In the dynamic world of marine contracting, staying ahead requires internal agility, data-driven insight, and excellence in execution. Van Oord, a global leader renowned for its complex dredging, offshore wind, and marine infrastructure projects, recognized this need when the company chose to overhaul its legacy ERP system.
Faced with a fragmented IT landscape, the challenge of retaining knowledge amid personnel turnover, and the increasing complexity of its projects, the company embarked on an ambitious transformation program aptly named Founding the Future. At the heart of this initiative lies the implementation of IFS Cloud, a strategic move designed to create a unified, future-proof backbone for the entire organization.
In conversation with ERP Today, Ralph Staal, Program Manager for the IFS implementation at Van Oord, shed light on the strategic imperatives that led the organization to embark on this journey.
“A couple of years ago, we knew we had to focus on leveraging the data we create daily,” Staal explained. “However, we struggled to translate that into proper initiatives that harmonize our application landscape and secure the foundational business processes in finance, procurement, and supply chain, especially on the project side.”
Addressing Complexity
A key driver was the evolving nature of Van Oord’s work and workforce as their projects became increasingly complex. Compounding this was the attrition of personnel as they take a lot of knowledge with them, making it imperative for Van Oord to set up a system that can institutionalize this valuable experience.
“By implementing a degree of standardization, we would have a way to retain knowledge and use that for our future projects to create better budgets, designs, and forecasts,” Staal said.
The desire to be more data-oriented was also paramount, with Staal emphasizing the practical need “to make sure we have the right data at the right time with the right person looking at it to take the right decision.”
A Strategic Fit
Given these goals, a simple cloud migration wouldn’t do for Van Oord; it was a ground-up implementation that also included replacing a legacy finance system. Van Oord is already a construction and engineering customer for IFS and after a thorough selection process, IFS Cloud, emerged as the clear choice for its maritime business too. “IFS really stood out,” Staal recounted. “We found that IFS had the best understanding of how contracting projects work; in terms of terminology and functionality, we just found that they were a good fit for our industry.”
IFS Success has really helped us make sure that we made the right decisions. – Ralph Staal, Program Manager for IFS implementation at Van Oord
The platform’s balance between standardization and flexibility was also appealing. “IFS is configurable, but it’s not extremely customized,” Staal observed, adding, “We’re trying to stick to standard as much as possible.”
According to Staal, the move toward the cloud was logical. “When we roll out the solution, we want to have one that is connected, reusable, and scalable,” he confirmed.
Navigating the Implementation Journey
Implementing a new ERP across a global, project-centric organization is inherently challenging. Van Oord faced hurdles like migrating from an extremely fragmented application landscape, establishing data and process ownership in an environment where these concepts were relatively new, and aligning numerous stakeholders across traditional organizational silos.
“Aligning with all the stakeholders so that we don’t face resistance later is the real challenge,” Staal admitted. Adding to the complexity, Van Oord is simultaneously implementing other major systems, like Workday and new planning solutions, requiring careful coordination and integration.
When Staal spoke with ERP Today in April, the project was nearing a major milestone. “We are at the final stages of the acceptance phase and will begin the user acceptance test phase for our first release in two weeks,” he shared. “Our first real entity will go live in June.”
Throughout this complex process, Van Oord has leveraged IFS Success—an engagement model delivering the knowledge and tools for customers to realize their true, long-term business potential. Staal noted that IFS Success “has really proven its worth, helping with explaining the best practices, doing design validations, and providing guidance on critical decisions.”
He added: “IFS Success has really proven its worth in the past year and half. [The] Customer Success Manager could look at some of the things we’re missing in our project and utilize IFS Success to provide that value to our project and our organization and that came in many different forms.”
“IFS Success has really helped us make sure that we made the right decisions,” Staal affirmed adding that he expected IFS Success to continue playing a large role in helping the company set up future support organization.
It’s about people working in a solution; not a solution dictating how people should work.
Future Focus
Van Oord expects significant benefits once the system is up and running in H2 this year. Technically, scalability and the ability to stay current with IFS updates by adhering to standards are key. For the business, Staal expected “better decision making through rolled-up data and insights, enhanced collaboration between the departments, and greater efficiency via reduced manual work, leading to faster financial closing and fewer errors.” Improved procurement cycle times and supplier performance management are also major targets.
Crucially, IFS Cloud also provides a foundation for future innovation. “As soon as we have this solid foundation in place, we can shift our focus [to] more innovative developments on top of our cloud solutions,” Staal said, hinting at future explorations like AI, enhanced sustainability tracking, and Quality, Health, Safety, Environment (QHSE) modules within IFS.
The Human Element
However, Staal emphasized that technology is only part of the equation. Effective change management, handled by a dedicated stream within the program using tools like a change network of ambassadors, remains critical. The biggest challenge is embedding ownership within the business itself. “The business is also taking ownership of what we deliver because the change will happen in the department. It will not happen in the project,” he explained.
Reflecting on the broader lessons learned, Staal concluded, “The real challenge is to really step away, and not so much look at a solution, but at how you work together and what you want to achieve together. In the end, it’s about people working in a solution, not a solution dictating how people should work.”
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Industry-specific cloud ERP is the norm for complex sectors. The market for cloud ERP is expected to hit around $74 billion by 2029, growing over 12% annually. However, the real momentum for companies in asset-intensive, project-driven sectors like Van Oord lies in industry-specific cloud solutions. While manufacturing leads overall ERP adoption, specialized providers gain traction because they embed deep domain knowledge, relevant KPIs, and pre-configured processes like complex project accounting or asset lifecycle management out-of-the-box. Van Oord’s selection explicitly hinged on finding a vendor that truly understood the contracting world and project core, which is why it chose IFS. Generic solutions often require heavy, risky customization to meet these unique demands, whereas industry-focused platforms like IFS Cloud offer a faster path to value and align better with specific operational needs.
Balance control, integration, and vendor alignment. Companies like Van Oord operate globally, often in remote locations, manage high-value assets, and handle complex projects, making their enterprise application strategy critical. When considering hybrid cloud ERP, key decision criteria include data governance & security, integration complexity, edge capabilities, and vendor industry focus. For the latter, for example, IFS focuses on asset-intensive, project-centric, and service-focused organizations in sectors like Construction, Energy, Utilities, Aerospace & Defense, Manufacturing, and Maritime. Aligning your needs with a vendor’s core competency reduces implementation risk and ensures the platform evolves with relevant industry capabilities.
Foster supply chain resilience amid volatility. Near-term factors like shifting tariffs highlight the need for supply chains built for resilience, not just static efficiency. Organizations should, therefore, expect their Cloud ERP provider to offer capabilities like unified visibility, scenario modeling, sourcing flexibility, and agile execution. For instance, Babcock International (Energy & Marine) leverages IFS as a full ERP across complex, multi-billion-dollar projects (like aircraft carrier construction and nuclear submarine maintenance). They have completed over 4,630 projects using IFS, relying on it as their “single point of truth” for managing materials, costs, labor, and asset maintenance across 12,000 users. Similarly, Royal IHC (Maritime) successfully consolidated 17 disparate legacy ERP systems into a single global IFS instance across 37 operating units in just 2.5 years, achieving significant standardization and efficiency gains.
