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

>>live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the Q covering I. F s World Conference 2019. Brought to you by I. F s. >>Welcome back to I f s world Everybody, This is David Dante with Paul Dillon and you're watching the Cube, The leader in live tech coverage. Where here from? From the Heinz Auditorium. Nick Ward is here. He's the head of OM Digital Solutions for Rolls Royce and Scott Helmer, president of the F S aerospace and defense. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Scott. I want to start with you. We heard a lot about digital transformation. You guys are in the heart of that. Ah, defense. Aerospace is one of those industries that hasn't been dramatically disrupted. Like publishing. Are you seeing taxis? It's a It's a high risk business. It's one that's highly in trench, but it's not safe from disruption. What are the major trends that you're seeing in your space and paint a picture for us? If you would, >>uh, that's a very good question. You're right. The same level of disruption related digital transformation has not yet common aerospace. Defense is that has come to some of the other league leading industries. But this is a whether it's land based operations, naval operations or aircraft operations. This is an asset intensive industry. It's characterized by a very connected network of organizations. Be the manufacturer's operators, subsystem, part suppliers or just maintainers. They stay connected throughout the asset life cycle in its entirety. I f F f s has a portfolio capability. There's four purpose underpinning the critical business processes of those organizations that enables us to be the digital thread to continue the connection of those organizations throughout that outs of life cycle, if you will, that sees this fall come to come to be at the heart of asset lifecycle Management on provides us with the opportunity to inform information insights for our customers. Like return on experience data on aircraft engines where an old GM like Rolls Royce, for example, can harvest that data to analyze the performance of those assets and ultimately optimized thereafter after service offerings. >>Who are the customers? I mean, there's a limited number of companies that make aircraft engines so you don't have a huge domain been numbers of those kinds of companies. But are the customers channel their partners the supply chain network >>Well, the ecosystem is actually large and extensive. They're very recognizable names, and it's certainly an industry that's characterized by significant growth. On the commercial side. Amaro continue is in the midst of a boom and is likely to continue to grow, are expected to continue to grow for at least another decorate decade. And on the defense side, we see military budgets continue or increasingly moving towards sustainment and serve it ization on a performance basis. So the number of organizations that are participating in that value chain whether they're just the upstream, only am so I should just upstream. But the Austrian Williams participate in the design and development are moving into the aftermarket sustainment and service support parts and subsystem supply, or ultimately, third part repair organizations. It's actually quite an extensive network participating in that asset life cycle. >>So, Nick, you know people here Rolls Royce, they think you know the iconic brand. We're gonna talk about cars, talk about your role at Rolls Royce and what's going on in your business. >>So my role I lead our product management function looking are digitally enabled. Service's so for 20 years we've been running a service we call total care. Total care is like a fixed dollar rate. Every time an aircraft flies, we paid a dollar rate for it. Flying. What's really great about that is we're incentivizing. No, I am exactly the same way that airline isn't said device. Keep the aircraft flying. It owns revenue for the airline. It owns revenue for us on that revolutionized relationship between oh am on operator. So within my role, it's about taking four division we call The Intelligent Engine. Intelligent Engine is recognizing the way that digital is starting to pervade the way we think about service is so we've talked about physical engine, big rotating piece of metal that people see service. Is that wrap around that on the digital brain that sits behind all of those sources? That's what we call the intelligent engine. >>Yes, so people sometimes think the mission critic critical piece of air travel is the reservation system. It's not. It's the thinness of the engines available that was lost in critical system, right? You mean like it? If you don't get your reservation Oh, well, somebody else will get it. Not not the end of the world But for the maintenance piece, that's all right. >>Job. You know, our fundamental mission is every rose was powered. Aircraft flies on time every time. All right, there's no disruption. There's no delay that works for the operator, for the airlines are owner of the aircraft. It works for us. And this is why the confluence of our incentives comes together and it really works well. >>So what role has technology played in terms of evolving that that experience? I mean, I'm sure, you know, years ago, it used to be a lot of tribal knowledge. Gut feel. Joe the mechanic really knew his stuff. Etcetera, etcetera, Powers. Technology evolved and changed your your business. >>So you had to go back to the business model, right? So technology should follow. The business model business model is fundamental risk transfer. So we take the risk off cost, fluctuation, availability, whatever it is away from the airline and we take it on to us is the Obama's Rolls Royce said the money's at risk. You gotta get really good forecasting. Four. Custom becomes your core skill almost because you've got to understand all the risk drivers understand how to optimize him, understand out of work around that in order to have a successful business. And you can't forecast without data without digital twins without all I ot and cloud and all the while the enablers allow you to sort of new to new generations of capability. >>So you're forecasting what probability of, ah, component failure, the life of ah, failure. How long it takes to bring stuff back on sure >>cost really on three different levels. So we do an engine forecast which is looking at the health of the life of the components in the engine, looking for any reasons why the engine might be forced off the wing. We're looking at a fleet level. So we're looking at all of the things that might affect the global fleet in terms of maintenance demands need for overhaul of those such things. And we forecast that out after 30 years, really accurately, as an engine leaves the factory, we know pretty much within 90 something percent everything that engine is going to require from the maintenance 20 to 30 years and then a network level. We're forecasting the capacity demand that we then need to meet within our maintenance shops globally. >>Well, He's obviously Paul. Been progress, right? We used to fly with very common four engine plains across the pond right now. Two engines. In fact, you don't want to fly in the four engine to engine more reliable. >>You've You've been a Rolls Royce for over 15 years. What have you seen as a result of all this technology is predicted maintenance technology. What impact is that? Had on equipment of reliability on life cycle on fuel efficiency. >>Huge, huge. I think if you don't have the data and you don't have the digital twin kind of capability behind you, you have to treat every engine like it's the worst engine in the fleet because you don't have the data tell you it isn't right. So everything is treated extremely extreme conservatism. If you have the data and you have the models and you have everything else around you, you treat engines, individuals. They have individual histories, individual configuration, individual experiences. Because of individuals. You tailor your maintenance intervention to keep that engine flying as long as you can on, you don't have to be his conservative. You can weed that conservatism out of the process, and that means it stays on wing 40 50% longer. It's flying for the airline that much longer. Revenues. Passengers are flying. There's less disruption. >>So what do you What do you do with my f s? What's the what's >>So Because we created this intelligent engine kind of next generation leap forward in that capability, we need data. So we have, ah, program we call the Blue Data Threat. The blue data traded in a global initiative that we're rolling through all of our 200 plus airline customers. How do we form a win win transaction with the airlines? Give us better data will make smarter decisions. You'll see less disruption, more availability. We'll share our data. Back with you is an operator. So this is a very simple, very nice cashless transactions. So with my intern X, because we share a number of customers, Scott has got a number of airline customers. Big airline customers were operating the maintenance system. What way do together? Is reform a plug in? It's like for us. We can go to an airline, and we can say you have total care inside to borrow an intel phrase. So he complied into the rosary service is seamlessly automated. The data can flow very little burden or effort on to the I t group of the outline. The data flows into our organization. We do what we do when we can push our date again back into the airline systems with updated form, their availability >>so key to that key to that value, Jane is obviously that common customer base. But critical to the work that Rolls Royce stuns does is the accuracy and reliability of the data They get to inform their own performance analysis and maintenance, availability information and the eye if it's made installed. Base leverage is a very rich data from the return on experience of the engine utilization that Nick and is able to use this part of the Blue data threat offering back to their customers. And together we're able to deliver unprecedented levels of value to airline customers and optimizing the availability of their assets. >>Nick, have you? Are you finding new ways to monetize this data beyond just improving the customer experience, a bond with your customers or their new revenue avenues >>for you? So I think within this is absolutely key that everybody within this transaction recognizes this is this is not a revenue opportunity for Rosa. This is a cashless transactions because there's a lot of sensitivity that data belongs to the airline, right? So you have to be very clear and open. That data is driving Rolls Royce to make internal improvements, so we will save a little bit on our bottom line of delivering the service's they've already bought in order to get better. Outcomes of those service is so It's a little early for the service. You were thinking about >>this a little bit like security. In that sense, you know of bad guys are trying to get there. So So the good guys to share data. It's a cashless transaction, and everybody we >>believe is a market collaboration on data is got to be the way Ford's >>Scott could. You double click on the Ecosystem and A and D, obviously different from the sort of core traditional you know, e r. P world. The importance of the ecosystem may be what it looks like, described the >>That's an insightful question, Dave, certainly the partner ecosystem in inner space and defense is somewhat differentiated. I don't want to go so far as to say that it's unique, but it's somewhat differentiated from Corey RPS. As you duly noted partner, our four persecuted for four purpose capability around the critical process is for manufacturers. Maintainers on, uh, parts and subsystem supply organizations is all the potential, and it's a promise. But that value can only be realized to the collaboration with partners who doom or an aerospace and defense and just support delivery and implementation capability. They provide value added service is around business process, reengineering, change, enablement as well as their partners and co innovation as well. Certainly the collaboration we have with Rolls Royce is certainly a new level of collaboration around innovation that hasn't been seen before. So those partners are critical to our ability to deliver that value to our customers. Secondarily, we have our partners are actually a route to market in the traditional sense of referral system like you would see in Corriere P. But more importantly, as an indirect route to market as channels to their end customers, almost I s v ng. Our capability to support the delivery of service is to their customers. >>So it's the it's the manufacturers of the Plains, For example, it's the airlines themselves. It's manufactured the engine defectors, >>the maintainers. So the M R organizations that do the work around repair, and it's the entire ecosystem of organizations to support the supply chain. Our partners are both in themselves as well as partners in delivering the capability to those organizing. >>And it's a data pipeline throughout that value chain a digital thread that you guys actually have visibility on, correct your value. Add to the and >>we have the opportunity to play a vital role between within that equal system in allowing and enabling the connective ity of that network between Williams and their customers between the operators and their maintainers. For example, we've got a collaboration with an airline right now where we're going to connect them directly with the third party organizations that they rely on for airframe repair. For example, >>I want to ask you about the aerospace business it used to be that used to be a very small market in terms of the number of customers. Now we've got Space X. We've got the private areas, three private aerospace companies. We've got different countries now. India, China getting involved. What impact is that having on your business. >>Certainly we're seeing the emergence of spatial program's playing a taking up a larger share of off of government or public sector budgets. And people are beginning to think about how to leverage or harvest the value from utilization of spatial assets and again are enabling capability. To be a collector of that data and supply it back as an information in sight to those were reliant on the data that is collected is a vital role that we play in that ecosystem. >>So when I was when you were describing the ecosystem value chain, it strikes me that there's there's clearly a whole lot of metrics going on. Are there new levers, new metrics, emerging new levers that you can pull to really drive a flywheel effect in the industry? One of the key key performance indicators that you're really trying to optimize visiting? This is >>Certainly this is certainly an industry that characterizes as an intensive, complex mobile and in this case complex in mobile or a pseudonym for very expensive assets. So everything around availability, reliability are all key drivers are performance indicators of our customers ability to realise the value from those assets and our role in that is to provide them with the information inside to be able to make optimal decisions to maximize that availability. >>Anything you dad, >>I think in this day and age things like technical dispatcher alive. Relative engines is so high, high 99 sort of percentage. You have to start focusing on things like the maintenance costs to achieve that. Driving your maintenance costs down, but still retaining your really high availability. That becomes a really interesting balance. You could have under percent of relevancy. What it's gonna cost a fortune. You don't want that. >>Well, gentlemen, thanks so much for coming on. The cute, really fascinating discussion. Thank you. Great to have you. All right, you're welcome. And keep it right there, buddy. Paul Gill on day Volante from I F s World in Boston. You're watching the Cube right back Right after this short break

(calm music) >> Good morning from Miami. Lisa Martin here, live with The Cube, on the floor of IFS Unleashed. We are thrilled to be back with them after not seeing them for three years, of course, of obvious problems. But I'm very happy to be welcoming back one of our Cube alumni and the CEO of IFS, Darren Roos. Darren, it's great to have you back on The Cube. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. >> I was telling you before we started, it must have felt amazing, exhilarating this morning, walking out on stage, seeing that sea of people, of live bodies, and actually getting to engage with your customers and your ecosystem in person again. >> Yeah, it's great. You know, I think we've all dealt with all of the challenges that Covid have brought and I think just going back to something that feels very normal and, you know, getting to interact with people again at this scale is really unique and a great feeling to be back, back in the throes of normality. >> Exactly. In the throes of normality. Well, so much has changed since The Cube last caught up with you. I think it was 2019 in Boston. Talk to me about some of the specific things that you've learned during the pandemic that IFS has done 'cause there's a lot of momentum which we're going to uncover on the show today. >> Yeah. Look, I think when we met last in 2019, the focus then was really on building out our Field Service Management offering. We'd always been a contender in the ERP space and with some asset management capability, but the focus was really on establishing ourselves as a leader in the field service management space. And today we are the undisputed leader in field service managements, both from an analyst and customer recognition perspective and what we've also done is we've really focused on building out that asset management capability and, you know, today, again, we're the number one player in asset management. And when you think about how you bring those two things together and the way that asset and service-centric entities have to orchestrate their organizations to create what we call amazing moments of service for their customers, then you need a technology platform that can provide all of that and we do that, really best-of-breed capability across field service management, asset management and components of ERP, but on a single platform. So customers don't have to deal with the integration complexity that they would in a more heterogeneous environment. >> Which is critical for getting time-to-market, product-to-market services, new revenue streams, et cetera. But you're also the top three ERP vendor. One of the top three. >> Yeah, we're one of the top three ERP vendors. You're growing north of 20%, way more than the big guys. How are you doing it and and where do you win? >> Yeah, you know, I think, for so long, customers have had to choose, as I said, between this best-of-breed and best-of-suite and making compromises either on functionality or on integration and I think that, you know, we are very focused from an industry perspective. As I said, just now, we only focus on capabilities and in service and asset-centric industries, think utilities, aerospace and defense, et cetera and in that space, you know, we have a very compelling proposition, as you said. We can help customers go live faster. We can de-risk those implementations 'cause we have more depth of functionality that's suited specifically to their needs and that makes it compelling and that means that, in a world where we're competing against vendors who are very much horizontally-focused and that best-of-suite offering that they have means that the functionality's compromised or in a best-of-suite, best-of-breed world, that the integration is compromised. That's why we're winning and that's why we're outgrowing the competition and, you know, I think we, we just stay focused. We stay in our niche, we stay focused on our customers and creating value and, you know, that's our reason for being. >> So north of 10,000 customers so far. Has IFS always been vertically-focused or is that something that's come on in the last few years, maybe since you were tenured. >> Yeah, in the last five years we've really homed in on those assets and service-centric verticals and it's important, because when you think about what we do from a development perspective, you know, as we build the technology and we think about those emerging use cases around, you know, asset investment planning or asset performance management or asset monitoring or all of the things that our customers are thinking about, IOT, AI, augmented reality, all of which we're showcasing at the conference, you know, you want to do that with a very specific use case in mind because I've talked a little bit about field service management and asset management but none of our customers consume technology in that way. You know, if they're in oil and gas, then they're thinking about shutdown and turnaround and they're thinking about plant maintenance, they're thinking about specific use cases that are industry focused and that's how we build the technology. So, you know, I think that's the differentiator for us and, you know, there's a bunch of customers here and, you know, you'll see all of the, you know, the solar arrays and the wind farms and all the different things where we're demoing the capability that we have that is very industry focused. >> The industry focus is so, like you said, very differentiating, but also it's not just, "We're going where customers are." It's, "We're listening "and we're actually speaking the language "that our customers speak." That's differentiating from the many, many hundreds of tech leaders that I talk to, just so you know. >> A hundred percent. Well, look, I think the thing is, is that what we recognize, is that for us to be able to really create value for them in the specific vertical that they're in, it can't be that we stick a marketing label on it. And that industry flavor has to be ubiquitous from, you know, when we meet them and we're able to understand the problems that they're facing through to the way that we build the technology to address the problems, all the way through to the partners that we're working with who are then going to deliver that solution. They need to understand the industry and I think that, you know, it's a not a particularly level playing field because so many of our competition don't operate that way. They have a horizontal application, they have horizontal partners, and then a lot of the rest is marketing blurb. But, you know, I think the customers that we have here today are great, global, international brands. You know, we told some of the stories from the stage this morning, with companies like Southwest and the MRO solution that we delivered for them and we're immensely proud of that. And, you know, our focus is on just telling more of those stories and creating more of those stories and being able to point towards tangible value that our technology's created in record time. You know, that's the focus. >> Right. It's all about the business outcomes. We've got sitting across from our set here is the Aston Martin F1 car. Darren and I were talking before, we're both big F1 fans. I love hearing the smart factory from an F1 team's perspective, or hearing about aerospace and defense customers because you get to understand the commonalities of these businesses and how similar they are to other industries. They have some of the same huge challenges but getting a race car built between now and February of 23 for the next race season, the amount of manufacturing that has to go on, smart manufacturing, and knowing that IFS is really underpinning that, is fantastic. >> Well, it's more complex than that even, because they're not building a new car by February, you know, they're rebuilding the car every week and, you know, it's that kind of attention to detail and the speed and sense of urgency that is a great opportunity for us to showcase the technology and that's why we love the relationship with Aston Martin Racing, but, you know, being able to then leverage the learnings from that environment, which is super high paced and the cycle times are so much quicker, into, you know, industries which maybe don't move as fast, but are, you know, perhaps more mission critical, you know, like an airline or, you know, something equivalent to that. >> Well, if we think about the industries that that you're focused on, so many of them were the hardest hit during the last couple of years, where they're really arterial industries and IFS has really been focused on helping these folks transform digitally. Talk to me about IFS as really a catalyst of those companies' digital transformations. >> You know, interestingly, we, didn't see a ton of impact during Covid to our business but that's because, as you say, that they were hit but hits almost in a positive way because they were the ones that kept things going. You know, think about our customers like telcos or utilities or, you know, unfortunately our aerospace and defense customers, commercial aviation aside, but we have a bunch of defense organizations that are customers and, you know, they've had to keep going and what we've really focused on and it continues to be our focus, is how do we help those businesses to be more efficient? And this is increasing, especially with what's happening in the world today, is increasingly important to them. How do they drive operational efficiency? And I talked a lot about the power of IFS's capability on a single platform and how do we bring the orchestration of the different parts of their business, whether that's their customers, their assets and their people. How do you orchestrate those things in order to create operational efficiency and in IFS language, create those moments of service? And that's what we do, and because we are focused on creating those moments of service and we're helping those customers to be more efficient, you're helping them to drive loyalty and, you know, repeat business and increase value in their customers, you know, that's, we just became and become, more important to them. You know, it's not a system that they can turn off and go, you know, "We'll do without this for a while." You know, we're really underpinning that value creation for them. >> You're integral. You're mission-critical, really. Let's double click on the moments of service. I love that from a tagline perspective. It's also the title of your new book. Congratulations on the book by the way. Define that for the audience. I think they can get a sense of that but what is, and it's really IFS enabling its customers to deliver moments of service. Talk to me about that. >> You know, it's funny. As we were discussing it, it tends to get used as the moments of service that we provide for our customers but that's really not what it's about. Every industry, every business, when you talk to the CEOs of those businesses, they're thinking about how do they impact their customers. What are the things that they need to do? And every business, when you talk about this concept of a moment of service, every business has multiple moments of service and everything that we do is about helping those customers, irrespective of whether they are a utility and the service they're providing is a broadband service, or, sorry, a telco providing a broadband service, or a utility providing electricity. That customer flicks the switch and the power is there, or they, you know, they dial their phone and the phone call is there. That's one of the moments of service that they provide. It could be, you know, the engineer going in and activating that service and being able to let the customer know that they're arriving at a certain time and then that broadband being activated so that the customer can actually, you know, plan around their day. But those moments of service are what we enable and it does, it takes a tremendous amount for an organization to come together. We all, as a consumer, had an experience where, you know, we've had an expectation and we've been disappointed and that moment of service wasn't provided and almost in every single case it comes down to a fragmented selection of systems that weren't integrated, that weren't inter-operating. You know, the wrong technician shows up, he doesn't have the right equipment, he didn't know that your house, you know, didn't have a certain capability or piece of equipment in it and that's where it starts to fall down and that's the customer disappointment and that leaves the sour taste in their mouths. So everything that we've done, whether it's our customer satisfaction monitoring tool, Customable, or whether it's the asset management capability, the field service management, managing those techs, so that you get the right technician with the right parts, when they said they were going to be there. All of those things are really focused on those moments of service, and you know, as you said, what resonates with people is that everybody, as a consumer, you know, interacts with companies where they've been disappointed by a poor moment of service and they've had great moments of service. So it does resonate with everyone. >> It does, and I actually think moments of service, probably, in a hopefully post-pandemic world, are probably even more important, because I think one of the things, and you talked about this, we've all had these disappointing experiences in the last couple of years, that were magnified to some factor of X and I think patience has been in short supply. Probably not going to rubber band back. So being able to, through your technology, enable customers to deliver those moments of service that are critical to reducing churn, increasing revenue, turning revenue into recurring, is really a differentiator for your customers. It's an advantage for them. >> Well I think that, you know, the consumers, in general, are becoming more demanding. That's a trend that isn't going to change. Covid certainly accelerated that. That's one element and we think about kind of big macro trends that are impacting, you know, businesses today. The other thing is this big move towards servitization and we think about companies like Rolls Royce, who are a customer of ours, who, you know, they used to manufacture and sell engines that went on aeroplanes and other engines. And today they don't. They rent those by the hour. And at the point that you flip that dynamic from being, you know, making a product and selling it, to, you know, providing it as a service, the world changes completely because all of a sudden you have to think about, you know, "How well are we making these assets? "How are we going to monitor those assets? "How are we going to continue to service those assets?" And obviously longevity and quality becomes so much more important and your customer experience becomes so much more important because if they're not putting a big capital out there and they're just renting it from you, if you don't provide, you know, quality of service, then they'll simply go somewhere else, and our technology underpins those motions. So you've got these big trends of customer expectation going up and of course the servitization trend. >> Right. And we've actually got Rolls Royce's Nick Ward for Rolls Royce coming on the program later today, so we'll talk about the big pivot they've made and how IFS has really been transformative in that. Talk a little bit about, in our last few minutes, about supply chain. Obviously we know it's been quite a mess the last couple of years. I saw some research over the summer from IFS that said 66% of organizations are keeping more stock on hand, more organizations are increasing supplier numbers. How is IFS helping in that sense? >> Yeah, so I think it's all about visibility and I think if we can give customers visibility into their supply chains and their stock levels, their inventory, and of course, you know, what's required from a customer perspective, and again, it's this orchestration of different pieces, which in a heterogeneous non best-to-breed and suite world, means that customers maybe have to try and figure out how they're going to manage all those things across the different systems. In IFS it's all in one system. We give them visibility and control that they wouldn't ordinarily have and I think that's a huge point today when you know everybody's under pressure. You know, how much money you've got tied up in inventory. You know, what your supply chain cash levels look like is a huge challenge for businesses with increasing debt costs coming up now. So, you know, I think that being able to manage that more efficiently, having better visibility, being able to plan more effectively, so that you're, you know, if you're building up your stock supplies, it's because you need those stock and you know what order's coming and that's where, you know, having integrated capabilities is so important and that's what we provide. >> Visibility and control are absolutely critical. I know that energy is one of your vertical specialties. Talk to me a little bit about how you're helping customers in Ukraine from an energy perspective. Is IFS there helping organizations to navigate those headwinds? >> Yeah, so we're not in Ukraine. It's not a market that we operate in, but I think that what is, you know, ubiquitous now in the world, is energy crisis, given what's happening in Ukraine and I think that, as an industry, we see the utilities industry investing heavily in two areas. One is that continuity of service and being able to make sure that, again, it has predictability around what the requirements are and how they provide quality of supply and continuous supply, but the other thing is of course is, you've got this whole move towards sustainable energy and that's an area in which we are increasingly involved and again, like I said, you see a bunch of sustainable energy demos going on around here in being able to help companies make the transition as well as manage that new infrastructure and we've got a bunch of innovation around that coming in the next six months or so. >> Well, you're coming off a fantastic first half. We saw the results over the summer, ARR up 33%. I can only imagine the trajectory in second half. >> It is strong. >> Continuing to go up. >> We'll release our Q3 results soon and, in fact, all the numbers are improved on our half-year numbers, so really happy with that development. But it's, you know, it is a testament to our customers. It's a testament to the way in which they work with us to make sure that we can build differentiated capability and, you know, we continue to try and work with them and reciprocate that loyalty and, you know, that's our story. >> Synergy. Love it. Darren, thank you so much for coming on The Cube, sharing with us the great momentum that IFS has been having during your tenure, also during the pandemic, the great customer stories that really articulate your value. We appreciate your time and we look forward to unpacking more on the program today. >> Thank you Lisa. >> My pleasure. For Darren Roos, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube live from Miami on the show floor of IFS Unleashed. Don't go away. My next guest joins me in just a minute. (calm music)