Servitization Trends Drive Record Growth At IFS

A conversation with IFS CEO Darren Roos discussing his company’s rapid growth and the future of the field service management market

Global enterprise software vendor IFS unveiled its 2018 financial figures in January, reporting a net revenue growth of 23 percent in its first year under new CEO Darren Roos. Field Technologies Online spoke to Roos (an SAP veteran) about the company’s growth and the importance of the company’s field service management business.

IFS reported significant growth in just about every part of the business last year. What is driving that growth?

Roos: When I arrived at IFS, what I noticed was that the traditional customer base, whether focused on manufacturing or some other sort of service industry, were all looking at how to better employ service in their businesses. That’s a significant trend, and we’ve pursued a strategy to provide an integrated and functionally capable solution to those customers as an extension of what we’ve done with them in the past.

There’s a tremendous amount of volatility in the market and a lot of non-traditional competition. What that means for any CEO is that more self-awareness as an organization is required. Today, they have to look toward digitization or new business models.

Perhaps in the past when things were going okay, organizations opted to not rock the boat. Now there is a greater awareness that if they don’t disrupt themselves, they will be disrupted by somebody else. They are thinking about how to employ new business models and engage in creative ways of going to market to entrench their existing customers and win new business.