IFS quietly re-emerging as global opportunist ERP force

International ERP systems developer IFS has brought its sales and R&D teams together to drive what new CEO Alastair Sorbie describes as: “a much more aggressive sales programme.” He insists that the former ultra-high growth firm has now turned the corner on its troubles, and is now moving out of consolidation and into growth again. And with licence revenues at SEK89m for the latest quarter against SEK86m last year, plus SEK547m total against SEK502m and six consecutive profitable quarters under its belt, he’s clearly right. Sorbie says IFS is seeing most growth in Europe, the US and Asia, where it had been struggling, and says ongoing uptake is due to a back to basics sales campaign alongside better co-operation on international deals. However, he also says that while manufacturing remains broadly IFS’ bread and butter, construction, defence and the project markets are the company’s key growth opportunities. “Think about our success in the defence market: we were nowhere here in 2002, but now we have enterprise-wide agreements with the MoD and the same in the US for the ECSS logistics systems for the DoD. Now we’re pursuing defence across the Middle East, Far East and Asia,” says Sorbie. Beyond that, he says IFS is trading on the current business perception of a need for flexibility. “Agility is our main re-branding theme – we’ll get in quickly and make you agile,” says Sorbie. He cites on Norwegian car importer that’s now expanded to import running shoes and to handle property management. “He needed a system that wouldn’t hold him back. We do that… “Current thinking around SOA [services orientated architecture] and the flow of processes link nicely to our [software] components story as well. IFS Applications 7, released last month, shows our experience. Software components were the fundamental building blocks in the first generation of IFS Applications back in 1998. “Now we are bringing to market the seventh generation of our component-based applications while our competitors are still on their first. The popularity of SOA means our competitors’ development dollars have to be used to break up their monolithic applications while their customers wait for promises to be delivered. At IFS, we can concentrate on industry-specific business functionality that gives our customers a competitive edge.”