The role
I led the ANZ presales team across the full IFS portfolio, including ERP, EAM and FSM, responsible for solution engineering and business-value engagement in sectors including utilities and defence.
The work required moving continuously between the operational detail of asset-intensive organisations, executive value, complex enterprise architecture and the realities of a large software product.
Why it is relevant now
The interesting part of IFS today is not simply that I know the company or its traditional system-of-record role. It is that the market is moving toward a problem I have spent much of my career circling: combine deep operational context, assets, investment decisions, enterprise workflows and now AI that can increasingly recommend or act.
What I see differently now
Several years of hands-on AI building changes how I now look at the IFS product estate. ERP, EAM and FSM already contain enormous amounts of operational context. The opportunity is not simply to add AI features to those systems. It is to use that context to create new decision and action loops around assets, work, people and risk.
The last example is particularly familiar. Yotta Horizons taught me that condition alone does not define asset importance; geographic, environmental and social context changes consequence. PowerPlan added the long-term investment and funding lens. Applied AI now makes it possible to bring those contexts together much closer to the operational decision.