IFS
IFS]

“Mobility is an integral part of the modern-day business landscape as employees intend to access business-critical information from anywhere and at any time,” begins Rick Veague, CTO of IFS [XSTO: IFS]. Be it in retail, automotive or manufacturing, enterprise mobile solutions are transforming business processes like enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM), and enterprise service management (ESM). Over traditional on premise versions of the enterprise software, this state-of-the art technology overcomes hardware complexities and implementation costs. “With an ability to be capped into the information flow going through your business, mobile devices connect organizations to their business solution and ultimately to all the peers, co-workers, customers, and suppliers.”

IFS, a leading agile enterprise software company, develops and delivers on premise and cloud-based ERP, EAM, and ESM solutions complete with a mobile offering that allows organizations to easily access critical data securely in real time. “We build applications that mobilize and enable employees to do their job quickly, easily, and efficiently, wherever they are without necessarily having to be in a typical office setting,” explains Veague.

IFS takes a pragmatic and holistic approach to mobility by creating a secure mobile enterprise environment for smartphones, where minimal data is stored in the mobile device and mobile access is controlled in a cloud intermediary. The company offers a series of native smartphone apps that address specific business needs. IFS also migrates its entire user interface to a mobile-friendly design that supports tablet computers with touch screens. “While deploying mobile solutions, we focus on the core components like mobile infrastructure and network connectivity,” remarks Veague. “They help in tackling the barriers and impediments involved in a more efficient way.”

Mobility has come a long way from being an industry buzzword. It is now a key element of an enterprise’s overall strategy today and tomorrow and IFS recognizes this.

We build mobile applications that mobilize and enable employees of an enterprise to do their job quickly, easily, and efficiently

As technology advances the mobility offering now includes IoT, wearables, and so much more. IFS believes that the world of sensors and devices is already well established and will continue to grow. Technologies such as stream analytics and machine learning are rapidly maturing, but connection to business applications, where real business value can be harvested, is less mature. IFS is investing heavily in this space merging the world of devices and sensors with their enterprise solutions. “By connecting factories, assets, and supply chains in real-time, our solutions continue to become ever more predictive, rather than reactive to the changes that impact business results,” asserts Veague.

In the years ahead, IFS will continue to invest in key areas like Visual Insights—the ability to visualize information to drive business results, improve decision making, and enhance the level of business process automation to reduce training time and costs. “Today, organizations tend to equate “mobility” with “smartphones,” but smartphones are just the start,” adds Veague. Another area where IFS is focusing on is smart glasses, which are geospatially aware and can provide information on in-field assets simply by looking at them. “We strongly believe that this is the next logical step in the world of mobility,” concludes Veague.

IFS believes that their clients shouldn’t just be ready for tomorrow, they should be able to make tomorrow happen. By taking a pragmatic, holistic approach to mobility, IFS helps enterprise organizations address specific business needs in real-time, a common demand in today’s business and business of the future. Mobility has the power to not only allow enterprise organizations to operate with agility but also competitively. With the right mobile enterprise environment an organization is always ready for what is next.