Hi,
I am a consultant assisting a small aerospace client who is looking at IFS. Could I get some general feedback on IFS Cloud and CRM for defense manufacturing users? Also has anybody had good luck with U.S. based implementation teams for the IFS Cloud product?
Thank you.
Hi,
We implemented IFS Cloud in December 2022. On the very begin it was crazy, so many bugs, we had no help from IFS, it was hard for us (little team). Today, I can say it is much better, but still, the system has lot of problems to be solve. I don’t know from what version or even, what system you are coming from, but you can expect some problems. So my advice, planning everything to detail.
For CRM, we are working to “selling” this module to our internal clients, but you can not expect a big CRM here. It is a ERP that has a CRM inside it, till now, I can tell you, it is not bad, but users expected a sales force (that is not the case at all).
Thanks,
Gianni Neves
+7
Hi Gianni,
we fostered a german company the last 2 years in their process of implementing IFS.
They went live 2022-07-01. We provided them with “old” data from infor and put it together with IFS data into a datawarehouse. Because I did some CRM consulting the last 20 years; in fact as an employee of IFS germany I was responsible from 1999 to 2001 for a module called “sales and marketing”.
It was bad even in this times but we learned some valuable lessons over the years.
Microsoft has an internal statistic that more than 50% of all the CRM system implementations will fail.
Why?
1: The goals from (Sales- or Top-) management are totally different from the goals of the sales reps.
2: Sales reps will always ask for “maximum” functionality but will do the least to use it.
3. People will always find excuses. IT systems cannot defend themselfes so ….
4. Worst CRM system users are mostly the best sellers and vice versa.
So your idea of “selling” the module to internal users sounds totally fine for me.
They WILL ask for more!
When they ask for sales force, or other tools, just ask for a the budget. :-)
Not only licences but TCO cost including implementation.
Everybody wants to drive on empty., 10 lanes “autobahn” but nobody want them in his backyard or to pay for them.
We use a very simple and affordable cloud based crm system.
Mainly we use the entities “company”, “person” and “contact” (which is telefon, mail, visit)
You can add documents like quotations but why should you do that?
IFS will create business opportunities (BOs) and quotations(OQL) for you.
We know that because we combined CustomerInvoiceLines (CIL) with CustomerOrderLines (COL) and OrderQuotationLines (OQL) in one FACT_Sales.
Quite interesting because from the COL we created a new field “ExpectedTurnOver” and “ExpectedInvoiceDate”.
The moment the COL is invoiced these information will vanish but you can image that these (and more ) are very valuable information for controlling, sales department and shop floor.
Please send me private mail and keep me informed about your CRM implementation.
All the best
Michael
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