 Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2019, brought to you by IFS. Welcome back to Boston, everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with my co-host, Paul Gillan. This is IFS World Conference 2019, theCUBE's second year covering this conference. Michael Uisi is here. He's the Chief Customer Officer at IFS, and Raul Saha is the industry partner Enterprise Application Services at TCS, a platinum partner at IFS World. Gents, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Welcome Michael. It's that you're very welcome. So last night I poked around the customer event and I was impressed with the number of partners here. I think the number is 400 is the public number. What is it about the ecosystem that's attracted to IFS? Well, first of all, I think the ecosystem has now understood that we have renewed our commitment to the ecosystem. That is something, a shift in mindset in IFS that is demanded by our customers, that our customers actually ask of us, especially while we're moving into also more global corporations and win more business there. They appreciate the choice of either IFS or our partners or a combination of our partners and IFS actually helping them deliver the value that they expect from an ERP solution. So Raul, from your perspective, so TCS, obviously Platinum Partners, you're making a big investment. Why? What's happening in the marketplace? Where's the momentum with the tailwind? If you look at TCS, TCS is obviously helping customers to become business 4.0 organization, which is all about harnessing the abundance of possibilities around digital technologies and getting more intelligent, better, lean, harmonized standardizing. And so that's where we believe we are partnering with, we are trying to leverage the ecosystem and one of the ecosystem, obviously, partners are IFS, which is a strategic partnership for us. And we believe that the investments that IFS has made in some of the unique last mile solutions are going to help us to deliver those differentiated offerings to the customer and create new partnerships with them. Michael, your role is a net new role at IFS. Did you get to write your own job description? And I guess, what does the Chief Customer Officer do? Well, first of all, in a sense, yes, we actually did specify exactly what that role is and we did discuss what the best is for the journey we wanted to get on when Darren asked me to take on the role. And what a Chief Customer Officer does, and there's a specific reason why we're doing it that way, the Chief Customer Officer really is heading up and that's what I'm doing. I'm heading up all customer-facing functions within IFS. And the reason why, so from sales to pre-sales to support to services. So it's all the customer-facing functions coming from how do we engage with the customer, pre-sales and after-sales. And the reason why we did it that way is we wanted to have complete ownership and accountability for the transformation that we underwent and that we wanted to go through because we really needed to make sure that all parts of the business were aligning around this transformation and pulling in the same direction and that's why this role got created newly. So what's the nature of the partnership? What's the history of the partnership? How did it start and where do you guys want to take it? Well, I think, yeah, we have obviously long-standing partnership with IFS and I think where we, I think both the organization have deep mutual respect. And I think one thing that we are trying to see that's the centricity around our partnership is all about customer. We keep the customer. We want to ensure that we help our customers build customer-first organizations. And obviously, the investments that I have made, especially on the field services area, ERP area, I guess those are the areas which is helping, because ERP, if you see, one of the strategic livers for an organization to elevate their digital agenda and get the right infrastructure in place, the right partner in place to ensure that they create a differentiation and create exponential value for the customer. And that's exactly where IFS and TCS are looking at the market and seeing, and ensuring that we are helping our customer create exponential value for themselves in the market. Yeah, and I think maybe adding to that, we share the same belief as well that actually the time of the monolithic ERP one solution for the huge enterprise, they are gone. Those days are gone. I think it's about blended solutions, where the ERP is a much more agile, it has to be much more open and allow for much more agile deployments and much more agile development around the core ERP, so that actually customers can digitally transform because it's all about speed and all of that. And TCS sees it the same way, so we've got the same, we've got the same. And the cloud mindset has changed that, right, Paul? Absolutely. And Raul, I'm interested the companies like Tata Historically have done a lot of custom development work for customers that we've been hearing from Darren on down today is no customization. So how does, what value do you add to a customer bringing in an IFS solution? See, the two things here, very simple. One is basically customers are moving from best in class to best of breed. That's quite evident. And secondly, while IFS brings the software expertise, we bring the industry expertise, we bring the domain expertise, we bring the SI system integration expertise, and that's where it's a very strategic combination. So the strategic combination is helping the customer to get the right software, the right domain expertise, right industry expertise, and together create together, they're helping them to address their business requirements, business need, and last mile, critical mile needs that need to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. And as a result, create exponential value and also a great customer experience for the customer. So how does that engagement differ from a more traditional one where you would come in and you would build custom screens and custom processes, you're not doing that. Now, what does that relationship look like? Yeah, so I think if you see the scratch development approach, obviously it has really transformed over the course of time. Customers are wanting off the shelf, out of the box, products, best of the breed products to help them differentiate their business function, create exponential value for the customer for that business function. As a matter of say, service. You know, if I look at field services as an example and you talk about telcos, you talk about utilities, where last mile delivery, last mile solution for that customer is very, very important to create the positive customer experience. And the investments that IFS have made in there makes a premium choice. And that's where I believe that developing something with scratch means you're boiling the entire ocean again. And whereas we have got IFS built softwares which were invested there years of expertise, years of I would say competency in building that, getting the best of the breed solution, get the best KPIs into there in the solution, gives the customer a choice, a ready choice to take to expedite their time to reality, time to value, and time to production reality. So I got a few times now, Ro, you've mentioned last mile solutions. And I like that term, I think it has meaning, especially deep in specific industries. And I think the intent is so that you don't have to do customizations. And then I asked Darren about tailoring, which he said, I wouldn't use that word. That wasn't my word, by the way, that was Christian's word. He used that in his keynote. And I think, so I'm trying to understand here. I think what Christian meant is, look, we've got this API platform to allow people to bring in whatever solutions they want. If it's an RPA solution or a blockchain solution or some AI module, they can bring that in and tailor it for their needs as opposed to customizing the software. Is that correct? I think when you listen to Darren, what he's talking about is customizing the core, which very often has happened in the past, where customizations have gone into the core, have been mandated to be on the core platform, which then actually has customers being stuck at some stage on the platform, upgrades becoming painful. So what with Christian's talk track around the APIs, us API enabling the whole solution so that the core actually remains untouched. There will always be customizations because customers need to differentiate, but they will be outside the core. There will be a level of, you can upgrade the core solutions, you will have those maintained either in either application services, which will be custom out-of-the-box solutions, best in breed, that actually tap into what we are doing, or actually you'll have bespoke solutions that you will write yourselves. And that is then a choice a customer can make, but without actually having the pain of not being able to upgrade the very stable, very performant transactional backbone. So the API announcements give you guys a real opportunity to do integrations, right? And it's been harder to do integrations, but that now to your previous question opens up, I would think a whole new TAM for you all. Can you comment? Oh, absolutely, I think that's where we, as I said, that bringing exponential value means integrating and delivering a frictionless business. And that's where it will fit in, rightly fit in. And obviously that would result in creating exponential value for the customer. Not only they can differentiate there's some to the market, but also get their product faster to the market and ensure that they also focus on custom sensitivity as we are. So the core can be, it should be evergreen. We want people to get the new version as soon as possible. Bug fixes, security updates, et cetera. New functionality. New functionality, avoid custom mods, but rely on service providers and partners to do further integrations that make sense, yes. Yes. I want to ask you the same question we just asked Melissa DiDonato about digital transformation. I'm sure your company does a lot of that kind of consulting work. What are the mistakes that companies make that we hear that these transformation products, most of them fail? What are the biggest mistakes companies make? Well, I will not, let me put it this way. See, I think there are three elements to it. I think digital transformation. See, I think creating the agenda for the digital transformation, what you're expecting out of it is very, very important. Creating a charter, what you're going to expect, what is the output of it, where you want to take it. What does a futuristic organization on a digital platform means is very, very important. I think if you look at TCS, our vision has been helping the customer get into a business 4.0 enterprise. I think we have made the agenda very, very, very clear. Now, how we can mass personalize the experience for the customer, how you can leverage the ecosystem, how you can basically help the customer embrace their risk and obviously harness their abundance. I believe these are the pillars of any transformation that, or digital transformation the customers are taking. I believe if we can stick to these agendas, I think getting to the production reality, seeing the success, has become more evident. If you're going to go to nitty gritty, I think there are many things, looking at their processes, making sure that they are harmonized, standardized, and rationalized, getting the right KPIs in the business. So I think these are the things that is very, very important as a precursor to our digital transformation. When once we do that, we know that the roads ahead would be much smoother than what it looks like. Is it more important to do a transformation with the customer at the center, with operational efficiency at the center, or can it be either? The customer center city is very, very key to all organization at this point of time, because if you look at any organization at this point of time, they are looking at customer experience as the top most agenda. Keeping the customer experience on the agenda, there is, so you know, when you're trying to keep that agenda, it means that you are trying to bring up a customer-first organization. So customer-first organization, it just doesn't mean that you have a very intelligent front office, but also have a very intelligent back office. And gluing these two together, a very intelligent mid-office. So I guess customer center city has to be on the top of the agenda. And then you have to ensure that your processes are streamlined, harmonized, standardized, lean to meet that objective. You make sense. So I think for, so customer centricity, so I feel as though, but part of that's cultural, you know, I mean, and it's true, you said this earlier this morning, some companies are, you know, customer centrics, some are product centric, you know, some are competitive. And you can kind of tell the difference when you're, especially when you're a customer. But I think true customer centricity mandates data access is central to the philosophy, the core. And I think the role that ERP provider, vendor provides is, you have a data pipeline that gives access to an organization such that a digital transformation allows them to put data at their core and then build whatever processes around it. And I think that's a real challenge for incumbents, especially where data is all over the place and different stovepipes and silos. But your thoughts on the role of data in terms of digital transformation and IFS's role in that regard. Long-winded question, but I haven't heard enough about data, I guess. I'll try to answer it in short. So I think data is absolutely key to anything we do. Yeah, so once you have, and when you go into a digital transformation, what you need to start with in my humble view is you need to start with what business outcome do you want to achieve. Most of the times it's customer centricity, it's something centered around the customer which you want to achieve. That will define both the digital transformation agenda, the KPIs you're measuring to us, but also the flow of data and processes. So you will need to build your digital transformation agenda around the targets you have and then define where does data need to reside, which data do I need to fulfill on that outcome. And I think that consistency going through that whole chain is actually something that very often isn't at the moment taken into account, but it's very often isolated efforts to do something fast without actually looking at the implications of what kind of transactional engine do I need, what kind of data access do I need and how do I get through the process to the KPR that I want to influence. Okay, and let me peel the onion on that and I'd love for your thoughts. To me, when you talk to a C-suite executive, what that business outcome ultimately comes down to is I want to increase revenues or I want to cut my costs. Now, of course, if you're in a different hospital, you want to save lives, but generally in a commercial business, increase revenue cut costs. Now, how I get there, I might want to have a better customer service organization to get cohort sales or follow on sales. I mean, the strategy is different, but it comes back to data and how data affects the monetization of my organization, whether it's increasing revenue or cutting costs. Do you buy that premise or am I just simplifying it too much? No, completely agreed. I think in a business world, it's always either top line or bottom line, but the challenges are obviously very different from company to company and from industry to industry. So if you're looking at manufacturing companies and trying to actually be less commoditized and getting into a situation where they stabilize revenue streams, increase margins, servitization is the name of the game, very different value proposition to, for example, in the finance industry, in banking and insurance. So there are very different models where there it's about ease of use and speed of actually interacting and transacting as a customer with the company. So very different value propositions, very different data streams you need to tap into and things you need to know about your customer and know about the service you're providing. So I completely agree with, it is always about revenue and costs. That's what businesses are in for, but eventually it's data is at the core, but how to get that data, which data you need, that is then specific to each other. And bringing it back to IFS, your ability to go that last mile, as you've been saying, Raul, allows companies to think construction and engineering supply chain, contractors, just more efficiently managing their ecosystem, their resources to either cut costs or do more business and scale. Exactly. And that's really where the whole idea of API enabling the whole suite came from, enabling the reuse of services, the reuse of data within those services, exposing it transparently, making it available for customers to then use in their digital transformation efforts, whatever they need. We can't predict and we can't actually preempt what a customer will need. We'll just need to make it all available and then with partners like TCS, make sure we actually go onto the right journey with the customer to digitally transform and use the right data streams, we can make it easy and accessible. And that's as there's been a platform and a product. To the extent that you can deliver an API enabled system, it becomes a platform that you can evolve versus a product that you install and manage. Final thoughts, Raul? I think what we discussed obviously is I fully agree on that. And as I mentioned that our take is to ensure that we help the customer build few statistics enterprises and we believe our partnership with IFS is a very key and strategic partnership for us to achieve the same and we have some early success and we want to ensure that we scale that, we ensure that we go to the market together and create a differentiation for our customers. Michael, your thoughts, where do you want to see this ecosystem go? Where do you want to see it go? Well, I want to see it thrive. I want partners to be successful with their customers on IFS implementations. That's what our ambition is, we need to provide world-class technology, a world-class platform as you said, that actually then can be used to help the digital transformation that all our customers will have to go through in one or the other way. Success is outcome-driven. Good outcomes mean people come back. Exactly, absolutely. Absolutely, you know, that's go to our DNA, I'm sure, go to DNA to IFS as well, you know. For each customer. Congratulations on the partnership and good luck going forward. Thank you very much. We appreciate you coming to theCUBE. Thank you very much. Thank you for watching everybody. We'll be right back with our next guest, Paul Gillan and Dave Vellante. You're watching theCUBE.