matter greatly, and those assets are your revenue producing assets that an airline has. >> Can you describe your approach in terms of of how you work together with your clients, the airlines, in terms of developing new products and new features. >> One of the unique characteristics about aviation and defense is not only the size of the client, but the length and duration of the relationships. So, we have a long and rich history, both at IFS and through the acquired MXI technologies, of working with our partners in their programs over the very long term. As much as we have domain expertise and a sizable team of domain experts inside of our business, we're able to recognize our partners that are visionaries in the industry, and we have established multiple levels of collaboration to involve them in the shaping of solution capability to support their businesses going forward. We are just launching today two new planning applications that were not only being launched with American Airlines and LATAM Airlines respectively, but were co-developed with subject matter experts at each. So they're tremendously valuable inputs into shaping our vision of what solutions are going to best drive business value for our customers over a very long relationship horizon. >> So, what have you unpack at MXI acquisition, what did that give you that you didn't have before and what's the total solution now? >> Certainly, I joined IFS through the MXI acquisition. I was previously it's Chief Operating Officer. MXI was focused on best of breed MRO capability for both defense and service port providers, as well as commercial airlines. In combining with IFS, that had a rich history in A and D, we now have the most comprehensive solution portfolio available on the market today. We are the only vendor that can provide best of breed capability, integrated into an end to end enterprise landscape, and we've got the team of subject matter experts or domain experts that are capable of delivering that value, not just the product, but the solution to the customers across all the segments of A and D. >> Just to be clear, your defense is more than aviation. I saw a military truck over on the expo hall, so it's assets beyond just airplanes when it comes to defense. >> Correct, we support on the defense side of things. We support multiple platforms, whether they're fighter jets, whether they're cargo carriers, whether they tanks, whether they're ships, we support for the operators, the offset optimization, performance based logistics, security, et cetera. For the in-service port providers, we similarly support supply chain requirements, MRO requirements, et cetera. >> Henry, as you look forward, you've been covering this space for a while, what are some big, new things coming down the road in the aviation industry that we should be looking for, 'cause we haven't seen a lot of big things from the outside looking in. I guess we had the next generation fighter planes, and then we had obviously the A380 and the 787 on the commercial side. What's new and coming that you're excited about? >> Well, technology changes slowly in commercial aviation, because of the safety aspect. The big, new things are the new aircraft, the 787 and the A350. They are really new generation aircraft, lot more composites, plastics if you will. They're using that instead of aluminum. The other things that's happening is additive manufacturing, this whole printing parts. That's real big, and I've been telling everybody the new Boeing 787 has two printed parts, one made by GE, $120 billion a year. The other made by a company called Norsk Titanium, with 140 people coming out of Norway, which is not exactly the center of innovation in aerospace programs. >> Jeff: With a printed part, like a 3D printed part? >> Yeah a printed part. Those are the two big changes in the aircraft. I mean, customers aren't going to see it, but these planes are now made largely of plastics and the metal parts are going to be more and more printed. Much more efficient way, lighter aircraft, less fuel use, more efficient, less environmental effects, etc. That's a big deal. More important than a huge airplane. >> Right, well I can imagine, we hear about the impacts of 3D printing. I haven't really seen it yet, but this vision where your ability to print parts on demand will have significant impacts on supply chains and inventory and huge, huge impacts down the road. >> And the airline industry is the most demanding. They've go to go through really massive proofs of concept and proof of materials, and it's starting to happen. >> Henry, what would you say is the most important area that IFS should focus on. If they can solve one problem in the airline industry, what do you think it should be? >> Availability would be one. Just aircraft availability, that's what. The airlines are concerned about two things. Dollar cost per flight hour to maintain and what they call a technical dispatch reliability. They want to get that plane launched 99.99% of the time. Get rid of the unpredictive maintenance problems. Schedule everything, make it quick, I want to get the planes off on time. >> It's amazing that unscheduled maintenance, regardless of industry, still continues to be such a bug-a-boo to productivity and profitability. It's one of these things that just has huge impact. >> I would completely agree with Henry. I think asset availability is the number one focus for commercial operators. Our focus has certainly been around trying to remove the impacts of unscheduled maintenance. One of the applications that we launched today allows you to react very, very quickly to unplanned or unscheduled maintenance events, and to do some what-if modeling, so that you can implement the best plan for your fleet, in order to maximize the availability of that asset. Not just in terms of bolstering or producing a better plan. We're attempting to do that even with line planning, where we're adjusting the traditional planning perimeters away from what must be done to what should be done in order to maximize the availability of that aircraft. Of course, as Henry said, everybody's focused on faster, tighter turnaround times. All of our software is designed to try and drive tighter turnaround times and greater efficiency. >> What percentage is scheduled versus predictive versus prescriptive? Maintenance. >> I think it varies by airline. The great majority of maintenance is scheduled, I mean, there's no doubt about that. They put these aircraft down for a week or a month. It's a massive amount of money. It's not the amount of maintenance, it's when unscheduled maintenance happens, it really throws things off. It may only be one or two percent of the maintenance tasks are unscheduled, but that's what throws the aircraft off the schedule. That's what leaves passengers sitting in the departure lounges, ticked off. Not getting there till the next day or the next week, whenever, so it's a very, very small percentage, these unscheduled maintenance events, but it's crucial to the airlines' economics. >> Exactly. Crucial to our itineraries, as well, as the economics. Exactly. >> Making sure that the airlines continue to do what they do best, which is get us from place A to place B. >> Precisely. Well, Scott Henry, thank you so much, it's been a really fun conversation. >> I enjoyed being here, thank you. >> Jeff: Thank you. >> Thanks, Henry. >> Thanks. >> We will have more from theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference just after this. (digital music)

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

>> Host: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE. Covering IFS World Conference 2018, brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a three-guest panel with us today. We have Amy Eager. She is the technical solution architect APS10 evangelist. Mark Large, the head of business systems at Volac, and Jay Gnuse, who is the information technology director at Chief industries. Jay, Mark, Amy, thanks so much for joining us. >> Absolutely. >> Thanks. >> So, tell me Amy, you are an evangelist. I love that you have that in your title, very cool. Tell me a little bit about what you do as a technical solution architect. >> So, I really have sort of a dual role. And technical solution architect is something very important to me, because I have the luxury of working with our prospective customers. So folks that haven't joined the IFS family yet, as well as our existing customers. So, for example I've known Jay for over 10 plus years, and we've worked on various technology aspects together. When customers upgrade and they need new hardware, and all those types of things I provide advice on that. But being a product evangelist, which is my second time. I'm very honored I was the APS9 evangelist, and the applications 10 evangelist, and that means that I get to go out and spread the word about all the benefits that IFS Applications 10 is going to bring to our customer base. So it's very exciting. >> So, you were on the main stage this morning, you're going to be back this afternoon. What are some of your favorite features that you sing from the rooftops? >> Well, I think really we got to see a great look at some of that this morning. The fact that you can interact with a business application simply by typing a few words in, and talking to the arena bot. I think that is really next generation, and going to take us to the next level. Obviously we see more and more of our users wanting to interact with their business applications the way they do with their phones and their consumer apps. So I think that's really very exciting, that certainly would be one feature, and just continuing to extend our user experience through what you saw this morning and the IFS arena client. Really putting the information right in the hands of the users. >> And then in an intuitive way, an easy way. >> Yes, absolutely, if it's not easy they're not using it so. >> That's a very good point, good point. So you both have these buttons on that says, "I'm an early adopter of IFS Applications 10". >> Yes. >> I want to hear from both of you, why were you an early adopter? We'll start with you Mark. >> Well, we were on Apps8 before we joined Apps10, and we did a lot of development work with IFS on Apps8, and it sort of came to fruition within nine, so within nine, a lot of the work we did was available. We didn't upgrade to nine, so when the opportunity with ten came along, we said let's go for it. We have a very good relationship with IFS, so we trust each other, which is key to any upgrade program. And there's so many new features that we can really benefit from as a business. >> And do you feel almost a little bit of an ownership in the sense that you, because you were with Apps9, and you may have even helped IFS sort of think about what could be next. >> Yes, yeah, so we definitely own the system. And in working with R&D they listened to what we're saying, so that, you know, for a software provider, that's a real key thing that they listen to their customers. IFS has definitely done that on Apps10, especially with the arena client, which launched today, and the arena bot, which I was one of the first people to use, so it's a very good tool. >> Very cool. Jay, how about you, why did your company choose to be an early adopter? >> Yeah, we've really got a great team at Chief, so we knew that we could find the problems and create the cases accordingly that are needed, so that IFS could fix them. And then we also have some very creative people on our team that can come up with enhancements, or small tweaks to the program to help and shape it for the future. So that was one of the reasons. We also are really excited about the training that we received, and that was something we were looking forward to, and sure enough we did get a lot of training, lot of questions asked, so we feel like we know IFS better now than we did before thanks to all the training with it, especially with R&D. >> So what are some of the benefits that you're already seeing? So, IFS Apps10 is going to be out to the general market later this year, or early next? >> Amy: Just shortly following the conference. >> Oh, excellent, okay. But you've been playing around with it for a while now, what are some of the benefits that you're seeing? >> One of the features that we like is the ability to edit customer order lines. Multiple lines at the same time, that's a nice new features that makes it a little quicker for our end users. Another one is the part cost history details. We should be able to save some data space by using that one. We also like the ability to move functional objects in the equipment object navigator. That's easier now, before we had left over objects sitting out there, and now we can move them. So that's nice. I really like the ability to pin records on the detail screen. It's kind of hard to describe how it works, but once you see it, it's easy and it's a very nice feature. And then, of course, the manufacturing visualizer is huge for us. With it, our customers have to make changes, and may be late in the game, and with that, we can see what's going on on the shop floor, and we can adjust accordingly. >> Yeah. >> How about you, Jay? I mean, sorry, Mark. (laughing) >> Yeah, so we, that's been a gamechanger for the business, we've gone from the webportal for booking holidays to the arena client, you can do it in the pub, or anywhere on the go, basically. Which is really good. >> I like being in the pub. >> Yeah, the pub's good. >> That works for me. >> And then um, Wadaco, which is the warehouse data collection system, which is all about scanning and handling units, and we manufacture lots of different products for the human and animal markets, and we have a sashay and then a box and an outer box and then onto a pallet, that's lots of transactions, but in Wadaco now, handing an issue you can do it as one transaction, so instead of ten transactions, you've got one transaction. That's a massive gamechanger for the way in which we use the system. >> One of the things we've heard a lot in the keynote, and also just in these interviews that I'm doing here, is just how customer-centric IFS is. And you're customers, so can you tell us a little bit about how, how has this company, earned your trust? What is it, what is it doing that's so special than other companies, that its competitors aren't? >> It's the relationship, it's all down to relationships. We have four values in our company, performance, ambition, collaboration, and trust. And actually, if you take all those four key values, IFS follows them, we work together well with best of breed system, we collaborate well. We're both ambitious businesses, and we trust each other. So if you've got all those four things, you've got a win. >> Right, right, right. So what do you want to see out of the next Woco. So we're at Woco 2018, I know it's only day one, but when you think about, you are valued and dear customers to IFS, so what do you want to see with this relationship going forward? >> Well I think the title this year, the what's coming next, is really important, and it's so great to be able to see all the new features that they're rolling out, and what they're doing, so looking forward to that again next time. >> And it's also the expansion of the arena client, you know, it's quite small at the moment, and there's all the updates coming, we're getting to see them firsthand, but this time next year or in 18 months, the arena client will be massive. And it will be the future. >> It's true, it's true. And how much are you talking with each other? I mean, that's one of the things that we've heard, too, is that customers, you know, it's almost like companies don't want their clients talking to each other but that's not so at Woco, that we want the feedback, want the interaction. What's the experience, can you describe what it's like? >> Well, to me, I mean, it really is sort of the foundation of IFS. I really believe that, I see that, I think we all do. The relationships that we have with our customers, that is something unique. This is not a vendor supplier customer type relationship. We are partners in this, and I think another unique aspect that I would love to point out is the fact that, not only do we want our customers talking to each other, we have perspective customers here. This is not a situation where it's all just long-term customers, we've all known each other. We have perspective customers here that are really gaining insight into what it means to be part of the IFS family. And that's certainly, I'm very proud to say, I've been with IFS for over 20 years, and that's something that has always been the case with our organization, and it means a lot to us for our customers to feel that way as well. >> So, now that the software has been deployed, how are you keeping, how can customers keep it up to date? >> Well, this is another aspect that we, we really introduced this in IFS Applications 9, but it continues on with IFS Applications 10, of course, which are quarterly updates. So, through the lifecycle of a release, an update will come out every quarter, they are cumulative updates, excuse me, so if you see update four comes out, and there isn't anything that you need, then you skip that, maybe you skip the next one, but six comes by and you say, there's something there that I want to apply, it's like applying a patch. So they can really stay current, and that's our driver. And another unique thing about this is not only are we introducing fixes and corrections, we know those exist in software, but we also try and introduce little feature, functional enhancements in these updates as well. So there could be a new feature available to you, or a new lobby, or something new with the bot perhaps coming in an update, so, it's very important to us to not only, of course, deliver fixes and patches when needed, but also functional enhancements throughout the lifecycle of the product. >> And have you experienced this yet? >> Yeah, even on the beta version, we've been taking updates, so we're on update four at the moment, so, uh, and update five's ready. We're going to make the decision if we want to take it now or we wait til RTM which is July for us. Which is quite soon. >> Right, right, no, it's just around the corner. Exactly. And so, I assume you'll be early adopters of Apps 11, too. >> Mark: Maybe. (laughing) There's no reason why not. >> Right, exactly. Well, Jay, Mark, Amy, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a really great conversation here. >> Amy: Thank you so much, thank you guys. >> Jay: Thank you. >> Mark: Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll have more from IFS WOCO 2018 just after this.

>> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's the Cube. Covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to the Cube's live coverage of IFS World Conference 2018 here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a three-guest panel with us today. We have Mark Boulton who is the CMO, Antony Bourne, vice-president Global Industries Solutions, and Brian Sommer who is an analyst at TechVentive. Thank you so much for joining us, gentlemen. I really appreciate it. >> Happy to be here, thank you. >> Happy to be here, yeah. >> So this is a big, big event for IFS, WOCO, as it's known. So talk a little bit about what you're hearing already from customers and feedback that you're getting. >> Sure, well the first thing is that everyone's told us Atlanta was a great choice of venue. >> Rebecca: This time of year in particular. >> Well, just flown in actually, from London where the weather is not this good. But, we've had really good feedback so far and still only at the end of the first morning. But the opening keynotes and the reveal of IFS Apps 10 went really well. I think most people have been really pleased with the content that they're seeing on the whole. So feedback is good. We know it's a big investment in time and time out of the office for our customers to come here. So we need to make sure that it's time well spent, that they get value. And so far, the feedback is really good. They're learning stuff, they're seeing things for the first time. They're meeting their peers and connecting. So it's good. >> And before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about the customers interacting with each other. Not only just you and telling you how they're using your product, but also interacting with each other and talking about things that they have learned and sites that they have gleaned. So can you describe a little bit about what's happening? >> And that's a key thing because we love our customers, we love getting them together, we love them talking to each other. It's not just taking it from our words and taking it for granted, we want them to share the experience, we want them to say, okay, what to do in this scenario? How did you overcome this? So these events are fantastic. I've just been talking to a customer, now, before lunch, about how they want to upgrade based on what they've already seen. And we're only halfway through day one. And it's just like, I want to talk to my account manager, I want a meeting about what we're going to do and when we're going to be doing it. So it's a fantastic event, fantastic. >> So, how about you? What are you seeing in terms of this new release with IFS 10. I mean, what interests you most as an analyst? >> Well, I've got some clients who specifically ask me to be on the lookout for some things over here at today's show. And one of them was around the new user experience on release 10 product. They're looking for something that's a richer web-based kind of mobile type of experience, or consumer-user interface experience for them. And I think they'll be happy with what's been announced over here today. It will come out in phases, obviously, but it works on everything now. Every kind of device and that's what the client wanted to see. And I'll report that back. >> Just to echo what Brian said, we've had customers already contacting us about because there is a certain functionality which we've introduced to IFS Applications 10, which they really, really want so they've actually said okay even before we announced it, which we let them have some indication of what was happening and they said, we need that, we want that. So its future is looking really good for upgrades, as well as new customers. >> One of the things that we keep hearing a lot of how customer-focused, how customer-centric IFS is as a company. The metrics speak for themselves in terms of your NPS scores and the Gartner insights. So how, as CMO, how are you going to get the word out, really? Because IFS is kind of known one of the best kept secrets in the industry. >> And it's true that we don't have quite the brand recognition that maybe some of the huge, massive competitors have. But, within our industries, we are very well known and we're known for all the right things. Great products, well-implemented and well-supported. We are leaders in a lot of the markets in which we play. Events like this is actually one of the key objectives for us. Is to have a good presence from analysts and journalists, the influencers, we call them. We like to think we look after them very well. They get the inside track on things that we're working on. So we use a lot of tools to actually spread the word. But, our biggest advocates are our customers. The people that have our software and have worked with us, they genuinely do love the products. And for those that were in the main room this morning when we launched-- Dan Matthews, our CTO, he said one of our core objectives is to design a product that people love. And so literally our customers will go out, as our NPS scores indicate as you mentioned, they will do the job for us. They tell people; they tell them very positive things about their experience. We did some studies. The majority of our customers actually are more profitable than people than use our competitor products. They're must faster time to solution and things like that. So these are the things that our customers are saying about us and these are good things to be talked about for. >> Right. Brian, what would you say should be keeping companies up at night. I mean, IFS is doing a lot of the right things. As you said, you're going to report back, the customer will probably be happy with what they hear. But what are some of the things that maybe customers are saying or customers are needing that you're hearing? That kind of feedback that maybe IFS-- what would be sort of your best advice for the future? >> Well, I think IFS plays in a bunch of different parts of the world. There is no single answer that will solve every customer in every part of the planet. And there are some very realistic problems that some companies have in areas where there's spotty electric power, or spotty internet access, and the like. They're going to probably continue to want a non-premise kind of solution. There are others in developing countries where they've clearly bypassed an entire generation, or two, of technology and they want to straight into cloud. And I know these guys, they've got a number of different cloud modules, or applications, in field services, one of those areas. And field service is a great one for the cloud, simply because that's what business is all about. It's about a bunch of people carrying tablets, and cell phones, smart phones, whatever, in and out of customer locations. That's fine. But by-and-large, what do the clients want? Well, I think what they want more than anything nowadays, they want to get out of the data-center business and more and more clients are looking at utility computing. And they're expecting vendors, eventually, to get them out of maintaining and running data centers because they have more confidence that vendors, and or partner technology provider can do a better job at web-security, maybe, than they could in-house by themselves. >> Just to echo that. >> I think one of the key differentiators from the IFS offering is the fact that we give our customers choice. We say, what do you want? We have the solution for you. Do you want it on prem? Do you want is SAS? Do you want it in the cloud? What is best for you? So that's where we can offer the customers something different than what some of competition may offer. >> Right. >> And just one more thing on that topic. And Darren mentioned it in his keynote this morning. But in North America, 50% of their customers are deploying on cloud, now. And that's core ELP. But in FSN, it's not quite 100%, but it's almost. And that's not dependent on the geography. Wherever we sell that product in the world, most people are choosing to deploy on cloud. So that is really real now, that trend. People see the benefits. I think, obviously, the majority of the industry and markets, and cloud solutions, now. But there really are tangible benefits and I think the customers have got it, now. And the move is real. >> If I can add on, I think one of the big things that is changing, is that customer after customer, client, client, I go to, they got a name for a project they want to take on. It can be the factory, the future, it could be a modernization, ERP modernization, or IT modernization. It could be a process transformation, digital transformation, business process redesign, whatever. They've all got a name for something. They don't know quite what it is, they really have a hard time defining it. But, they're on this journey and what they're looking for is more than just a basic transaction processing ERP product. They want something that will handle, like, IOT technology. They want connectors that connect up things beyond the four walls of the enterprise. They want to connect up to their assets as well as to assets that are out in the field, either with customers, what have you. And that's really where the future of this base is going right now. >> One of the things that we've also heard about in the keynote was the real emphasis on time-to-value. The customer really wants to be able to see a return on investment almost immediately. Is it difficult to keep up? It's almost an unrealistic expectation to see that value right away. >> I think it's down to what solution they're trying to solve and the ease of use; the implementation. And as we've said, from an IFS point of view, we want users to love the application. That means it needs to be easier to use. With what we've introduced today, with IFS Applications 10, does make it easier for customers and users to actually get the benefits out of their solution as quickly as possible. >> And are you able to keep up with the pace of change? How do you keep up, I mean to say? >> There are a number of different ways. Because we focus on our core industries, we belong to industry organizations, we often have customer advisory meetings at customer premises. Because we invite all the customers to it, or as many as we can so that we can talk to them, they can give us feedback about what they want to see in a product going forward, and we can channel that, in addition to the trends that we see in the industry. Because we have a lot of people that have come from the industry, they have that experience embedded in them. So they know what the industry wants. But we need to keep up with the trends to ensure we give them that benefit once they implement the solution. >> And one of the things I would add is that time-to-value is improved if the product is a good fit in the first place. If you've got to do a lot of modifications-- first you're adding in cost, you're also adding time, and complexity and risk to the project. And the industry expertise that Andy talks about, which comes in from a number of directions into our RND and it's reflected in our product. At least we've done a number of charts over the last few versions of our software. And if you go back like 10 or 15 years, you'd see that maybe, 25%, 30% of the project was going into modifying the software to make it do what the customer needed before they could even turn it on live. Today, we have a lot of clients who've upgraded from eight to nine, or now nine to ten, and they've literally-- they're running standard software. And so there, your time-to-solution is really rapid. It's as quick as you can move data and so on. But if you're not modifying it, that's key. >> That's the key, exactly. Well, Mark, Antony, Brian, thank you so much for joining us, it's been a great conversation. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> No problem. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have much more from IFS World Conference just after this. (upbeat techno music)

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

(synth music) >> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's the Cube. Covering IFS World Conference 2018, brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to the Cube's live coverage of IFS World here at Georgia World Conference here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm you host Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost Jeff Frick. We're joined by Tobias Persson. He is the IoT Services lead here at IFS. Thanks so much for joining us, Tobias. >> Thank you, it feels really nice to be here. >> So, I want to start out by having you explain to our viewers what you do at IFS as an Innovation Service Lead. >> Yes, I'm heading up the IFS Innovation Services Team that came to official existence in May last year. It's there because of the fact if we want to get the IoT message out there, we want to be out there to mission about IoT. Actually helping our sales and presales to do the business discussions with people, with our customers, that is. As well as actually implementing solutions, rolling them out. So, we're kind of like from idea, talk to the customer, to real roll out, that's what my team does. >> So, you said you want to get the IoT message out there. >> Yeah. >> And what is the IoT message, from the IFS vantage point? >> Well, coming from a tech background myself, I've been involved in IoT space for quite some years, and the biggest challenge or difference between normal IoT and IFS IoT is the fact that you can actually do something with the data itself. Typically, when you're talking about IoT historically, it's driven by R and D. It's not a strategic effort at all. It's mainly done to figure it out. And IoT has taken some steps since then. And we're providing a way to actually short cut your IoT data directly into your most business critical system. And doing something with it, providing huge efforts and benefits off the bat. >> And you guys are really integrating IoT into the existing applications, existing workflow, so trying to grab that value, not as a stand alone science project, or something that's on the side-- >> Tobias: Yeah. >> But really integrating it into your existing applications and the existing work-- >> Tobias: Correct. >> That those existing applications are managing. >> Tobias: Yeah, that's true. >> What are some of the impacts that you've seen? Or, I guess, some of the customer impacts that they've seen? >> Well, it's all about automate step, in a sense. At least, that's the first step. I mean, we have seen customers just taking the data out and getting the running rs out, for example. That has huge implications on the amount of time you spend entering stuff, as well as having the data with quality so you can do something with it. But the biggest thing is, really, to automate stuff. Like send out a work order, for example, automate that. Or send out the replenishment for some consumable or whatever it is. So, anything you can run or post or trigger in IFS applications, field service management is actually triggerable by IFT observation. >> So, can you describe to our viewers how the process works. I mean, I know that IFS really prides itself on being so customer centric. >> Tobias: Yeah. >> So, how do you work closely with customers, from the very beginning, from the idea to the actual product and implementation. >> Well, taking it from the start and from the top, we obviously have a full set of IoT industry directors that are really skilled and seeing what's next for the market, being out there to communicate the message. Serve the station is obviously one. Digitalization is another one. So, we're talking about this in all kinds of places, right? My team comes in, kind of like the second stage, where the sales and presales have done a demo with the generic tools that we're providing them with and taking the discussion from there. And we're usually building something that is quite specific for the customer, using their data, really any kind of data to prove the point. Some kind of power BI dashboard, some kind of of actual IT observation going out. And the thing is, when we do that, they tend to really get it when they see things coming in from the physical world into their, this will be your FSM or applications environment. And they see an observation comes in and suddenly, boom, that's an action going on. So, that's what we're trying to do. And we're involving ourselves quite heavily in how to define what's your IT use cases, running workshops with customers, and pinning it down. It's not rocket science or anything, but it's kind of our own methodology to pin down what's your first step? What's your IoT use case that you aim for? And how do you plan to get there? That's what we're trying to achieve with our team. >> Has it been an integration challenge to go to devices and sensors and kind of the IoT world and to plug that back into the application? >> Well, that depends a bit. I mean, our application, our solution is really dependent that it's getting sent the data. Or actually picking up the data from a API or a database. We haven't seen a project yet where we're actually picking up stuff directly from the assets. >> Jeff: Okay. >> What we usually see, though, is that the customer has taken that step already, so they're getting data into some kind of... It could be a printer management system, it could be a whatever management system, and we're getting it from there. We are talking to partners that would allow us to get the data strictly from an industrial context, and industrial protocol, a specific machine, whatever it is. But as of now, we are reliant on the fact that somebody is sending stuff to the IoT hub-- >> Jeff: Right. >> Which is the official usher component. >> So, you're just really taking advantage of that data flow that's already there and really adding an extra layer of value-- >> Tobias: Yeah. >> That they can extract by pumping that into your application. >> Operation allows the whole thing, yes. >> But that is really the key-- >> Yeah. >> The differentiation, is that you're not just seeing the data, you're now saying, okay, what is this data telling us and now what do we do next? What do we do with it? >> Tobias: Yeah. >> So, can you give us a real specific example with Anticimex, and what-- And this is the rodent control, pest control company. And how this company is using your product. >> Yeah, I mean. >> Rebecca: And seeing a real return. >> Yeah, from what I know, Anticimex Finland has deployed this, they have about 3,300 traps in effect out there, at the moment. And they're using this for, well, the traps are connected, obviously, so they send the data, for shots fired, how full it is, battery levels, stuff like that, to do the IoT solution. >> Rebecca: Shots fired, I love it. >> Shots fired, yes. (laughs) So, it's not like a single off, you have to empty it directly, it's kind of a pressurized air container, doing all kinds of killings in a row, if you will. And you need to know how are my traps doing? >> So, it's really, again, just a another layer of efficiency improvement-- >> Yeah. >> By, not just setting and coming back after so much time, but actually having the data for the activity in those traps. >> Yeah, no, they are really, in a sense, they have opened their eyes. They know how their assets are doing. They know when they're full, they know when to pick it up and even if they don't have to go there today. That's also good information for which they need. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So, they're doing this to optimize their service visits and doing like a full automated work order flow. I think the statements from Jussi Ylinen, the managing director of Anticimex Finland that will be here as well later on, they have been doing something like 6,000 automated work orders in the last six months. Which is a huge productivity advantage. >> Jeff: 6,000 automated ones. >> Yes. >> So these are ones coming directly out of the system, based on the feedback from the IoT. >> Tobias: Yeah, not passing any employee at all. >> Wow, that's a huge number. >> How revelatory is that, for a company to have all of the service visits be automated? How much of a change is that? >> I think it's huge, actually. I think it's quite easy to imagine that would be a good idea. However, until now, it's been kind of a hassle to get there. I personally do think that there our solution provides that gap and services as a short cut, as I mentioned before, to get there. >> But I'd imagine, too, it's a process flow on the customer's side, too. Because they got to, now, accept the fact that they don't know exactly what the schedules are going to be for the next several weeks or for those days because they have to allocate some portion to the automated process, or they're feeding that in at some level, upstream, to make sure that gets integrated into all the rest of the activity. >> Well, you could have, if you wanted to, manual intervention in all stages, if you want to. You need to, probably, if you need, if you're on an oil rig or something, that you have a critical part, automated order coming in, that should be accepted by someone along the way, that's perfectly fine, as well. So, it doesn't have to be fully automated if you don't want to. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> But it can be. >> So, I know that you're not only an IoT evangelist within IFS, you're an IoT evangelist in general and in your professional life. >> Yeah I hope so. (all laughing) >> So, can you talk to us, big picture, big strategy, where you see IoT going in the world but then also as it relates to IFS? What does the future hold? >> Well, the easy answer is, you may have seen the old commercial where they state, well, we need to be on the web. Why? It doesn't say. Well, that kind of, you know that you need to consider this. But you don't really know how to get there. That kind of approach is somewhere along the line where we are right now with IoT. I mean, we used to be something like a buzz word. People tried to figure it out. Nowadays, it's more like people have taken steps, they have the data somewhere. It's usually stored somewhere in some database or some system or whatever. But it's the actionable part that's missing. I don't think people actually tend to look for the actionable part in a ERP company. But that's actually what we're providing. So, I think in a few years to come, it will be seen as suspicious not to have your stuff connected, not to have your open data. Instead of being the other way around. I think this will be a very natural part of not being blind to how your assets are doing. >> Jeff: Right. >> Why would you like that? That's the old fashioned style. So, I think this will be a very natural step in any kind of of product development of all service centric company in years to come. >> And do you think it's indicative of people accepting a lot more data sources into their decision making processing? >> Yeah. >> And adding that layer of automation? 'Cause a piece you didn't talk about, that's obviously part of that, is AI in some point in time, right? >> Yeah. >> 'Cause now, you got the automation, you got all this stuff coming in, you can't send the entire fleet out tomorrow if you only have x number of vans and you got x number, 6,000 service requests. So, then you add that AI component, the machine learning component, the prioritization component in, again, moving more of this manual scheduling process or routine, scheduled maintenance-- >> Yeah. >> Into a much smarter way to execute the details. >> Yeah, it's all in the step of going from data collection, data acquisition, figuring out the technical stuff behind connectivity, getting the data out. And now with the next step when the revolution comes. How do we approach that? With AI, with machine learning, with actionable insights, whatever. And to be quite frank, I don't think people necessarily don't want to see that. They want to see what comes out of it, but they don't want to see behind the curtains on that. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So maybe, just maybe, in the near future, people will need to bring in someone that knows machine learning from A to Z in the companies. Or at least use someone that does their insights for them. >> Jeff: Right. >> So, how will IFS expand it's IoT offering, at the next World Congress next year? >> Well, as you know, we have had a few early adopters adopt the program for IoT, yeah. And they seem excellent and they're actually being the first ones out, they're live right now. They have a really good story to tell. So, that's good. In a sense, we are taking it from the heavy asset centric, from our rig, that's one part. We have taken some steps. Service is the next one, being Anticimex in Kucera. We believe that connected field service is the main thing to go for. The real good IoT use cases is for connected field service with assets, or sending data throughout. And, to me, the next strategic step, since we are having a whole lot of revenue coming from manufacturing, is actually connected manufacturing, or connected manufacturing lines. Industry four point zero, whatever you like to call it. That's our next strategic move with IoT, as I see it. >> The lines have been connected for giving data, but not necessarily for actionable data back into the lines, right? That's where the really big change is. >> Yeah. >> For the automation, automation back into it. >> Yeah. Automation, you have the full scale automation, pyramid where you have the POC that runs the low level control system. Then you have the scale down, the many systems as well. The thing with IoT is not only do you get the data for specific assets, you also get the full picture of like, how are my factories doing? On this level to this level? So, we come small, like a less operator, more kind of strategic view on the whole thing. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> But you need to be able to get the data out from different levels. And actually access it and make sense of it. >> Jeff: Right. >> Which factory is doing best? For example. >> Jeff: Right, and what are you managing, too? You're managing to the device you're managing to the whole output. >> Yeah. >> So, maybe based on economic factors, you want to run things hard, which is maybe not optimal for maintenance but because of the economic situation-- >> Yeah. >> You're going to press it. So it's really, that variable management opportunity-- >> Absolutely. >> Is a very different way of kind of looking at your output. >> And one way, one view really-- >> Jeff: Right. >> A scalable view, really. There is a stand just behind us, where we'll show a an industrial demo, together with Accenture, which will actually trigger a service request from a physical device, an engine, in this case. That goes into the system, the IFS system, that is actually scheduled, sent the repair guy that comes out, wearing a whole lens and fix the issue. >> Jeff: Right. >> So, that's an end to end thing. It's actually manageable and doable with our solution. >> Jeff: Great. >> And that was one of the things that the CEO talked about during the keynote too, is that it is automating certain tasks, but then really leaving the more unique tasks up to the human and the human connecting. With machines and also with other humans. >> Tobias: Hmm. >> So, tell me a little bit about differences that you've seen in the market. So, IFS, based in Sweden, many of its senior leaders in London, but of course, you have places all over the world. Do you see any differences, in terms of the customers in Europe versus the US? And how you're thinking about maybe making a bigger push into the US? >> That's a really good question. I'll have to think about that for a while. (All three laugh) I think what we are seeing in my team, at least, that's kind of on our horizon, is that Germany in general are heading toward industry four point zero, that's kind of a really hard driving fact. That's stated even by the government. So, we need to get into that, as well as pushing for field service management as a solution. US, I think, we should be doing more in. Let's put it that way. >> Great, great. Well, we look forward to hearing more about what you are doing in the US. (All three laugh) >> Jeff: More. >> Exactly. >> Jeff: That's a good thing. >> Tobias, thank you so much for coming on the Cube. We've had a great time with you. >> Thanks for having me. >> Jeff: Thank you. >> It was a pleasure. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. We will have more from IFS World here in Atlanta, Georgia just after this. (low energy techno)

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live, rom Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE. Covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference 2018 here in Atlanta, Georgia, I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Jeff Frick. We are joined by Darren Roos. You are the CEO of IFS. Thanks so much for joining us Darren. >> Great to be here, thanks for making time. >> So the conference is buzzy, we're really picking up a lot of excitement here. But I wanted to talk about you, just starting as CEO in April, brand new to the role. What what drew you to the role? >> You know as I did my due diligence on IFS what you found was there was a customer base that was super engaged with what we were doing. If you look on Gartner Peer Insights' website as an example, we're the top-ranked ERP solution amongst our peers. If you look at our NPS scores, we have a 34% bump on our top five competitors. So, when you have the opportunity to lead a business, of scale, we're half a billion Euros in revenue, with a super happy customer base, that's a great opportunity, so you know, I couldn't pass it up. >> And this is something that you also talked a lot about in your in your keynote. And and the number, the metrics speak for themselves- >> Absolutely. >> but it's the customer focus, the relentless customer focus, how do you maintain that? What is the secret sauce? >> Yeah, you know, I think it's not one thing, it's loads of different things. You can think about the business model that we have, but another data point that I love about the business, that the average tenure of our employees is nine years, right. And to really understand ERP, to understand how our customers are using the technology, you have to have tenure, you have to have account managers, and pre-sales people, and consultants, who've had the time to engage with the business, to go on this journey with them, to understand how the technology works, how the industry works, and really be able to move the needle in a meaningful way. And you know, most of our peers just don't have that tenure. They're focused on other things. And I think that the fact that we're able to bring in young talents, like we saw Tyler on stage this morning, talking about the technology, but with great people like Amy on stage, who have had great experience with our customers. That balance of tenure, and experience, and innovation, is really how we've managed to drive those results. >> It's really hard thing to maintain, because they've got to feel engaged obviously, with their customers and feel good about helping their customers, but they've also got to feel really good about the management and the company behind them, that enables them to deliver the innovation, to be engaged, and have that institutional knowledge. If you lose the institutional knowledge, both the customer's institutional knowledge, as well as your own organization, it's really hard to replicate and expensive. >> Yeah, it's difficult to do, and the reality is, it might be expensive to replace the people, but you can't replace the knowledge, right. You just can't do it. So you know we've been nominated as a great place to work for the last nine years, I think it is. So you know the fact that we were able to maintain that status, together with the customer satisfaction scores, are really the reason why we have the buzz that we do here today. >> So this is your first World, WOCO, World Conference, as you're calling it. What do you hope attendees come away with? >> Yes, we're not as big as some of our our peers, and I think it's really important that our customers come away from this understanding that they've bought the best technology that there is in the market. And really, when when we talk about the Gartner Peer Insights rankings, that's the validation for me. I'm not talking about some nebulous metric that I invented. If our customers say we're the best, or the customers in the market say we're the best, that's a good validation for me. So the customers that come here, and the partners that come here, can be proud of the fact that we are the number one in this industry, when it comes to the quality of solution that we deliver. So that's one thing that I want them to know. And then another thing that is really unique about IFS, is that we don't sell software. We sell an outcome. When we engage with the customer, they have a specific business benefit that they're wanting to derive, and we stick with them, we really partner with them to deliver that outcome. And again, I say that in a very meaningful way, because a very large proportion of our business are the services to implement our own software. So we work very closely with our ecosystem of partners in order to deliver it, but we're always on the hook to deliver that customer's success too. So you know, those two messages for me are, you have great technology, be confident in what you've bought, it's recognized as the best on the market, and know that IFS will always be in your corner. >> Go ahead. >> I was just going to ask about the culture, because you also talked about that being one of the things that really drew you to IFS, and then the need for candor too. So how do you make sure that customers are telling you things, even sometimes things you don't necessarily want to hear? Because you also made a point of saying that on stage, come up, talk to me, I want to hear it. >> Yeah, look I think, you know, how you encourage that and this is my leadership style, is not to become defensive, and to show customers that when they give you that feedback, that you value it and you take action. And I think that's a very self-fulfilling approach to take. So you know, I'm a straight shooter, I always have been. It's what my reputation is. And I think that it's a good match with the IFS culture because that just, tell it how it is approach, is how IFS typically does things. I think it comes from the fact that we're a Swedish company, and you know, it's a very open culture, a very straightforward and honest culture. It's not hierarchical, and that's a good fit with the way I like to run the business. >> It's still hard though, 'cause nobody wants to tell the boss bad news, right. So, I mean the fact that you have that, and it's, the right thing is to actively search out the negative right. >> No one, no one told them that they don't like to tell the boss bad news. >> They didn't know. >> People are quite happy to tell me the bad news when there's bad news tell me, no no. >> Well, that's the only way you can fix it right? >> Absolutely. >> So I want to kind of talk about digital transformation, and I could probably drop about 100 buzzwords, with IOT, and cloud, and AI, and dead smart people that get branded interesting things. But really it comes down to something you talked about in the keynote, and that's getting closer to the customer. Getting close to the end user. Whether that's you and your customers, or your customers and the consumers of their products. How do you see, I mean is that really the essence of digital transformation? Is the enablement of getting closer to the end customer? >> I think that proximity to the customer is a major trend that we see in, whether it's through servitization or product, or whether it's through, the example that I gave on stage this morning, with just you know, all companies, whether they're B2B or B2C, getting to know their customers better, I think it's a trend that we see. But really, the IFS philosophy is, don't worry about the buzzword. Don't think about AI, or about IOT, or about any of these things. Think about the business problem. Think about the business pain that you're experiencing and then let's figure out a way to leverage technology to solve that problem. When you have the business pain in mind, whether that's an inflated cost base, or whether you're trying to drive incremental revenue, trying to launch a new product, whatever it is, then it's much easier to come up with a tangible benefit that you're trying to achieve, and specific metrics. And that's what IFS is focused on. So on the on the Did You Know slides before the keynote started this morning, we spoke about the incredible, tangible benefits, that our clients have recognized, in terms of their improvements in profitability, their improvements in revenue, and these are specific metrics. And we track them, because we're engaged with customers focused on that outcome. So you know I think from my perspective, forget about the buzzwords, really focus on what the business pain is that you trying to solve, and then leverage technology to solve that problem, and measure whether you've managed to solve the problem. And that's how they should focus. And very often today, in a disproportionate number of cases, that's about somehow getting closer to the end user customer. Understanding what they're looking for, how they want to transact, and we see that in every industry. >> I'm just curious from a historical perspective, you've been in ERP for a long, long time, and I remember when kind of the first big ERP wave hit, I don't know 30 years ago, 40 years ago, you know better than I, right, there was this huge leap in productivity and efficiency. Are you amazed still today, that there are these giant opportunities for efficiency improvements? It just staggers my mind that there's still so many big opportunities, to squeeze so much more value out of processes and assets. >> I think the reality is that technology, while it is the enabler, it's also very often the inhibitor. So you know, what we see is, we see as these new technologies come on board, that we're able to unlock new capabilities that the technology just simply didn't enable before. We have a great customer, Anticimex, who are in the pest control market. And the way pest control companies, Anticimex are an example, is that they would put rodent traps out and then they'd have to send field service agents around to go check whether the traps had been activated. And now they put sensors in the traps, the traps report back when they've been triggered, and they only send field service agents out to go and check when a trap has been triggered. Clearly, that's a level of efficiency when, pre-sensors, and pre the IOT connectors that we have today, simply weren't possible. So it's really about the way in which innovation is, technology is enabling us to do things that simply weren't possible before. So now it's, you know, you can understand why happens. >> Yeah, and then the other piece that you talked about there, is really kind of this API economy, with you know, connecting the very disparate databases. So that's a big piece. Then the other pieces we're surrounded here, is the ecosystem. I wonder if you can speak a little to, you know, how the ecosystem plays in helping you deliver value to your customers. >> So IFS, as I've said before, have always had an approach which is, that we want to own the value, the outcome for the customer, the value delivery, the value assurance. And I think now what we're looking at, is how do we leverage the ecosystem to do a bit more of the work so that we can make sure that we can scale? Because as we win bigger and bigger customers, with global footprints, doing bigger roll-outs, they're wanting to engage with partners who perhaps have a bit more experience from an industry perspective or from a horizontal, functional perspective. So you know, as we engage with partners like Accenture, or like PWC, or other partners like that, it really gives us the ability to scale the business to a greater extent. So the ecosystem are critical for us in doing that, but for us, we can't compromise on the quality. It is always quality first. It's always a case of making sure that our customers will still realize the benefits while we give them some more options on how they can deploy. >> So the theme of this conference is Connect to What's Next. So we want to know what is next for IFS. Particularly as you were talking about doing your due diligence, and it has these great metrics, it's kind of this best kept secret, really, in this industry. >> It is an incredibly well kept secret. >> So how are you going to get the secret out? >> Look, I think, from my personal planning perspective as CEO, we have some work to do around standardizing our operating model. At the moment we're a fairly fragmented business. We have eight regions, and those eight regions don't all run in the same way. So we have some internal homework to do, and we'll get through that pretty quickly. After that it's really about leveraging the global partnerships that we have. You know Microsoft are here as an example, Accenture are here as an example, as platinum sponsors. And leveraging those partners, to get better known in the market, and those are some of the discussions that we've kicked off. And I think there's lots of ways for us to, to try and leverage the secret, to try and kind of open, open the box a little, and show people the power of what we've got. But I think we're going to, we're a relatively small business still, and we're going to have to leverage those partnerships as a springboard to get to more people. >> And this is your first US world conference, right? You guys have had other conferences in North America, but not your big one. >> Darren: I think they've done one here before. >> Darren and Jeff: I think there was one in Boston a couple years ago. >> But I don't know, I think that was more kind of a North American one, maybe or Americas, then the world conference. >> What I'm saying is that when we nearly twice as big this year at the World Conference as we were at the last one. And I anticipate the next one will be twice as big again. So you know, we're seeing phenomenal growth, we're seeing strong growth in our revenues strong both in our headcounts, and we're seeing strong growth in the number of people who are interested in our technology, so, you know, things are good. >> Great, well Darren thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. We've had a great conversation. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. We will have more from IFS World Conference 2018 in just a little bit. That was terrific. 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>> Live, from Atlanta Georgia, it's the Cube. Covering IFS World Conference, 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to the the Cube's live coverage of IFS World 2018 here at the Georgia World Conference Center in Atlanta. I'm you're host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. We are joined by Peter Scheltus, I hope I'm saying that correctly. He is the global strategy and sales director enterprise operational intelligence here at IFS. Thanks so much for joining us, Peter. >> Yeah, thank you for having me over here. >> So let's start this interview by having you tell our viewers a little bit about what you do at IFS. >> Well, our product actually is a very cool product if you want to improve your business. And, I'm talking business, not IT. We use an IT tool for doing that, but we are supporting managers to make better and faster decisions. 'Cuz in the current environment, current world, change is everywhere and change is coming more rapidly than ever, whenever. And what we do with IFS here, why we create a kind of a digital twin of your organization and to support all the managers in your organizations to make better and faster decisions, connected to each other. >> It's interesting the digital twin concept 'cuz we see it a lot, like G.E. uses it a lot. We make a digital twin of say a 737 because one of those operating say out of Dubai is very different than one of them operating out of Alaska, so they can run tests and stuff. I've never heard anyone say a digital twin of an organization. That's really a novel approach. So, how do you do that and what are some of the benefits that come out of doing that. >> Well, yeah, that's a good question. When you talk about a digital twin, there's a reason for having that. And you think about complex assets, and what you'd like to do is not only look at the asset, but would like to do predictive and even prescriptive. And the question mark if you're looking to organizations, they are complex as well, but they are not that visible. And they are not tangible. It's about people, it's about organization, it's organization charts, it's about processes, it's about systems, it's about risks, it's compliance, finance, whatever. Everything, projects, programs, so I can continue with that. But the question mark there, and all those elements are connected to each other. But how can you as a manager, if you have to manage that all, how can you make a good decision then? If you don't know how it looks like? And, what we do is, I actually visualize those complexities and bring that to the end-user, and the end-user in this case is the business owner or actually a business guy working in an organization, so he's capable of making those better decisions. >> That's the enterprise operational intelligence, or the EOI. >> Yeah, this is how we call it. >> That's what we call it. And then when you're looking at this complex organization, the digital twin model, can you kind of switch what you're optimizing for, 'cuz that's always the big question, too. What are you optimizing for, because then you might turn your levers very differently depending on profitability, speed, there's a short-term opportunity, a lot of complexity. in what are you actually optimizing for? >> Yeah, for sure. I mean there are so many elements connected to each other, so it is complex. And what you do see is that you have the classic BI tools and the classic data discovery tools, and what they do is they create pictures out of the data, because there are so many sources, where's so many data, but we do it a different way. We do it a different way for a reason because it's not about the target to make the data better, it's about making your business model better or your company better. And then we start actually modeling your organization, and plotting actually the data, not only financial, but also strategic and operational data, and even also risk and compliance data to the business model. And then, we have the platform, with having included three different engines, which is actually a model engine to create the model of the company. We have a data engine to work with all the data coming from all the different sources, and we have an execution engine, but it's all embedded in one platform. And it is integrated by design, And with sorry, but one more thing to add, which is realLy cool, is in the end, it's not only backwards looking, but due to the fact that we have the execution engine, you can even put basis rules on top and algorithms to go to predictive and even to prescriptive decisioning. >> I'm reacting because you keep talking about the visualizations. I'm always struck by the beautiful visualizations that come out of a lot of these tools. And they're pretty pictures, and they're kind of complicated, but so often you look at them, and you're like, so what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do now based on this beautifully complex picture, and it's not usually very obvious, so delivering actionable incites is very different than just creating a beautiful visualization of a bunch of data. So, what are some of the ways you help people actually make decisions? >> Well, there are two elements in and one element is of course, I'm talking about role-based cockpits, so per role is different, so you get actually what you see. I mean if you are the CEO or the CFO or you are team leader or whatever, you know what your work is, I assume. Then you give them the picture they want to see, so we have multiple pictures we can show. That's one thing. But in the end, it's about people. People have to do something, and people have to change. And what we have experienced over the past years is if you give somebody a tool, just a cockpit, and nothing hasn't really changed. So what we are a big supporter of is also to bring in and kind of a performance coach. And a performance coach is different role, and sitting next to whatever, a manager, and explaining and working with him together, what is it what we see? What can we do about it? How can we improve? Where can we lower costs? Where can we improve value? Where can we find it, so, kind of a performance coach is really important in the implementation approach. >> Do you see that there will always be a need for a performance coach? Or does the performance coach help the user understand, oh these are the questions I should be asking when I see data that looks like this? I mean, what's the evolution there? >> Yeah, it's really interesting. It's not always necessary. Of course every organization does have it's own majority, and if organizations is already quite performance centric and know how to work with metrics, the performance coach is not even needed. But you have all kinds of different organizations. So most of the time we just advise to use it as well. But again that's step by step. Think big makes more steps. So it's a agile approach as well. >> I'm sure the performance coach will eventually get baked into the software where it tells you if you tweek this lever here, it's going to that impact. If you tweek that lever here, it's going to have this impact. We see some of that in kind of the sports fitness devices where now there adding a smart, software driven coach beyond just telling you that you ran four miles or whatever. So, I would imagine that's got to be something you guys will implement because you've got the data. You know what the factors are, you've got the digital plan. So any good examples that you can share of customers who are starting to put this into practice and some of the results that they're getting. >> Well, we have quite some customers over the world, actually all kinds, well not every country in the world, but or region, yeah, definitely. We have them from power plants up to financial institutions, up to airlines and everything in between from manufacturing, et cetera. What we do see is that when you start with the EOI concept, we start most of the time with the board, because if you want to improve your organization from strategy to operation, that should be really bundled so that people do the right things. But if we don't get a clear view on strategy, how can you expect that all the operational people can do the right things? So that's how we start and you work with that and you have those first benefits, which is already after a couple of hours. While having the most nice example, if I have board, and I give them all a white piece of paper, and ask them, can you write down the strategy of the company and I get five different back. And we just say, it is important to have strategy connected to operations, how can we start change there? So, that's the way we start it. And then you already see benefits there. But during the process, and with the model capability of the platform, by bringing more and more into the connect cockpits, the more you see and the more benefits you'll have. So we have examples of total productivity of a company in a power plant of increasing 20% productivity. >> 20%, wow! >> Yeah, absolutely. And we even have performance where we have 90% savings, 90% savings of getting all the reports in place. Yeah, that's a really interesting numbers, I can tell you. >> It's amazing how much inefficiency there is still in so many places that can be wrung out with the right kind of application and the right focus. >> Yeah, definitely. And there is a reason why there is that possibility because when organizations grow, they will be impacted on different, how do you say it? >> Departments? >> Departments, yeah, different departments. So, then you're lacking an in twins view, if everybody is looking in his own silo, which is a common nature of grow, but while having the connected cockpits and connecting the dots there, you find really money. >> That's what were lookin' for. >> I know one of the big objectives is for customers to be able to see results right away and to see benefits right away and that was also a point that was made in the keynote by CEO Darren Roos, is this real time to value the customers are looking for. Do customers have almost unrealistic expectations though because of this 24/7 world that we live in, that they are going to see something right away, this return on investment. And is that ever a challenge that you're trying to meet? >> Well, not really. You can expect it, but up so far, and we're quite busy for several years right now, it was always the other way around. So, the customer was like, "Uh? Wow! Ooh!" (hosts laugh) >> So, they didn't expect us, and that's what I like then see you coming, and then bang, the result is there. But as I said earlier, "Think big, but make small steps". And then the old implementation approach, and the model-driven nature of the product, gives us the opportunity to work work in sprints, because I don't believe in waterfall approaches, or blueprinting organizations because what happens today or tomorrow, we don't know, and well, how can I handle if I have to do blueprinting up months, you don't know what's happening. So that's why we have a very agile approach and the sprint methodology in the implementation, and every sprint is actually a business case in itself. As one example, we have now, with a service customer in the UK, we even have a cost-savings of 27 million pounds over a couple of years, and it's not my mats, but there were their own figures. So, they figured out like that, so that's good. >> It's a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. >> It is isn't it? >> It's such a simple concept of a lot people are still baked into this, "I need to define it, I need an MRG, "and a PRD, and we're going to put this big implementation" and that's just not it. Just do, right? Just move a little further, 'cuz you're never there anyway, right? >> Exactly, it's a transformation path, but it's a daily transformation. >> I'm wondering if you've observed any ancillary benefits of this digital twin concept in the sense of encouraging more experimentation in companies? As Jeff was talking about, "If I move this lever this way, "and this this way, if I make this tweek, tinker here or there, are you seeing that in the sense of companies, and individual employees, just being more willing to try things? >> Yeah, but it's very depending on the type of organization. I have to be honest. But yes, I do see, of course, people are used to get their information. The early newspapers, less and less newspapers on paper are there, and so, which is helping to use cockpits on a digital way. But the thing is, and that's very interesting, if we all walk the same way, and that's the funny thing is if you do it on the approach like the EOI approach, from a strategy to an operation approach, instead of making pictures out of data, then you direct everybody in the same way. And in every organization, you have people, they walk like this, people they do like this, and it's a combination, but the interesting thing is, if you all walk the same direction, then the benefit is bang, it's massive. And that's really interesting because if you have people that walk the other way around, yeah. And that's actually the digital twin, and I think EOI in this case, if you talk about digital transformation. For digital transformation, you need a digital twin, you need IFS EOI. >> I need a digital twin. (hosts laugh) >> It's a great concept, again we hear it all the time in industrial devices as a really interesting way to model and test, and like you said, "Be predictive and prescriptive", but I've never really heard it applied to the application of an organization which is at least as complex as a jet engine. >> It is, it is! For people it's the blue worker and the white worker, and the color in this case, and now this is the next step. And it sounds logic, isn't it? >> Yeah! >> Absolutely! >> Yeah, especially when you start testing and tweeking things. >> And in the end, you have reality, and reality is changing. And then you have the digital twin. And of course, so the digital twin should be changing of course. If the real world is changing, and this digital twin should be changed. They're both connected, but if want to make scenarios and predictive elements in the digital twin, then the real organization has to change. And that's absolutely the next step, and we're just good at it. >> Well, thanks so much for joining us, Peter. It's been a really great conversation. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick, We will have more from the Cube's live coverage of IFS World in a little bit.

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