The People Behind IFS Cloud is a blog series meant to surface stories of the amazing individuals behind IFS Cloud.
From developers and engineers to marketers, every week we’ll get to the heart of the team behind the launch of IFS Cloud so you can get to know them a little better and find out what makes them tick!
This week, meet Shyamini Werapitiya, Services Excellence Manager at IFS. Shyamini has been with IFS for two years and is based out of our office in Colombo, Sri Lanka. While Shyamini isn’t working she enjoys traveling, exploring, hiking and crocheting. Shyamini has project-managed IFS Smart Data Manager, a core component of IFS Cloud for end-to-end data management, which is easy to use, yields consistent results, and can significantly reduce implementation and upgrade times and costs. In this blog, Shyamini shares with us her experience working on the launch of IFS Cloud.
Let’s learn more about her.
Tell us about your role and your main responsibilities regarding IFS Cloud.
I am the Global Release Manager for the Solution Center team within the Global Customer Services function. The primary focus of my team is to create excellent moments of service for our customers through the lifecycle at scale. We are the innovation engine within Global Customer Services and we are continuously evolving new ways to add value which of course is closely entwined with the IFS Cloud offering. We have worked hard to simplify the process of migrating data between different environments and from multiple legacy systems. Our new Smart Data Manager will store, harmonize, cleanse data, identify data duplicates, and converts and deploy migration data between environments, creating a smooth and consistent customer experience through the lifecycle.
Having worked on IFS Cloud in your role as a Global Release Manager, what gets you most excited about the solution?
IFS Cloud is expanding the technical and solution possibilities of IFS and I’m gaining valuable experience throughout this journey, which is very exciting! Our customers are committing to a long-term experience with IFS Cloud and I believe our products and services are incredibly well integrated to achieve this. IFS Cloud gives a great experience for our customers in meeting their expectations and achieving their business goals. The IFS team will continue to share expertise to enable us to achieve the best possible experience for all of our customers.
What was your favorite part about working on IFS Cloud?
IFS Cloud contains new functionality as well as an evolution of architecture and technology. The new architecture is simpler to administrate. It also empowers our developers to model the code faster and deliver new features more efficiently. The new model increases our opportunity to improve the pace of innovation.
The new architecture enables us to deliver features, functionality, more business value to our customers. That’s my favorite part about working on IFS Cloud.
In your opinion, what makes IFS Cloud a gamechanger for our customers?
IFS Cloud is the next step in our journey to provide world-class solutions to our customers. It enables them to access the best of what IFS has to offer across our entire portfolio of solutions.
IFS Cloud makes autonomous and intelligent business a reality for our customers. We empower our customers to configure their own workflows and business processes without touching the core code. We have integrated business process automation into IFS Cloud to provide an easier lifecycle for our customers. This means they can immediately benefit from a core set of enabling technologies. The technologies enable business transformation from artificial intelligence and robotic process automation.
With a focus on technology and innovation, IFS Cloud is a gamechanger for our customers. IFS Cloud has redefined the experience for users and business leaders as they manage the business.
If you were a business, why would you deploy IFS Cloud compared to other solutions/products on the market?
There are so many reasons why I would deploy IFS Cloud. I suppose I’ll start by saying that cloud-based systems provide better value, higher return on investment, lower total cost of ownership, and a pathway to upgrades and improved functionality. IFS Cloud is a best-in-class solution that carries value beyond meeting functional requirements.
IFS Cloud is 100 percent web-based and integrated by design. It enables seamless real-time access to all key business information from anywhere, at any time. For example, users can quickly check purchase orders, inventory, and schedules. This saves a lot of time and increases the overall efficiency of many business processes.
The third reason is that IFS Cloud is easy to maintain and is a truly global product offering that supports country-specific demands as part of the standard solution. As a result, IFS Cloud facilitates country-specific requirements for operations, key processes and other generic capabilities which can be configured to cover all or some requirements in any country easily from one control center.
Finally, with IFS Cloud, customers can benefit from the latest innovations and cutting-edge industry functionality. IFS Cloud empowers our customers with industry-specific, intelligent, and automated solutions, and fast functionalities. The delivery of innovation enables customers to realize their competitive advantage now and in the future.
You continue to mention delivering business value. How does IFS deliver business value with every deployment of IFS Cloud?
In today’s economy, business requirements change rapidly. This requires that we deliver new features and innovations frequently and quickly to our customers. The release of IFS Cloud as the single ‘home’ for all product offerings enables us to do just that.
Historically, we had large core releases every two to three years with quarterly updates that contained fixes and new features. With IFS Cloud, we have begun a new release and support cadence to enable our customers to benefit from new functionality, innovation, and best practices. As per the new release cadence, we will issue releases twice yearly with a focus on releasing new functionality and support through monthly service updates.
Each new release will be pushed to all users with no additional cost while eliminating development work. With this approach, we make sure that we deliver new functionality and innovation to our customers as early as possible and more frequently with less customer effort. This initiative is part of IFS’s next evolutionary step towards evergreen enterprise software. For our customers, it minimizes the impact, effort, risk, and cost of regularly updates and optimizing IFS solutions.
Thank you for your time, Shyamini. Before we wrap, is there anything else you want readers to know?
My pleasure! I’d like to finish by saying that IFS Cloud is not just software, it is an experience.
With IFS Cloud we are starting a new twice-yearly feature update cadence for an evergreen customer experience. We are continuously evolving to deliver business value to our customers with every deployment. IFS Cloud is a must-have for any business that wants to challenge its market. Learn more about IFS Cloud here.
Do you have questions or comments?
We’d love to hear them so please leave us a message below.
Debjyoti Banerjee
IFS Cloud itself is the most unique ERP product till date, and to read about the behind the scene stories is really inspiring.