Last week I visited the IFS Customer Day in Kyoto, Japan. This event was organized together with our partner NEC in Japan and Asia. It was a true pleasure to see a full auditorium of IFS customers and partners sharing their success stories of using IFS Applications in a wide range of manufacturing industries.
On the agenda was a business update delivered by IFS CEO, Alastair Sorbie. IFS CTO Dan Matthews and I held a product strategy presentation to share product news and strategies for IFS Applications and how it can serve as the platform for making innovations more agile.
Several success stories were presented by customers describing how IFS Applications has helped their businesses to improve productivity and customer responsiveness. There was a mix of customer examples where IFS Applications has been implemented as a complete ERP suite, but also where it co-exists with an existing finance system like SAP. In these cases, IFS Applications for manufacturing and supply chain are used instead of SAP manufacturing because companies have experienced that IFS better supports their core business, is quicker and safer to implement, and NEC delivers a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) with IFS Applications. These are values that I see more and more customers experiencing by using IFS Applications.
Some months ago, Gartner placed IFS Applications in the leader quadrant for midmarket manufacturing companies. According to Gartner, IFS demonstrates a clear vision and the ability to execute against that vision. Leaders have proven products, a track record of customer success and demonstrated momentum in growing their market presence. Leaders also have a track record in developing their solution into a next-generation application without causing too much disruption when adopted by their customer base
#1 in Rotterdam
The other week I had a keynote presentation at the IFS Benelux Customer Summit in Rotterdam. Rotterdam has the biggest harbor in Europe, and IFS completely dominates the marine industry in this area. IFS is selected instead of SAP over and over again because customers in this industry need business software and business partners that are agile and flexible enough so they more rapidly can benefit from change and be prepared to manage the unexpected. We are now also establishing a strong industry partnership together with Deloitte for the maritime sector. IFS is focused on the maritime and oil & gas, among other industries, resulting in several new large global customers over the last couple of years. These customers share their experience with each other about how IFS and our partners deliver so much more business value than our competitors such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Infor. Please check this movie describing our business success stories in Rotterdam harbor.
After the customer day in Kyoto, we met with management at the NEC HQ. NEC is not only a partner who sells and implements IFS Applications, but also uses the product at its manufacturing plant for supercomputers, which is considered to be the most advanced and modern computer manufacturing plant in Japan. Please spend a few minutes watching this video.
