Reporting from the ERP Today News Desk, live at the IFS Unleashed event in Orlando, Florida, Mark Vigoroso, Chief Content Officer, ERP Today/Wellesley Information Services and Stephanie Ball, Deputy Editor, ERP Today, sit down with Kevin Price, Global Head of Enterprise Asset Management, IFS to discuss the future of managing assets.
Traditionally, the environment for asset lifecycle management (ALM) has been limited by both scope and capacity. It could be combined with an ERP application and other elements of work being done at those assets. However, this served a limited purpose because that environment did not account for what happens before an asset is acquired (before the cradle) and after it is retired (after the grave) when looking at a cradle-to-grave solution.
According to Price, this aspect is now be achieved through a solution set called asset investment planning, offered by IFS through its acquisition of Copperleaf Technologies.
“[Through this solution], we can look at the beginning of that process before the cradle to understand where [an organization] can invest money and where to place the value of that investment,” Price said.
When it is time to retire an asset, Price noted that the solution can help businesses reposition, refurbish or rebuild it. It can also assist organizations in answering the question of reaching a new sustainable goal with that asset. The solution, Price said, “puts IFS in a unique position as it provides real-time information and decision-making for the ALM journey.”
Making a composable solution
Price said that IFS’ ALM offering in a highly competitive enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions industry was unique due to its composability. “It is one of the more attractive areas of the solution set,” he explained.
“The solution not only allows organizations to pick and choose the areas they want to succeed in but also helps them get that success,” Price said. “Instead of burdening the organization with the cost of an implementation or owning or serving the application, we put it in a cloud and make it composable.”
Benefiting from Copperleaf’s acquisition
Speaking on how Copperleaf’s acquisition has impacted IFS’ ALM offering, Price said that though it has been only a few weeks since the acquisition, they are already seeing an overlap in their customer base as both Copperleaf and IFS operate in the same space. Giving an example of what they hear from customers, Price said, “When we are introducing the joint concept to customers, we hear that they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on investments in their infrastructure, new business areas, geographies and opportunities, and believe it or not, some of those decisions are still being made on spreadsheets with consultant partners.”
With the Copperleaf acquisition, IFS wants to offer not only the former’s solution capabilities but also integrate those with IFS’s real-time ALM solutions to make them evergreen and mitigate some of the risks that they may face with a vendor-based solution.
Looking ahead
Referring to the book Moment of Service by Darren Roos, former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IFS, Price asked that, when looking at it from the perspective of the ALM process, “Are we really getting to the moment of service where we could be?” He added, “When we think about the Copperleaf acquisition or the deployment of composability, or getting our customers to a faster success, that moment of service becomes more resilient, reliant, and sustainable.”
According to Price, under the leadership of Mark Moffat, CEO of IFS, the company will build on Roos’ principles, and the possibilities of where the company can go with “new technologies, new capabilities and acquisitions are quite limitless.” However, this will require a laser focus on the six industries that IFS currently serves and industrial AI to power the next growth phase for the ALM tool set.
Note: This ERP Today TV content comes sponsored by IFS.