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

>> Live from San Francisco. It's the cube covering IBM thing twenty nineteen brought to you by IBM. >> Hey, welcome back here when we're here. Live in San Francisco for IBM. Think twenty nineteen, two cubes Exclusive coverage. I'm over here, students to it's been four days. Were our fourth day powered through a lot of interviews. Obstructing the Civic Lanois number one live event covers a Cuba to great guests here. Ashutosh Mooney, vice president, Applications services with an IBM and carried to lose chief technology officer nationwide Building society in the UK Great to have you guys. Thank you, John, for applications. Big part of the focus because the applications air now dictating the data strategy. The II with a and you could cloud multi cloud underneath. So the chained, changing market requirements around what, after doing are super important? All this is a focus. It's dictating that the infrastructure what to do so that this is the key to the cloud. Talk about what you guys are doing. >> Absolutely, absolutely, in fact, not just for IBM. For clients, mostly for them to be able to ready for their customers, they need to make sure that their applications are up there for their customer experience as well. What we're seeing is most of these supper clients today are saying that all the work that they have done in past for the last five, ten years that's the core that they have been in there trying to look at how they can minimize the spend on that and maximize the spending a ll. The customer facing applications like to enhance the customer experience >> they call and you call that the workload? Oh, yes. Load is code for applications. Carry your customer of IBM. Let me explain what you guys do first. Then we can talk about some things you're working on, >> So we are a large, UK based mutual building society. We have about fifteen million members in the U. K. But you can think of us as a bank. In many respects, most people do. Challenge throws us, as you said, is basically we have thirty or forty years of legacy technology. We need to transform that technology and also bill the next generation digital services alongside that technology. So if Rose, it's the combination of how do we transform that legacy core whilst also building from you? >> And what are some of the use case is that the new technology going bring you because containers has been great with legacy because you don't kill the old to bring in the new. As you look at the modern modernization journey, you're on What is guiding principles? One things you guys are looking at, how you guys thinking that through? >> Okay, so a number of things. One is we've been on a thirty year journey towards looser and looser coupling on smaller and smaller micro services. So what you're starting to see is big applications, monolithic applications being broken down into services and the micro services. So for us, the key is the smaller and smaller micro services. The more agility we can create more value great. And that loose coupling them becomes really important because that then allows us to deliver a high level of parallelism in development in change. So those are two key areas. >> It has it going today. Good scar tissue. You learning its >> learning and its iterating and it's failing and its understanding. But the main thing is, you know, the more we do, the more we learn, the more we can then build that back into Nick's situation. >> Actually, I always love to hear, especially the financial services ones that have been around a while that that modernization and how they do that, I couldn't help but notice. You're both wearing the, you know, I heart a I the shirts. So if you connect the dots for us between that application modernization and the wave of a ay >> yeah. So I heard that Tom fail fast and fail regular. I mean, it's all good until you actually have atleast one success, right? Failing fast is good, but you cannot escape feeling. So where it comes into play is primarily making sure that you're basing your those decisions on what have been proven right in Pastor's. Well, so what we have seen, especially for financial services, is even though the system's off engagement has changed the fundamental principles on which the banking services all the insurance services operator has not changed. So you're still wearing the same set of services just in different ways. The expectation of the client has changed, but the services remain the same. So our ability to be ableto look at what we have been doing in past which services makes sense to be Microsoft's enabled us getting talked about. It's not that you just take all the functions and enable them. That's where we're able to bring value Tour Kari. What's the impact >> on this on your ultimate and user >> better value? So for us, it's about helping our members, who are customers, to make better financial decisions on. To do that, they need data. So what we're trying to do is to really take that Legacy estate, which is really about locking data into the course. Or we can use it trying to liberate that day to get it out into the hands of our members so they could make better decisions on a eyes were really keep part of >> you. I mean that that was what we think back to. That wave of big data was the I should be able to have smaller companies, you know, not take years and millions of dollars to be able to do that. Tell us what's different about, you know today in a I that that we might not have been able to do five years >> ago. There's a couple of things, really. So one is compute power. So what you're seeing really is eyes is not necessarily advancing massively in terms of the algorithms and the approaches in the methodologies. What you're seeing, though, is compute power in storage capacity growing at an exponential rate store. So what it's doing is enabling those algorithms to work in a way that they've never been able to do before. We're getting to value quicker because the time it takes to reach that value is much shorter. >> I want to get your perspective on you mentioned parallel breaking down, decoupling things with looser sets the services. This is certainly the cloud way make AP eyes have micro services. Big part of it. How is that going from a culture standpoint? Because this is one of the things we hear all the time is it's a cultural journey to one. Get people lined up with that. And then what if some of the business benefits that you see what this parallel isn't? His efficiency is an innovation. Where do you see that culture? What did What did you do to change the culture? Go. Cheers. Um, this is what people want to know about. >> So in fact, what we're seeing is a majority of the clients have started to look into this because everybody else was because somebody digital native out there was doing it, so they some of them actually last on too quickly. They have not been ableto change their internal culture within the organization when the customers were ready, but their internal organizations or not. But I think plants like Cup NBS have sought out a fairly good strategy, and it will be great to get if you can >> share with your secret sauce that you like Carrot Stick. They were gonna go this way or you burn the boats, as they say at the How did you get people to go in the right direction? >> For us? There's a really, really important related past this the culture of the people from a culture perspective. You know, we've got teams of people who have been doing phenomenal pieces of work for thirty forty years coming to the end of their career. And you know, the technology that we're using again, we're looking at and the service life. So how do we how do we get away from that world where we're constantly focusing on the legacy to start focusing on new technology? So it's bringing in new people with new ideas. It's changing the way we work, so we started to focus on things like our child. They've ops, automation, new ways of working to allow people to really sort of liberate away from the old ways of working and give them new ideas and new opportunities. That's part of that as well. There's a couple of things in there for us which is really important. So one is bringing new technologies in bringing new people in that Khun, use those technologies. We also have to make sure we keep our own people trained up as well, so we can't forget the people that we've got. So it's it's a set of different things, >> and training is critical. Was gonna open source out there. It's like, you know, every years like a dog here, and you gotta keep up to date, Keep learning >> and all these aspects of procreation, right? So you cannot do it in isolation if you're doing it together. I mean, whether use design, thinking or not right, that's it. That's it. That's the way to do it. But I think the aspect of co creating in your end stakeholders and your own stakeholders, Orin more >> talk about more about that, cause this is a big team co creation we love doing with content were in the Q. We're doing it here with constant when you get into development. This is a new psychological dynamic, but also it's a productivity opportunity. Can you share what you're seeing there? Explain co creation a litte bit deeper >> Look so that we talk hypothetically, right? So from hypothetical perspective, if we were able to look at organization or a flat form where were able to access an amount ofthe computational power computation skills are programming skills. Our ability to be able to do the most creative expects for any use case and industry would be enormous. We just don't have that. We're limited to specific parts that were working with the Limited with specific employees that we have Andrea limited to the customers that were kids, and I think if we expand, so while we don't have, uh, handle off all the things that we haven't played. But if you are able to bring in our customers or internal stakeholders as well as our partners that we're working with and are able to build a common team and one of those common themes could be that I need to get you those services quickly and then figure out how to three can actually work in tandem we'll be able to make. >> How does that change your engagement model? Because I might be the same in eight days there, Miss Captain. Well, we used to do that before we usedto partner and understand their needs Bring solutions to the marketplace. Is it more software driven? So what's changed from the old way to the new way? Because I don't agree with you, by the way, I'm not I'm not a skeptic, but, yeah, that was what skeptic might say. >> Yeah, no, I think earlier what was happening was they were It was more offering leg and what I mean by offering letters these of the sex I have. And let's make these assets find the solutions. So what people will do is they will say this is the banking solution I have in this specific case and let's figure out what fifteen things I can >> do without those solutions. >> Approach now is different. They approach now is This is what the customer is demanding and the reason they're demanding is because customers expectation is based on there most recent experience that they had somewhere else, not necessarily with the bank. They may have experience and over, so when they have experienced that experience there, they want the similar services from the bank. So now the co creation model is actually starting from the other side of the equation rather than coming from Essex out. That's >> so it's flipped. The old model was hears. We got here's what you could do, Your limited and now it's like is what we want to do >> This ice >> program the infrastructure and focus on software to find agile. This is seems to be the new way. >> Let me add to that as well, because I think one of the things that we've done over the last year is really focusing on what our technology strategy, how this technology going change. Our business we've done is created a strategy where our ambition actually exceeds our ability to execute. So from a co creation perspective, we actually need really good partners are going to work with us in that context on be strong challenges br critical friend in the process. >> So it's more efficient and more productive. You get best of both worlds and the outcomes are more aligned via agile. Got me more acute on target. Many pretty much that >> getting Carrie actually love to get your perspective on like, what does it mean to have a cloud strategy today? We heard this week. You know, Jenny said, We're, you know, entering chapter to of the clouds. We took care of the twenty percent that was a little bit easier. We're getting eighty harder. Lots of customers I talked to. It's It's changing all the time, and things like hybrid and multi Cloud don't really mean much to them. Got serious in your shop, how you think of things. >> Great question. I think it's changing, and it's different from industry to industry. So I'm banking. The challenge for us has always been regulation has been the regulators pushing back on public cloud and saying, You know, we were nervous about that. Have you manage the security of the controls around that? So a lot of banking is focused on private Cloud? Can we adopt the technology in those banking's those styles of technology delivery in the private cloud way? But we're now starting to see that there is this shift towards public cloud with the economic advantage that public cloud house on the innovation that's going on in public cloud. It's becoming really attractive. So the strategy for us is about how do we make that happen? How do we build that multi cloud model? And then how do we move that sort of hybrid model from private to public and get the advantages of the different styles of cloud computing? >> Guys, Thanks for coming on, Given the inside love, this Dev ops Co creation model and really applications air driving the requirements now with programmable infrastructure. This is changing. The procurement is changing. The culture hiring strategist is really disrupted. This is really the digital transformation. It's all about creating great shop. Thanks for coming on. We appreciate final question while we're here. Thoughts on think this year in San Francisco. Libit Rainy February. That's okay, but all tightly together. What's your thoughts? What's the themes? What's your What's the top story here? >> Getting your pops? >> Whether it makes me feel like >> home is fantastic. Eso No, it's been It's been an amazing week. >> Lots of innovation, Lots of great conversation. So I really enjoyed it. >> Yeah, No, absolutely. I think we've gone around myself, even though we are definitely aware of what's going on in here. But I think there have been lots of partner ecosystem that has been here, and I think that collaboration has been great. Thank you. >> It's been great. Show a lot of inside Kaspar perspective. Thanks for sharing what your journeys on and some specifics Way appreciates. A cube coverage. I'm shoppers to Minuteman. Stay with us for a day, for we're four days a coverage. We're here on day for Stay with us for more after this short break.