PTC’s expansion into field service management is about to collide with IFS, an established and fast-growing European FSM vendor.

IFS makes software for ERP, EAM and FSM. Let’s boil down the alphabet soup before we go any further:
IFS = Industrial and Financial Systems
ERP = enterprise resource planning
EAM = enterprise asset management
FSM = field service management
Why should engineers or their companies be interested in an alphabet soup other than the one they have been ordering with CAD, CAE, CAM and PLM (product lifecycle management)?
Who Is IFS?
IFS is “about a $1.4 billion company,” we hear at the conference, but relatively unknown in North America—a market it yearns for, where industrial giants have traditionally ordered from ERP giants, such as SAP (with 2022 revenue of $32 billion), Oracle and Infor.
Gartner recognized IFS, placing the company in its “Magic Quadrant” for FSM software for years now and IFS seems intent on capitalizing on the designation.

Not only does IFS have to battle relative obscurity in the United States, but it now also faces competition from a company quite familiar to U.S. manufacturers: PTC. PTC has boldly and decisively acquired FSM market penetration by acquiring first Servigistics and, more recently, ServiceMax—also in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. The $1.46 billion ServiceMax acquisition was PTC’s biggest ever.
It just might be a feeding frenzy in ERP right now, according to a Wall Street Journal article just published. Software giants Oracle, SAP, Infor, IBM and Microsoft have traditionally served companies that sought to manage the products after they are manufactured and sold—from machines on the production line to engines in aircraft, selling enterprise software to manage customer care, maintenance and service.
Despite the public and media fawning over ChatGPT, big manufacturers still have more interest in the robust software that runs their businesses. The focus on AI’s latest shiny object may be fleeting, but the need for corporate-wide digital transformation is real. Manufacturers seeking to digitalize their operations are seizing on ERP to help them. Fortune Business Insights estimates that companies will spend $45 billion on ERP software in 2023, according to Pitchbook Data statistics quoted by the Wall Street Journal. This has not gone unnoticed by investors who have poured $23 billion—37 percent of all software as a service (SaaS) investments.

Small and medium-sized companies looking to get into ERP for the first time are finding that SaaS has significant benefits over monolithic software applications installed on premises: no up-front investment, less IT involvement, and the ability to work anywhere on any device.
The Wall Street Journal focused on ERP startups raising capital such as the Belgian Thynk, which specializes in hotels and raised $13 million; Germany’s XentralERP for ecommerce; San Francisco’s Rootstock, a Salesforce spinoff that caters to manufacturers; and Zip, which raised $100 million.
Why Should Companies Consider IFS?
IFS creates software that manages many aspects of an asset’s life downstream of its manufacture and sale. This is by far the longer stage of an asset’s life and often the period in which most of the money is spent on it. Consider a jet engine that, although expensive for an aircraft company to buy, costs the airline many times the price of the engine to maintain and fuel it.
Following that money is IFS and several companies involved with ERP, FSM and EAM, such as (in no particular order) SAP, Microsoft, Infor and Oracle—and recently, a CAD company called PTC. You may have heard of it.
PTC sensed the money being spent on the products that its software had designed and manufactured and went after this opportunity with acquisitions, as previously noted, but its entry into the market is being dismissed by IFS executives.
It’s hardly competition to us, say two IFS executives when asked about what effect PTC is having on the post-manufacture software vendors. The range of IFS software, both best of breed and platform, covering the spectrum of ESM, FSM and ERP, goes beyond what PTC can cover, is the consistent response.
The Product
About 25 minutes into the conference, IFS shows off its products. Its cloud-based asset management is shown on a fictional power generation station in animated 3D. A red light (literally a traffic light that is red) on a dashboard alerts the staff that a turbine is about to fail. The entire turbine housing is shown on another panel. It may have been emitting a strange noise, exposed by telemetry of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, or nearing the end of its expected service life. Panels are (digitally) removed until the suspect part bearing comes into view. But the IFS application is not done … step-by-step instructions are given on how to remove the bearing. There’s more. The application is able to study the supply chain, search for vendors, alert operators that the part must be imported is back-ordered, and will result in some downtime.
“They had me at being able to take panels off,” says an attendee. But when IFS was able to predict the difficulty in getting a replacement part, they were blown away.
Such is the advantage of a digital transformation, where process data can be accessed and is actionable, as well as a cradle-to-grave view of a product (asset) that only starts at its design and manufacture. The most agile and tech-savvy early adopter can do this.
One such company is Smart Care, a $400 million food service company. Food service was no place to be when COVID hit. Restaurants and food service companies (hotels, stadiums, etc.) suffered. No one was going out to eat.
This is a good time to retool, said forward-thinking Gyner Ozgul, president and COO of Smart Care.
Ozgul was growing tired of the company’s SAP implementation. IFS offered an alternative and so did Microsoft. But unlike Microsoft, IFS’ application was all integrated and operated as one. Microsoft’s offering was still getting its act together, he says.