IFS has announced the latest enhancements to IFS Cloud platform. The October 2022 release contains numerous enhancements designed to help customers meet their environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. Many features are aimed at making it easier and faster for customers to collect, manage and record key data. IFS suggest the release will provide visibility into their environmental performance.
The enhancements include:
- New functionality to track indirect greenhouse gas emissions to assess an organisation’s overall carbon footprint in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. [Sustainability Hub]
- The ability to help company and project teams connect and extract data from various sources and assess their performance in Scope 1 and 2 of the Sustainability Hub. [Sustainability Hub]
- A new feature that enables organisations to record vehicle usage and environmental costs in the planning and scheduling optimization (PSO) process. This allows companies to capture data around the performance of different vehicle types and compare the results. While also enabling report generation to support ESG initiatives. [Planning and Scheduling Optimisation]
- Reduce spare part inventory and increase refurbishment by empowering mobile service technicians to manage the return of unused inventory and uninstalled components. This can be done easily and accurately, thereby reducing waste. [Service Management]
Christian Pedersen Chief Product Officer, IFS said, “IFS has come a long way in a short time. Particularly its ability to understand and track customers’ ESG performance and support them on their journey to sustainability. We have concentrated on the element that represents the biggest challenge: data. Understanding data and being able to collect and interpret it is ultimately fundamental to any strategy. We are focused on making this easier and simpler for every organisation to achieve.”
Pedersen continued: “Your organisation’s environmental, social, and governance goals are in the spotlight. IFS tools and innovations provide data to help drive towards aims, show progress against commitments, and demonstrate accountability and transparency. Our message to our customers is: ’Stay focused on ESG goals and making an impact on the planet.’”
New capabilities at IFS UNLEASHED
Unveiling its global community event, IFS UNLEASHED, the company launched new capabilities that will help global companies connect operations across sites, functions, people, and assets.
As companies face pressures to reduce complexity and operate consistently across their entire business, they need capabilities that help them serve customers faster, reduce downtime, and meet compliance requirements.
Features include:
Visualise global transactions: Manage and visualise operations across multiple currency rates. Improve productivity in currency exchange tasks with the ability to import currency rates automatically to save time in currency exchange. [Finance]
Manage global absence limitations: Set and manage absence limits based on each country’s absence requirements. This provides HR teams with a full absence view from multiple countries. [Human Capital Management]
Secondment for work tasks: Define employees in the record of one company and make them available as employees and resources in other companies. Allow joint ventures, subsidiaries, and inter-company processing to reduce HR administration and simplify technician task reporting. [Enterprise Asset Management]
Reduce the risk of contract start delays: Initiate the procurement process for parts in one legal entity and conclude it in another. The cost of part replenishment transfers from the asset-owning company to a different company. Enable Maintenance and Procurement Managers to prepare for operations in new legal entities earlier by managing the transition between contracts. [Enterprise Asset Management]
Service Management features
Deliver service more efficiently: Manage a portfolio of repeatable installed products and assets of increasing complexity. Deliver service efficiently in high-volume asset and product service scenarios. [Service Management]
Expand shift planning capabilities: Ensure the right resources, with the right skills, are available for scheduling, including on-call scenarios, with enhancements to the dispatch console for managing in-flight work. [Service Management]
Reallocate field technician jobs: Let dispatchers locate and communicate with the field technicians more easily to reallocate jobs when needed. Identify and resolve any issues to ensure service levels are achieved. [Service Management]
Reduce aircraft turn-around-time: Reduce turn-around time with the introduction of a new solution for MRO Service Providers performing third-party line maintenance and other customers that have aircraft requiring maintenance. Reduce the time of aircraft maintenance work and increase compliance in line with customer requirements. [Aviation Maintenance]
In combination, these new capabilities offer organisations increased operational efficiency and process optimization, which is crucial to global enterprises’ growth. IFS’s twice-annual release cycle, of which the October 2022 update is the latest example, allows customers to constantly evolve their solution without the need for major upgrades or migrations, clearing their road to focus on business transformation.
Enterprise Times: What this means for business.
IFS’s release looks quite comprehensive and interesting because some of the company’s development has been closely tied into sustainability. If enterprises have key corporate environmental, social, and governance goals, then IFS tools and innovations can provide the data to help them meet those goals. The company says it helps drive towards aims, show progress against commitments, and demonstrate accountability and transparency.
After reviewing IFS’s website, it is still unclear whether the company has signed the UN Global Compact (UNGC). The world’s largest responsible and sustainable corporate governance initiative. Perhaps. This may require adjustment to its product roadmaps which may support future alignment with their client sustainability goals.
Correction:
IFS became a signatory of the UN Global Compact in 2021. The company is committed to its principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption.
https://www.ifs.com/about/corporate-social-responsibility
