Hi Jamie 

Welcome to the IFS Community! 

I work with an IFS Customer  using App10. The IFS users I work with can be categorized as above average users since they manage to sort most of the issues before forwarding it to us, the IFS Support team. We even have a few users who are able to compare and contrast competitor ERPs when it comes to identifying new requirements. Hence the demand for new features is pretty high internally. 

We use several criteria in business meetings to identify new IFS features to adopt. First of all, me and my team demonstrate to the users the new changes in IFS. Ultimately we make a collective call to install the new modules or not. IFS Community resources is one source we use to stay updated. Additionally the requests come within the business for specific requirements. Then we go and explore them. 

I have been leading an internal discussion on the capabilities in 21R1 as we talk about upgrading somewhere down the road, focusing on features like the Shipment Order which replaces the inconvenience of the intersite data setup in App10 we are using. One challenge we have been facing is the absence of a cloud demo environment for us to test these flows. With such an environment in place, I believe we could stay updated on new features even more. 

Thanks for the question :)

“One challenge we have been facing is the absence of a cloud demo environment for us to test these flows.”

This comment….100% the biggest problem for us.

@ShawnBerk @EnzoFerrari 

Thank you both for the responses, much appreciated. Out of interest, what aspects are you wanting to test in the cloud demo environment?

• To generally understand a feature and how it might benefit the business and end users
• Technical challenges/compatibility with your existing setup
• Change management/retraining and general impact to the business
• Anything else?

@Jamie Byrne 

At the moment, for us, it is doing the technical evaluation of Aurena everything compared to V9 IEE.  We need to evaluate the work to uplift our existing customizations as well as the new functionality and interface across the entire application - we can’t do any of that.  We can and have used a V10 Race environment to look at Aurena, but given that there is so much of Aurena missing in V10 compared to Cloud, it was really a pointless exercise.  Example, the entire Solution Manager doesn’t exist as Aurena in V10.

Not to mention we’ve compiled a list of over 70 things that are missing or are deprecated in Aurena.  We need to learn or understand how to make up for that lost functionality first or learn the new way of doing the thing that isn’t like for like if there is an IFS replacement for a function (and there are some).

We haven’t been able to get to the point of evaluating new functionality and its usefulness really because we can’t get past the uplift part.

My entire teams belief is that dropping the access to a RACE or DEMO environment was a huge mis-step on the part of IFS and real hinderance for existing customers to consider how to upgrade.  It has to have been a factor in pushing more customers to opt to go to V10 rather than upgrade to Cloud as well.

@Jamie Byrne we mainly look for a demo cloud environment to generally understand the feature as well as to evaluate the impact to the business at a high level. 

I have a question for both of you. Other than staying updated through what’s shared in the IFS Community, what are the other ways that customers like us could use to identify new features to adopt?  

Hello Mr. Byrne,

I work for one of IFS's customers in Turkey. 
Accounting, Finance and Human Resources modules were developed by the partner company.  It's hard to adapt to native modules because of the logic of standard modules. As a consultant, the program can be quite complex for the end user. Are there any company-based simplification methods for this?  As a developer, we feel that the integration and technical documentation is insufficient. If you wish, we can arrange a meeting for details.

Best Regards.

 @Jamie Byrne I agree with @baris.halici 
I am a Developer/Administrator/Report Writer/Project Leader. I do everything for the company that I am working for right now. 

For me, the IFS Community is one of the best things created. I can search, learn and ask questions and receive help quickly. There are intelligent people in this community.

However, if the technical documentation can be more straightforward and provide screenshots, it will improve and help me save time.

On the other hand, I have been a developer for another ERP system, and I can tell you IFS is the best and more clear and friendly to work as a developer. 
 
Thanks,
JL

It's great that the IFS community exists. It's also great to be a part of the IFS community.

And yesss! By collaborating under the leadership of competent developers, we can make the community better on technical and development issues.

Cheers!

The latest functionality - shipments, manufacturer tracking, freight, PSO as well as any Lobby enhancements.  This does certainly relate to demos and sales activities but it is also beneficial for current implementation projects.

Best-

As others also mentioned, I think it’s super important to have a demo environment for people to tryout, because with the component-based installation customer is not aware of what exists outside their system. It’s almost all the time IFS consultants/Partner must analyze the customer requirements and propose what’s best for them, rarely the opposite.

IFS Community, Insider videos and IFS Academy trainings has been helpful for new functionalities, but I feel information is scattered and need to put some effort to find all resources regarding new functionalities. It would be nice to have everything connected and accessible from one place.

Particularly I like the IFS Insider YouTube videos because they are compact and precise. If this can be somehow integrated to IFS documentation, then together with a demo environment people could self-learn the new functionalities decide what’s best for them.

Since the topic is about feature adoption, I think it’s worth discussing about process for feature removal as well. As a developer this has been a problem for me particularly in framework and UX related features. I strongly believe that information about removed or deprecated features should be formally available with explanation and alternatives or a future plan.

Regards,

Damith

Hi @Jamie Byrne ,

As most of people have commented above, the huge problem customers are experiencing is that, they don’t have demo environments of the versions higher than the version they currently in. Customers can study/learn on the new features in the IFS webinars and the posts/questions in the community, but there’s no place for them to test and analyse them for their business.

And as @dsj has suggested, I also think it would be great if the IFS Insider videos and webinars can be connected with IFS online documentation, so that they can watch videos relevant to the help topic, as well.

Thanks,

@Jamie Byrne , any follow-up actions identified that you’d like to share here? :)

Hi @EnzoFerrari, I’m looking to pick up some of the documentation issues with a technical/educational writer this week. There’s a wider challenge of ensuring the right type support content is available and consumable; something that I have started to document for review. As for the availability of a demo org, it’s not in my area of work but I will feed this back to the business.

Hello, we’ve started a project to improve education materials, including help. Based on some of the comments in this thread, you may want to get involved with your feedback.

@dsj, @baris.halici, @ThushAsanka, @ZTC ZTC JGOTA