The time has come for another talk with one of our partners, Novacura. Novacura is a long-time partner of IFS and a two-time winner of the Channel Partner of the Year Award.
Now the company has more than 150 employees, offices in 10 countries and helps organizations get more out of their business systems. So I talked to Östen Westman, Sales Director Business Solutions at Novacura, about their origin and IFS and their thoughts on IFS Cloud.
How long have you been a partner of IFS?
We’ve been an IFS partner since 2013 and we became an IFS Channel Partner in 2016.
However, we’ve worked with IFS since the very start of Novacura back in 2005.
Why did you decide to team up with IFS?
Teaming up with IFS was natural because most of our employees have an IFS background. But also, we teamed up with IFS based on the complete offering that comes from IFS as an ERP vendor. IFS has a very strong industry focus that is a good match with us at Novacura.
Describe the ideal Novacura customer.
A customer with a good understanding of ERP and an open mind for real process change. If this customer also operates in one of our focused industries (like Manufacturing, Logistics, Construction Projects, Asset Maintenance, Defense, Mining, Energy or Oil & Gas) or has process improvement as a core initiative, it is a perfect match for us.
In which countries do you operate?
Currently, we have offices in 10 countries. Headquartered in Sweden and with additional offices in the US, Australia, Finland, Norway, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sri Lanka. This allows us to support customers on a global level, even countries in Europe and the Middle East where we haven’t opened an office… yet.
What makes Novacura unique?
It’s a combination of the people that work here and the actual products we can offer. Our own low-code platform, Novacura Flow, on top of IFS gives our customers a unique capability. This low-code platform can also work as a BPM platform, adding a flexible process layer to the IFS ERP. But customers don’t have to create everything from scratch in our low-code platform – our new Novacura Marketplace provides dozens of ready-to-use business applications that are by default compatible with IFS. These apps together with low-code capabilities unlock the huge potential that already resides inside IFS!
The freedom we offer our customers is highly appreciated and together with our mix of people with strong process skills, we tend to have long-lasting partnerships with customers. This makes us relevant for scenarios such as new ERP implementations, upgrades and solution development.
What advice would you give IFS Customers considering a journey to the cloud?
We often advise our customers to question their current and future state. With this new perspective, try to imagine what could be possible, or what you would want to be possible with a cloud platform. Customers can achieve a higher degree of digitalization when they don’t limit their access to information.
By challenging the current view on a customer solution, process, or specific function, we can eliminate unnecessary modifications and increase the level of automation in the processes.
Our customers are in general better prepared for IFS Cloud and an “evergreen” ERP solution because we can avoid modifications and complex configurations in the IFS software with the use of Novacura Flow.
How would you describe your firm’s values and how do they align with IFS?
We believe in freedom for our customers related to allowing them to define their own processes, integrate with any system and enable them on any device whenever they need. And I think the “freedom to choose” is also an important element for IFS.
To learn more about our partner landscape, please visit the IFS Partner Network.
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