IFS Cloud October release to accelerate business automation, boost advanced analytics capabilities

IFS Chief Product Officer Christian Pedersen 

• First of four release announcements deliver IFS’s vision to lead as the default Composable Enterprise Application Vendor

IFS, the global cloud enterprise software company, last week announced the general availability of the October release of IFS Cloud. 

The release is focused on enabling organisations with intelligent insight and accelerating automation efforts. Central to the October release are enhancements that will support end-to-end process automation and advanced analytics capabilities that will impact the organisation across functions. The release includes over 340 new features and advancements that will accelerate the customer’s journey to digitalisation. 

The heightened automation in this release will continue to help organisations transform operations, work efficiently, and liberate staff. IFS Cloud will help to rescue the time, effort, and resource burden while increasing the quality of work and experience across industries. The new automation features include:

• New cash planning analysis model enabling customers to improve cash management, reduce risk, and better plan for unforeseen scenarios for projects and companies. 

• Streamlined Manufacturing Execution System (MES) to improve production quality control and performance, helping to drive fast decision-making and identify patterns. 

• Simplified expense submission and reporting process, for Human Capital Management (HCM), improving the quality and accuracy of receipt types.

• Enhanced request management for ordering, delivery, and pick-up of non-stocked consumables to reduce costs.

• Improved accuracy for work estimates and technical productivity through AI and historical data-driven work schedules and job completion times.

• Save time through Independent Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MROs) businesses to quickly and easily bulk upload hundreds of maintenance requirements.

• Drive increased accuracy and reduce error for mobile workers to take lidar-based measurements on mobile devices easily. 

With regard to Advanced Analytics, the October release of IFS Cloud, will build on the new architecture, new user experience as well as automated management and deployment made available in the spring release to further improve experience and capabilities. 

The enhanced capabilities will allow customers to gain a faster understanding of key challenges across the business, transform operations, work more efficiently, and increase productivity. It also provides simpler, more intelligent analytics for faster time-to-insight and improved predictive capabilities to support planning and reduce downtime for example.

Current capabilities in IFS Cloud include:

• In-memory analytics engine replacing the old Cubes version and significantly increasing performance. 
• In-memory capability that facilitates more granular data for better drill down 
• Automation of the setup and deployment process that reduces the technical skills needed by businesses and the number of people needed on projects 
• Third-party plug-ins that add capabilities like process mining, forecasting, etc. 
• Embed functional analytics models into the business, including CRM, human capital management, enterprise asset management, projects, procurement, sales, finance, and maintenance 

The October release additionally supports a range of Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities, which will drive faster, more accurate decision-making processes.

IFS Chief Product Officer Christian Pedersen said: “With each successive evolution of IFS Cloud, we are continuously looking to develop the solution to ensure it is fully aligned to how customers buy and use technology. Today our customers are telling us they are looking to accelerate automation and attain intelligent insights faster. Pedersen continued, “Customers want to drive productivity and operational efficiencies, and through this latest release, that is exactly what we have delivered to them.”