 Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2019, brought to you by IFS. Welcome back to Boston, everybody. This is Dave Vellante with my co-host, Paul Gillimer, winding down day one of the IFS conference, the World Conference here at the Heinz Auditorium in Boston. Paul Helms is here as the Senior Vice President of Customer Success at IFS, something that we've been talking about a lot. Stefano Mattiello, who's the Senior Vice President and the Global Head of Consulting, also from IFS. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much. Hi, Paul, let me start with you. So, kind of a loaded question. How do you define customer success? It's a question I get very often on customer success. You can make out of it what you want to. The way IFS looks at it, it's not only me, but IFS looks at it as, how do we take our involvement into our customers' business outcomes beyond the go life? Okay, so they buy software, they implement the software, they go live, and then what? Okay, so customer success is really looking into what is the quality of the relationship we have with our customers and how deep and how integrated we are in that relationship, understanding what success means to our customers because it's different for every customer. And then how do we back this up with the quality of service to really build that success and mine the value that is in the solution to the benefit of our customers? So it's this long-term relationship driven by business outcomes that is customer success. So, historically, in the software business, success was defined as we're live. Service now makes a cake. Hey, success. That's not how you guys are defining. No, I mean, it goes way beyond the go life. In fact, I mean, we're talking about success is actually starting even before the implementation even starts, right? Which is capturing what success means to that particular customer, right? In your business situation, what does success mean? Feed that in. We obviously want to get the customer live as quickly as possible. It's a time to value, right? And that talks to ROI, but that's just the beginning of the game. That's not the end of the game, right? So it's about what are we doing after the go life phase? What are the interventions that we're running in A, delivering on that promise that we made right up front that says, you know, what does success mean? Let's make sure we deliver on that. But then more importantly is how do we kind of maximize that success? You know, as the market dynamics are changing, as there's more pressure coming on your business, your business is changing, right? So how do we evolve your business model? Because success today might have a particular shape and a particular color, but in nine months or 12 months time, it'll change, it'll morph into something else. So it has a different definition. So it's about that lifelong engagement. You know, how do we keep redefining success? So what stage does the success discussion begin? It's very much, you know, as I said, in the early stages of what we were called the pre-sale cycle. So when we first start talking to a customer, is we really want to understand what are your business imperatives, right? Let's try to capture that. You know, it's fundamental that we're not just selling technology for the sake of technology, but we're there to drive a business agenda. So it's really, you know, as early as we can do it, I think that's where we can capture and maximize the delivery of that success. What does it really look like? So the sooner we do it, the better. And Paul, so looping that actually back into what do we see in our customers and the way they use the software and the way their business is changing in their environment and bringing this back all the way into the product, okay? And how do we shape the roadmap of the product using the insights into how customers are being successful using our products? So, you know, we are not there yet, but that is the ultimate goal that we will build better products based on our customer success insights and then turning this into a mature cycle to really drive and maximize customer value over their life cycle. So it goes beyond just the service, it really is all the way back into the product, how that adds value, how do we deliver this and all the way back again. And I always argue, I mean, unless you're sort of a nonprofit or if you're a hospital, you want to save lives, but if you're a for-profit company, you want to increase revenue, you want to cut costs, you want to drop money to the bottom line, you want to rip the face off your competitors and you want to do some good for your community. So I mean, you can take all these other factors, whether it's better customer satisfaction, better productivity, et cetera, and it usually boils down to those things. Is that fair? Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much, those are your business imperatives. Yeah, that's what success looks like to you. But it's an iterative process, right? So that's what I was saying earlier, it doesn't start and stop there. I mean, things will change and the approach we want to take is let's not just do it once, let's keep revisiting this, right? Because once you've captured those objectives and you're actually on top of those, or you think you're on top of those, then as we improve the product, as the market dynamics change, then you'll have different priorities. Right, so let's keep revisiting. And the way we're looking at it is a project is no longer just a start and a stop, a single time event, it's an iterative process. Right? Are you seeing priorities change or maybe you don't have enough data to speak to this, but we saw 160 CEOs recently signed a petition or a proclamation, if you will, that it's not all just about shareholders, there are multiple stakeholders they have. Are you seeing priorities or customers change over time? I think when the conversations are changing. So when we talk about, 10 years ago, probably talk about optimization, it was purely for getting more bang for your buck, okay? So how do I take cost out? How do I become more efficient, more effective? The conversation is changing now to how do I become more sustainable? It's still, you still need to optimize, you still need to deliver better and operate better, but it's not only for profit, it's also on how do I become more sustainable, how do I leave an environment for the youngsters in my company that they still have a company by the time that they are at our age. Benioff's been very outspoken about that, as you know. I'm just waiting for the day when the CEO misses three or four quarters in a row and says, yeah, but we're doing all this great tech for good. But I do agree, I mean, especially with millennials coming into the workforce, they want to see that their companies are doing good, they're giving back to the community and paying it forward. Question on swim lanes, you got I think 400 partners. What are the swim lanes between the services that you provide and your partners provide and what's the overlap there? So this is the transition that we're in at the moment, is that historically IFS was trying to be and all things to all customers, right? So we'll do everything from A to Z. What we're doing now is we're saying, well, let us focus on what we do best, which is our product, right? That's really what we do best. So what we want to do is we want to try and help the ecosystem, we want to help our partners in driving those efficiencies and actually implement as quickly as possible and drive value for our customers. So what we're doing is we're now moving into a position where we say, let us rather drive a value assurance discussion with our customers, let's safeguard projects. So we're working in a symbiotic relationship with partners, we're not competing with them, right? So we know what we do, we know what they do. So you have some new services, IFS select, select IFS success, IFS tools and methodologies. So there's knowledge transfer then between you guys and your partners, is that right? How does that work? I mean, this takes investment, it's got to be more than just a press release obviously. Yeah, we want our partners to know everything that we know. And we're a software company, we're not a services company and we don't want to compete in the service space. We want to use services to enable software and more software because the faster we grow our software business, the better for us as a company because that is our core business. So there's no competition with partners. We want to share what we know, we put it in tools and methodologies, we standardize knowledge, we share knowledge, we bring this out, we enable them in the same, we put our partners through the same training, we put our own people. There's no secret little room back there where we give them the real stuff, our own people. So we are very open with knowledge and experience and sharing them and helping them enabling this. So we will work with a partner to say, okay, the first ones that you do, you might not be that confident. So let's be there in a more intense way. And as you go along and you build your confidence and you build your competence, we can take a step back. And therefore we can still ensure quality for our customers while skating through the ecosystem. So this is, it sounds strange, but we really do not want to do the services business. We want to do the services business that we have to do, not as much as we can do. And I mean, just picking up on that as well is it's not only about enablement, we're actually actively sharing our tools and methodologies with our partners. So whatever we use ourselves, we're making available to our partners. And that's fundamental, right? That's exactly what Paul says, is we want the partners to do exactly what we're doing to the same level of quality and same standard. And we have a stated vision that says that the customer experience should not differ whether they use IFS as their partner or they use a service provider as a partner in their journey. Because it's about the experience around the product, not around the service that should make the difference for them. I think you have a dog-fooding booth here. I call it dog-fooding. I know it's kind of a pejorative, but you know, your champagne, drink your own champagne. But, you know, IFS runs IFS, it's sort of a big theme here. Right behind us. Have implemented, and this is what you're talking about, the tool and methodology you use for your own business. What have you seen in your own business? What kind of business impact has IFS had on your business? So we implemented our own, as you say, we drank our own champagne within six months. We came from an environment which was quite desperate, historically speaking, many different systems in different locations and regions, and we brought this and consolidated this into a global template. This was hard. Harder than we probably thought it was going to be, not technology-wise. Technology-wise, it was, yeah, technology is what technology is. But from a change management point of view and from an impact to the business and to people's daily operations, it was bigger than we thought. But when we, so that's a learning. We've captured this and our lessons learned. We have made some changes and brought in some new tools and methodologies and insights that we share with our partners. But if you now look at afterwards we live, the impact it has on our business, it's transformational. It is giving us insights which we never had before, giving us efficiencies which we never had before. It opens up new things that we consider doing as a business and operating as a business which we never had before. So, yes, was it hard? Yeah, it was hard. That's not, you know. What were you transitioning from? All sorts. Oh, so we had a... What, everything? Yeah, I mean, we literally had a cluster of independent systems that all be modified. And I think this is another point is that the historical approach to a lot of ERP installations is, tell me what you want and I'll develop it for you, right? And even if it means that we're actually going to build a square wheel, which is not the best model, but that's what you want. So we're going to give you that. Whereas the approach we're taking now is, you know what? We've got enough capability and standard functionality from all of the years of experience that we have. Go with kind of best, you know, best in breed approach. It's more than enough than what you need and it'll give you that ability to switch it on and go live and run with it immediately rather than customizing it and spending three years and trying to get that square wheel, which is actually not what you really need. That seems to be the karma at the company. We've been hearing that all day about the value of not customizing. Correct, exactly. And the product itself and our solutions are very rich and we take this one step further and say, well, actually, how can we get our customers to adopt quicker depending on the industry that they are in? Because we have to accept that the way you do a certain thing in one industry is not exactly the same as its best practice in another industry for very good reasons. So there's differentiation on how processes live in different industries. So Stefano and team has been very busy building what we call the accelerators and how do we bring those industry best practices together in two things. One is as a quick start. So here it is, just use it and run with it and you're up and running in a very quick way. So that's our knowledge and experience that we share and we make it available through our partners as well. And secondly, it will allow us to keep that up to date as sort of the reference architecture for your industry as you go forward, you might be going one way with your implementation. We say this is industry best practice and how do you derive value between the gap by adopting the gap between what is standard best practice and what you have in your solution. So driving that value over the lifecycle as part of the success engagement. So you guys are senior executives at a global company. You talked to a lot of customers. So I wonder if I could get your take on sort of the macro from a spending standpoint. I mean, we see in the US, we're in the 10th year of a boom cycle. The IPO market here is kind of, the windows closed, I think at least for now and the street wall streets rewarding growth. I mean, I don't care if you make profits, things like cash flow, EBITDA, they don't seem to matter. And so that's been going on now for the better part of a decade. When you look at Europe, it looks like it's softening. It's kind of overbanked financial services and now you're not exposed in financial services. Certainly not in a big way. But so what are you seeing across the globe just in terms of spending on tech and what does it mean for your business? I mean, you're a share-gainer. You're taking share. So you should be somewhat insulated from any kind of flattening or softening. Even though the softening is not precipitous, but I'm just wondering if you guys could give us your kind of anecdotal take on what's going on in the marketplace. You want to start? So I think two things that we see happening. We see many more new customers coming on with us. So you saw this morning as well in the keynote, more than 50% of our revenue comes from net new customers to IFS. That is amazing. There's not another similar company that can claim that. We are growing the market by more than three times the average. So, but that's one part of the story. The install base is the other part of the story. So the install base, what we see there is they are spending on the digital transformation, on getting ahead in their game. By, tech is disrupting a lot of industries and it's enabling a lot of disruptors to enter markets that previously and industries that previously were closed to them. And financial services, you see that a lot, but also in the other industries, we see these young and upcoming disruptors coming. So we see a lot of people and companies investing into the digital transformation, opening up new channels, opening up new markets that were not there before, but now with tech and the tech that is available is there. At the same time, they need to create space and investment. Nobody has unlimited resources. So they're looking at optimizing what they have so that they can free up some cash and capital to invest into some of these disruptive things. So it's really an exciting time to be part of the industry and really exciting time to be part of a challenging and a challenger company like IFS that really goes out and focuses on its industries, focuses on its tech stack, where it matters. We're not trying to be everything to all men all of the time. We're really going after what we know we are good at and I think the numbers show for themselves that. Half of the transactions are new adoption of IFS. That's enormous. Half of the license revenue. That's what my license is. Right, okay, yeah, but so, and then, I mean, unless there's a huge proportion leaving your install base, which it doesn't sound like that's happening. No, it's not happening. That if people are just even spending flat with you guys, it's a growth story. It's very, I mean, my opinion, it's all about choice. Customers want choice. They want an alternative, right? And I think what I think we're doing right, well, at least what I like to think we're doing right is that we focus on business outcomes. That's really what it's about. You know, we're talking their language, talking to their agenda, and we're giving them an alternative. I'm not forcing them to go into the cloud. We give them the option to go into the cloud if they want to, but they can also stay on premise. We don't force them to go subscription model. The option is there, but they can also, you know, choose for perpetual if, so it's really about giving them choice, talking to the customer business outcomes, and engaging in a really customer centric and customer intimate way along that journey. And it's working. So given the success you're having in specifically in Europe, you see how do you feel about your ability to export that success to North America? Well, we're doing that already. I mean, it's happening. You know, we've seen growth globally, right? It's not, yes, I mean, in certain regions, it's accentuated and larger, but it definitely is, it's a global phenomenon. We are seeing that. I think a lot of it is also coming back to our focus, right? I think you made the point that it's not, we're not trying to be all things to all people. Where we focus, that's where we really excel. So the kind of the answer to your question is less about the geographies and more about the industries that we want to focus on, regardless of where they are. That's the approach we're taking. And also the capabilities we're bringing in the field service management has been a very healthy growth area for us. We saw this morning again, we just announced the acquisition of Fistia that will further enhance our capabilities in this place. They're really a leader in what they're doing. So that level of focus makes us win in our industry. That looks like a good acquisition. That's a lever, a relatively small company, but, and you picked it up from what I can tell pretty cheaply, but the impact of your business is significant. So that's good, congratulations. All right, Chance, I know we're probably keeping you from important customer dinners and touring Boston. So thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. It was great to have you. We appreciate it. Thank you very much for having us. All right, thank you for watching, Paul. It was great working with you. There's always a wrap here from IFS World in Boston. And this is theCUBE. Go to siliconangle.com for all the news. Go to thecube.net for all these videos and we'll see you next time.