Financial Times

IFS Applications, founded in 1983 provides extended Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP ) functionality including customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), product lifecycle management (PLM), corporate performance management (CPM), enterprise asset management (EAM) and maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) capabilities.

IFS the global enterprise applications company, providing solutions which enable organisations to respond quickly to market changes is looking to expand its business portfolio in the region, according to Alastair Sorbie, its new CEO.

During a recent visit to the country, he told The Sunday Times FT that IFS, while allowing resources to be used in a more agile way to achieve better business performance and competitive advantage, will be expanding the regional market.

“IFS has over 500,000 users across seven key vertical sectors: aerospace and defense; automotive; high-tech; industrial manufacturing; process industries; construction, service and facilities management and utilities and telecom. This is a very large portfolio which we plan to expand,” he explained.

Sorbie said the company now has 2,600 employees worldwide and has pioneered component-based ERP software with IFS Applications, now in its seventh generation.” IFS’ component architecture provides solutions that are easier to implement, run and upgrade, while being available in 54 countries in 20 languages,” he added.

Sorbie said that IFS Applications 7 enables enterprise agility so that organisations can take advantage of rapidly changing international market conditions.

“The new release gives enterprises a service-oriented architecture (SOA) with reusable business components designed for improved user productivity, faster implementation, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and easier upgrades.

Unlike traditional monolithic enterprise software, IFS Applications 7 meets today’s business needs,” he added. “Software components have been the fundamental building blocks since the first generation of IFS Applications and now we are bringing to market the seventh generation of our component-based applications while our competitors are still on their first,” he said.

Adding that the popularity of SOA means that the company’s 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 true competitive edge in today’s increasingly global market.”