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>> 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.
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