IFS’ CEO Mark Moffat, appointed this year, has no shortage of ambitions. He sees a golden future ahead. Under his leadership, the brand should become a dominant Asset & Service Management player. Just hearing about this type of software, the world will soon have to think almost exclusively of IFS. In conversation with Techzine, Moffat explains IFS’ growth plans.
Moffat’s goal is to automatically associate certain work and job roles with IFS in the future. Just as sales process management is now automatically associated with Salesforce and HR work with Workday, Asset & Service Management will soon ideally be automatically linked to IFS. The company is already well on its way to achieving that position, Moffat observes, but by 2028, the goal must actually be achieved.
In principle, that would be quite an achievement, especially considering that IFS has now been around for 40 years. Still, the product approach has changed significantly in recent years, allowing other ambitions to be set. With the launch of IFS Cloud in 2021, a foundation was laid to undergo one of the biggest transformations in history. This architecture makes the different types of software more detachable as components.
Thus, customers who take ERP, the software discipline in which IFS initially made its name, can continue to use the solution as usual. Meanwhile, it opens the door to more firmly position the other IFS Cloud components Field Service Management (FSM) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). Those two software packages in particular are the focal points for the growth strategy and ways for IFS to differentiate itself in the market.
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Putting customer first
Moffat’s ambition for IFS to continue making a name for itself within these two software disciplines does not come out of the blue. Together with predecessor Darren Roos, who now holds the position of Chairman of the Executive Board, he developed a strategy prior to his appointment as CEO. With this, IFS set out to intensify its customer focus further. An advantage in this may be that until his appointment, Moffat was active as IFS’ Chief Customer Officer. Now that he has an even more overseeing position within the company, he can concentrate more on customer focus.
Thus, upon becoming CEO, Moffat immediately set himself the goal of visiting 100 customers in his first 100 days. He has successfully completed that period. The CEO sees the conversations as an opportunity to understand how IFS can contribute to customer success with software. IFS can respond by customising solutions by identifying where companies’ needs and challenges lie.
Moffat says IFS needs to understand the customer accurately. That applies to both his customer conversations and those of his colleagues. “It’s an opportunity for me and the others to listen to what the customer likes. And what they tell us are also the challenges. Because let’s face it: what we do is not always easy,” the CEO said.
The starting point is good
All discussions with customers have led to the fact that FSM and EAM should be at top of mind at IFS, while related software is also offered within the cloud platform. FSM and EAM can be seen as related products within the IFS Cloud. Both software solutions focus on managing and optimizing physical assets and an organization’s related work processes. If you take both of these and they now work together, then in theory, that promotes usability quite a bit. They are also increasingly coming together, which is why we talk about Asset & Service Management at the beginning of this article.
If IFS wants to become a dominant player in both FSM and EAM and we see them separately, a different path must be taken for both types. On the FSM front, the win ratio among interested companies starting a tender process is also high, as we understand from Moffat. There, IFS now has a name and fame, including recognition via top positioning in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management.
Progress is still being made in the EAM area. There, the dominant players SAP and IBM are active. Nevertheless, there is plenty of growth in this area, as we notice from Moffat’s words. In fact, recent figures from Gartner claim that IFS has the largest market share in the EAM field—narrowly beating IBM by 0.1 per cent. While the strategy there works well, IFS still needs to achieve more market share for any absolute leadership position.
Forward-looking growth strategy
In addition to considering customer focus important, Moffat sees other options for building the IFS brand. For example, the role of partners within IFS is growing. Five years ago the number of partners was very limited, now the number is around 400. “Our partners are investing in IFS and developing innovative solutions that benefit our customers,” Moffat said. These collaborations lead to more options to optimize implementations and tailor the software to a company’s needs.
At the same time, Moffat sees that IFS has work to do at the partner level. IFS regularly wins tenders from multinational companies. To better assist them, partners who also operate globally are needed. “That will be the next phase for us, developing more large partner relationships,” the IFS CEO foresees. With that, there are several starting points for reaching new heights under Moffat’s reign.
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