IFS uses Crystal Report mostly, which isn't too user-friendly. Developing reports isn't easy and requires a lot of dev time. Since SAP bought it, Crystal Report has become more complicated to use on IFS. You have a dashboard for reporting that is good, but it's incomplete. Most of our clients use Power BI or some additional tooling for BI.

I worked on a third-party system called Harmony Solution. This French company produces a reporting tool that I feel is better than Crystal Report for IFS. They could also improve the plugin for Excel data migration to clarify its use. Many clients use it for massive amounts of data, which affects their systems. There is no communication about that. Clients use the Excel plugin because they know it works, but it does not always work the way it should. They need to improve the plugin's performance or inform customers to limit their use.

Migration jobs are often based on Excel inputs, particularly CSV files. That can cause issues when operating across several countries. For example, say I'm working on a French PC collaborating with someone in India who uses an Indian PC. Excel will transform the file based on the country's language, and the input data will be wrong. I believe they are trying to fix this with the smart data tool in the cloud. 

IFS is a very large and complex software, and implementation of IFS can be challenging and may lead to a difficult lengthy project. It can take between 12 and 24 months in some cases to deploy. I have found that not all clients are fully aware of how big the task is that they're undertaking when they make a decision to move to software like this.

Companies need to be more aware of the complexity of an ERP implementation project and while I fully recommend moving to IFS, it is not easy and does require business change when adopting an ERP solution. 

New features are a difficult ask - I work across multiple industries and everyone would probably choose a different feature. Maybe BIM in Construction or Customs link-ups for importers/exporters.

The next version has already been released, and some of the technical things are a little bit behind the curve in development. This is specifically security, maintenance, security role maintenance, and creation. This is in their new product, called IFS Cloud.

They've significantly changed the user interface and how the entire package is presented to both tech users and regular end users. They've gone to a thin client instead of their own client. There doesn't seem to be a focus on some of the maintenance and technical areas that users like me would use from the IT point of view.

These are areas that I've only seen in demonstrations. In version 10, which we're using now, everything is in good shape.

Regarding an area of weakness in the solution, it is not a user-friendly solution.

In future releases, I want to see more reporting features and interactive dashboards included in the solution. In short, the solution's overall interface should be simplified.

The support provided by IFS Applications has room for improvement. I'm based in Poland, and when my company had an issue, finding people from IFS to give my company the support it needed was difficult. I work for a big corporation. After a few years, the company decided to form an IT team that could manage issues related to IFS Applications because there was no direct support from IFS.

You can buy products everywhere, but the most crucial aspect is the service or support you receive after purchasing a product or solution.

What I want to be added to IFS Applications that would make life easier is a reporting feature that's easy and useful, rather than my company having to use a BI system or IBM Cognos for reporting. It'll be too expensive for small companies to implement a BI system in addition to an ERP system. IFS Applications currently has an Excel function that allows you to put your data into Excel and work on Excel. Still, it would be great to have easy diagrams and a direct reporting feature added to the solution.

There should be some improvements in the predefined templates in IFS Applications.

Aspects of HR and payroll could be better. Polish law is complicated, and users are demanding. In the Polish market, there are a lot of smaller HR/Payroll systems that are easier to use. While IFS is powerful, this is sometimes also a weakness as it could be easier to use, yet it wouldn't be so flexible and open for customization if they simplified it.

Some changes should be made in almost every module. However, it depends on process logic.                                                                                

An area for improvement would be transactions, which can be tedious to complete as the process is very complex.

Customization needs to be improved, and the solution should be simpler.

We have upgraded to the latest version right now. We have issues with the quality. We tried to enroll in their Evergreen program which was meant to help us adopt any service update or anything that the tool’s providers come up with. However, the tool always causes disruption to the business because of issues with quality, general compliance, and others. There is also the issue of missing functions. Some finance people would expect the invoicing behavior to be closer to SAP. They need to think about a different approach in advanced invoicing or something like that.

I also have issues with the quality of new releases. In the past, we had to upgrade only every four or five years. We expected it to be a big project. However, when we attempt to do every single update that pops up, it keeps us busy constantly.

We would like to see AI-driven CSI functions built into the tool that would allow us to quickly tie our improvement goals to metrics and activities, so Assyst will suggest the next steps to help us get closer to our goals. 

Another area we would be interested in seeing is further support for MS Teams. We have used the APIs to work solutions but as soon as the graph APIs from Microsoft come out of Beta, we would love to see a packaged app here that is supported through upgrades like the rest of the Axios products. 

As a consultant, examining the system, it appears that the challenge may be in marketing the system as a set of distinct modules. When a company chooses IFS as its ERP solution, it can be confused about which features to use and how to use them. Additionally, end-user documentation may be difficult to understand, particularly for those without prior experience with the solution, which can create a steep learning curve. As a consumer software solution, we expect that when we start using a new system, it would guide us through the necessary processes. Unfortunately, IFS does not have this guiding capability, making it difficult for users to understand the design process and which buttons to press in order to move forward. To gain a full understanding of the system, users often have to do extensive research and read through a large amount of documentation. The solution needs to improve its documentation and user-friendliness.

IFS Applications is not robust enough to handle high-volume transactions, so it's not suitable for larger enterprises. It's also lacking flexibility in platform compatibility - it's more compatible with Windows than other platforms. In the next release, IFS Applications should include compatibility with mobile devices.

I'm a business analyst, so I do a lot of customer-facing work. I take calls from businesses I have to troubleshoot. One thing that bugs me is the error messages you get from IFS. If I get an error message, I have to dig to find the cause because, often, the error message doesn't precisely describe the problem. It'll hint about where the problem lies, but you have to work to find the root cause. It doesn't help in my situation. You expect an error message to point to the field or what is causing the issue.

If they cleaned up their error messages, it would make things so much easier. Typically, an error message will focus on one field. It's one comment. Obviously, you don't want to see a lengthy message on the screen. I don't know if it's a translation issue because the organization is Swedish, but the wording of the messages isn't native English.

There's another issue for anyone using the system. IFS is based on companies. You create a company in the system called Company 100. When you bring on another plant or office, you need to make another company called Company 101. IFS has this popup box, so you need to be conscious of the company you're working with at any time. If you need to switch to another company, you must click on this right mouse button and say "Change company." It brings up a dialogue box with all the companies you can access; then, you put a checkmark in the box of the company you want to go to.

When people start using IFS, they have difficulty grasping this concept, but you constantly have to switch companies depending on what you're doing. I think everybody's in agreement that you have to go through this process. I don't know what they can do about it, but it causes issues. 

They do have a popup at the bottom of the screen that indicates which company you're working in. However, people don't always look at that when they are busy. They might start processing invoices in Company 100 when they should be working at Company 101. You have to manually switch companies, which frustrates users. I'm sure IFS has heard this over and over. 

When each user is set up, they're assigned a default company. My default company could be 100, so I start in Company 100 when I log into IFS, but if I have to do business with two other companies, I have to select the company and click back to the original company when I'm done. I can't say it's a minor thing because it causes a lot of frustration. 

I think that with the latest version of the product in the cloud, the user experience is very good since it is highly configurable and very capable software. I have seen that one of the areas that my company has identified for improvement might be the rental management capabilities within the solution. IFS Cloud Platform is a very strong solution, offering more opportunities than others, especially in the area of service it offers, as there have already been huge improvements in IFS Cloud Platform in the last couple of years, making it an industry-leading product. As a business, we are very happy with what the product does for us and its capabilities, providing us with a good experience with the current model of the solution so far.

I don't have any suggestions related to the solution to provide to the vendor since I think the solution offers many more capabilities than what we could use in our company. The product is not short on capabilities and has everything that my company requires.

I won't be able to give the correct feedback. I haven't seen everything in action, however, based on my experience, what I've found is that lot of days we are using mobile phones or tablets. Yet, this solution doesn't work on those types of devices. They need to create something that can be used on Andriod devices to make it easier to use in terms of how we work. It should incorporate the devices we're constantly utilizing.

The user interface can be improved. When you're clicking through the screens, there are some icons or symbols that really need updating and would be more useful and noticeable if they are aesthetically pleasing. 

The CRM was shaky and although this improves greatly in Apps 10.

The integration is a bit complex, and post-implementation support services need to be improved. They have a service center based out of Sri Lanka. The support aspect is good, but the response time is a little slower than we anticipated.

In the next release, it would be better if Warehouse Management could be improvised. They have a product line that's a data warehouse management system, but it's still premature and requires a bit of enhancement.

• End-user interface
• The concept of the main request and its related tasks or decisions
• Reporting module
• CMDB integration
• Pricing for incidents 
• Knowledge management features.

This product is good for certain business verticals, every product has its strengths and weakness. They are fully aware of it. Thus, they only sell in industry verticals where their solution offering is very strong. However, the product is good enough for many more industry verticals and for use as a general ERP.

Areas were I would like to see improvements:

1. Workflow designing across application modules to reflect business workflow across departments.
2. Ability to place approval check-points in the custom workflow, so clients can decide what they want it.

There might be a need for better training or support for users or improvements in the application's usability or functionality because we initially faced some difficulties when we started using it.

IFS Applications can improve the reporting capabilities and increase the speed of feedback time in the IFS Applications. This would help with the overall performance of the solution and provide better experiences for customers.

One idea is to expand the areas of operation for the product. There was also an internal case study that looked at the possibility of adding a feature for internal offsetting between different companies within a group. This would allow for the offsetting of debts and balances between the companies, rather than having each company make separate payments. It's called cash flow offsetting. It would've been a great addition to our current systems IFS Applications. Unfortunately, the feature is not currently available.

The product requires heavy administrative work. It's not an easy drag-and-drop workflow type of model. It's hard to configure and customize. Axios claims that the new version will improve that, but I haven't seen that product. I hope they offer it in the next release.

Technical support could be improved.

Usability could be improved.

I'm speaking in regards to the state of the IP in 2016, and I don't know how it has improved since that time. However, I would say that some kind of bot assistance, some kind of artificial intelligence to help people solve the problems, would be interesting.

There are certain digital features that need to be incorporated, such as IOP. It's a blockchain platform. We are currently exploring these types of features to enhance our solutions for added value for our clients. 

Pricing is an area that could be improved. They could be more competitive.

As a salesperson, my perspective is limited. Someone from a development team may have more insights into which features may be lacking.

It would be ideal if, in the future, the product could incorporate IoT and blockchain elements. We'd like to explore more of these types of features going forward. We feel they could enhance our client experience and add value to our own solutions.

The pricing could be a bit better. It's a little high.