IFS Applications 10

IFS Cloud ERP Demand Forecasting Module

IFS ERP software Demand Forecasting™ is a highly graphical, interactive tool for forecasting and demand planning, which helps create both short-term and long-term forecasts/demand plans as a basis for sales planning, budgeting, master scheduling, and inventory control. Strong support is provided for new and replacement products. IFS ERP software Demand Forecasting has advanced integration with Master Scheduling, which enables quick and efficient Master Scheduling and Sales and Operations Planning processes.

Customer Schedules Module

IFS ERP system Customer SchedulesTM integrates your manufacturing processes and production schedules with your customer’s demands to provide greater delivery precision, shorter lead times, lower inventory levels, and more cost-effective operations. It efficiently manages repetitive demand schedules, both short and long-term, and greatly enhances the ability to plan and forecast production capacity, inbound material, and shipping. Built-in reconciliation can automatically align schedule differences, adjusting the schedule to reflect actual customer needs.

Product Estimate Management Module

IFS ERP solutions Product Estimate Management supports manufacturing companies to handle complex price estimations to establish the best possible bid price of a product when submitting quotations. We make use of the embedded IFS CRM solution to enhance the collaboration between technical sales support in the back office and the sales rep. Advanced cost and build-up functionality enables users to determine whether a product can be manufactured or marketed with a profit.

IFS Sales Configurator Module

IFS ERP solutions Sales ConfiguratorTM guides your sales personnel and customers smoothly and conveniently through your selection of products, product characteristics, and accessories. An easy-to-use​“product advisor” builds configurations through a series of questions that precisely define requirements. The IFS ERP software Sales Configurator is a guide that helps the salesperson or customer during the configuration process, where the user gets prompted with possible combinations, valid values, and information messages and automatically inserted or removed values to ensure that a correct configuration is done. This means that you create configurations that meet precise requirements on demand.

IFS Sales Contract Management Module

IFS ERP software Sales Contract Management enables you to manage the lifecycle of your sales contracts from bid and tendering through completion and handover. It also provides functions such as payment terms, markup and retention rules, certificates, payments, contract revisions, detailed change history logging, as well as links to projects on a granular level, including cost roll-up from projects. Invoices can be generated based on several flexible options, including progress, quantity, sales value, cost plus, and milestones. Reimbursable project invoicing is also supported. In addition, it has strong change management capabilities to manage variations in scope.

IFS Sales Orders Module

IFS ERP solutions Sales Orders lets you manage your sales order processing at one or more sites and is a fundamental part of the IFS Supply Chain solution. The solution covers the complete cycle from Sales Quotation to Customer Invoices and Returns. Various sourcing options, such as inventory, external suppliers, or manufacturing, are supported.

To be able to promise reliable delivery dates to customers as well as provide accurate planning information, the solution also includes customer routes and the supply chain matrix that holds the lead times between sites, customers, and suppliers. IFS ERP software Sales Orders offers a multitude of pricing options, including customer agreements, price lists, campaigns, sales promotions, rebates, as well as various types of discounts and charges. Customer schedules can be used to facilitate forecasts and call-offs in repetitive environments.

Accounts Payable Module

IFS ERP solutions Accounts Payable™ simplifies the handling of your supplier invoice and payment routines and is integrated with accounting rules and purchasing functionality for matching purposes. Support for self-billing reduces invoice handling. A variety of currency and payment options contributes to the flexibility of the component, while the follow-up and analysis capabilities ensure full control.

Accounts Receivable Module

IFS ERP software Accounts Receivable™ simplifies customer invoicing and payment processes. It automatically handles the coding of routine transactions. IFS ERP software also provides powerful customer credit monitoring capabilities. Integrated with sales orders and accounting rules functionality, it helps you minimize errors and simplify routines.

Budget Management Module

IFS ERP software Budget Management™ is a powerful tool for managing the planning, budgeting, and forecasting workflow in IFS Applications. IFS cloud ERP can be used to set your corporate strategy with enterprise-wide drivers and assumptions for the budgeting process, as well as to set targets for the scorecard and budget templates. Support for continuous planning and rolling forecasting allows the user to monitor and update the process at all stages.

Business Planning Module

IFS ERP Business Planning™ supports the process of creating budgets, forecasts, and other business processes, both for individual companies and on a consolidated level. IFS cloud ERP Business Planning offers an integrated and centrally controlled planning engine that supports demand-driven planning based on customer-defined planning models. Organizations can have purpose-built planning formats to handle different needs, all the way from personnel planning, revenue, and cost planning to the balance sheet and cash flow. Different scenarios based on different assumptions can be managed and compared.

Cash Flow Module

IFS ERP Cash Flow™ offers you flexible liquidity analyses based on a variety of scenarios that you select. Use sales orders, purchase orders, accounts receivable, and payables to generate projections of your cash position. Use this information to analyze your company for better cash management and strategic decision-making. In addition, amounts can be handled in your base currency or in the transaction currencies involved.

Consolidation Module

IFS Consolidation™ enables you to consolidate balances from any number of companies at any number of levels, regardless of charts of accounts and reporting currencies used. IFS ERP Consolidation can be done in multiple corporate structures for operational and managerial purposes. The consolidation process, which can be executed for a single structure node or the complete structure at once, includes automated support for ownership and intercompany elimination. As this component is an integrated part of the IFS ERP system, it is possible to capture subsidiary balances at any time and directly drill down to underlying 

Financial Summary / Features Module

IFS ERP Financials, an integrated part of the IFS ERP system, brings together your financial activities, no matter how diversified, because by design, it is a multi-company business application that can handle parallel companies over a wide range of currencies, legislations, business models, and accounting principles. With IFS Financials, you get end-to-end integration. All your business-critical information is accessible in real-time, so you can accurately measure business performance, make key decisions quickly and be in full possession of the facts to support your growth plans, now and in the future.

Fixed Assets Module

IFS Fixed Assets™ makes it easier to strategically manage your company’s fixed assets. A fully integrated accounting tool, IFS ERP includes multi-country support for depreciation methods, making it the perfect fixed asset tool for a global organization.

General Ledger Module

IFS General Ledger™ ensures you have a solid base for financial analysis and reporting, plus powerful simulation capabilities, including multiple general ledgers and advanced distribution rules. It helps you to gather and consolidate financial events from all systems and subsidiaries within a corporate group.

Project Finance Module

IFS Project Finance™ gives you a continuous view of a project from a financial perspective over any number of years, both when the project is ongoing and after it has been closed. You can also drill down into the data to the source of the transaction for a more detailed analysis. The integrated project accounting rules within the ERP solution support different methods of capitalization and revenue recognition requirements.

IFS Batch Process Manufacturing Module

IFS Batch Process Manufacturing™ supports recipe/formula-based manufacturing typically found in the food & beverage, pharmaceuticals, and chemical industries. The solution includes full traceability from raw materials through intermediates to finished goods. Batch balancing makes it easy to deal with batch size restrictions on multiple levels. Sequencing based on product characteristics minimizes changeover costs. IFS Batch Process Manufacturing comes with native support for quality management with control plans and analysis, catch weight, multiple units of measure, and shelf-life control.

IFS Component Repair Module

IFS Component Repair™ provides you with extensive support for doing repairs on components in a service or manufacturing environment, with complete control of costs, risk, revenue, and scope. The IFS ERP solution comes with the possibility to define part exchange deals — loan, single- and double exchange — which make your supply chains more agile and efficient.

IFS Configure & Make-to-Order Module

IFS Configure & Make to Order™ helps you manage and simplify the production-to-order process, from advanced make-to-order (MTO) to simple assemble-to-order (ATO), including multilevel pegged (DOP) structures. The IFS ERP solution supports order-unique production design for standard products and characteristics-based configuration with built-in rules for production. Sales rule logic is obtained using IFS Sales Configurator.

• IFS Configure to Order™ gives you powerful functionality to handle the complex material flow of a vast number of parts that can be combined into perhaps millions of combinations by providing strong support for configured products. Instead of using a part number for each unique combination, you maintain a configurable base item number, which makes it much easier to maintain and control products and their possible variations. With IFS Configure to Order, the characteristics and possible values of each characteristic for each base item are defined and maintained. Multi-level structure functionality makes it possible to have configured products that consist of other configured products on many levels.

• IFS Dynamic Order Processing (DOP) enables Make/Assemble to Order™, which supports full-level pegging to any user-definable structure level together with a partial MRP calculation. The pegging is utilized for actual costing, progress monitoring, and up- or downstream propagation of changes in supply and demand dates or quantities. Combined with IFS Constraint Based Scheduling, advanced planning and scheduling functionality with both material and capacity constraints is supported. Order unique structures are created and maintained based on standard BOMs or custom engineering. The structures can be reused and graphically compared to standard or other order-unique structures.

IFS Constraint-Based Scheduling Module

IFS Constraint Based Scheduling™ optimizes the production schedule based on the critical resources that limit production capacities, such as equipment, tools, and personnel. It centers on an interactive Gantt chart with very sophisticated drag-and-drop planning. Scheduling can be done both manually and with the help of advanced algorithms, with or without finite capacity.

By identifying production bottlenecks, you can deliver on time and keep production costs under control. Multisite, multilevel capability check gives you an advanced tool for accurate delivery time estimation. IFS Constraint-Based Scheduling can also be used in a work order context to optimize maintenance plans based on craft, tools, and material constraints. Advanced Planning Board (APB) is a part of this component and offers an increased focus on planners and planner needs for functional and graphical support during the​“hands-on” scheduling process. The IFS ERP solution can also be used for what-if scenarios that simulate based on selected shop orders, e.g., resource breaks down, and analyze the consequences.

IFS Discrete Manufacturing 

IFS Discrete Manufacturing (includes Shop Order)™ is a comprehensive enterprise resource planning solution to support the production process from shop order requisitions to receipt of finished products. The IFS ERP solution includes material availability checks, scheduling of operations, consideration of tools and labor, integrated quality management, and analysis. Reporting of operations or material transactions can be done differently using interfaces tailored for the specific situation, such as bar-code readers or operator terminals.

IFS Manufacturing Summary Module

IFS Applications has long offered manufacturers an agile solution for enterprise resource planning (ERP). From the start, IFS recognized the need for manufacturers to operate seamlessly across multiple manufacturing modes. Manufacturing has become more complex, and today IFS Applications help more and more manufacturers operate in any combination of — Make-to-stock, Make-to-order, Configure-to-order, Batch process, and Engineer-Procure-Construct.

The IFS manufacturing components support all phases of the manufacturing process for all your employees, making it easier to plan, execute, control, and analyze many types of manufacturing. The powerful, multifaceted IFS ERP solution offers a simple, highly automated flow for handling repetitive tasks with advanced management-by-exception functionality to trap and action exceptions. It also supports lean principles and mixed-mode manufacturing, where different types of processing coexist in the same manufacturing environment.

IFS Project-Based Manufacturing Module

IFS Project Based Manufacturing™ allows you to plan and execute manufacturing as part of a project scope. Costs for material, labor, and operations are automatically allocated to the project. Inventory functionality can be performed in a project context, and you can transfer material between project activities and between project inventory and standard inventory. The enterprise resource planning solution also includes the option to run material requirements planning across the scope of a project.

IFS Repetitive Manufacturing Module

IFS Repetitive Manufacturing™ improves efficiency by reducing and even eliminating transactions in the manufacturing process. IFS Repetitive Manufacturing supports Kanban, orderless receipts, backflush, and super flush with lot/batch and serial tracking, as well as rate-based production schedules. Schedules can be generated manually or automatically from MRP/Master Schedule and span multiple production lines to increase efficiency. Shop packages can be created and printed. Calculation, simulation, and execution of manual cards and full electronic Kanbans are supported. Combined with IFS Planning, you can create a hybrid pull/push system using material requirements planning (MRP) to generate production line schedules, plan supplier schedules, and dimension Kanban circuits. The Kanbans trigger the call-offs based on the actual requirements. The card management functionality greatly simplifies change management, counting, and tracking for manual card circuits.

IFS Shop Floor Reporting 

IFS Shop Floor Reporting™ is an efficient, easy-to-use way for your employees to quickly report production information. The IFS enterprise resource planning software gives you the status of your operations, the quantity of manufactured and discarded items, and the accumulated operator hours.

With IFS Shop Floor Reporting, shop floor data is collected automatically with the help of various equipment in the production system, e.g., laptops, mobile phones, bar-code readers, etc. The main client for the operator is the shop floor workbench, which contains all he/she needs for the daily shop floor work. The enterprise resource planning system provides the operator with all relevant information, such as tools, materials, guidelines, tracked structures, assigned resources, etc.

The enterprise resource planning system also provides support for concurrent operations per employee as well as concurrent employees per operation. In addition, functionality for registration and follow-up time on interruptions is supported. If IFS Time & Attendance is installed, the system has integrated options to reconcile shop floor reporting time with time and attendance data as well as approval functionalities.

IFS Visual Planning & Scheduling Module

IFS Visual Planning & Scheduling™ optimizes your production schedule using infinite or finite capacity. Through a graphical presentation of the plan, it becomes easy to identify potential capacity bottlenecks or material shortages. The interactive design allows you to act directly and immediately to resolve capacity or material shortages. The enterprise resource planning solution also includes support for sequencing, set-up optimization, and the possibility to group operations that share similar characteristics into blocks planned as one unit.

IFS Manufacturing Visualizer supports planners and management in their operational work. This out-of-the-box configurable enterprise resource planning solution provides up-to-date information about the current production status of a resource (machine and labor) and material situation. It’s more than just a highly graphical visualization tool; the IFS Manufacturing Visualizer also works as the foundation for initiating necessary actions to support your production processes. The Visualizer also comes with auto refresh functionality which enables online monitoring of your production.

Export Control Module

IFS Export Control™ enables you to manage your enterprise within the legal requirements of your export licenses and supports companies that are handling parts subjected to export restrictions, e.g., military equipment or high-tech electronics. This reduces risk and avoids the high penalties that can and are levied on those who break the rules. The IFS cloud ERP software solution will identify any restrictions that may exist for the part, prevent sales, or, if a valid export license exists, use the same. Parts and denied/allowed parties are classified by supplier, customer, end-user, etc. IFS Export Control is designed to enable you to manage your export control procedures in one place and to comply with the various applicable regulations. It enables ordering processes and export licenses to be managed consistently across your enterprise for improved supply chain management.

Rental Management Module

IFS Rental Management™ provides functionality for supporting the rental processes for customers that want to handle their internal or external rental demand. There is support for renting in, renting out, and handling rental demand on the project. Rental demands can be supplied both internally, from own inventory or internal supplier through the inter-site process, or externally, back-to-back. A single enterprise resource planning solution gathering all data in a central component, it offers common processes for rental and non-rentals, e.g., deliveries, receipts, inventory management, and invoicing.

Shipment Management Module

IFS Shipment Management™ is a solution for inbound receipt as well as outbound deliveries of shipments. The inbound receipt of material, including inspection, returns, and scrap. Inbound receipt can be done based on a dispatch advice received from a supplier or an internal site, or a purchase order. IFS Shipment Management also supports the outbound shipment process with reservation, picking, and delivery of goods. Transport documentation such as goods labels, consignment notes, delivery notes, bills of lading, and proforma invoices is created. Also, outbound electronic dispatch devices are supported. Capabilities include support for standardized integration between trading partners using GS1, including support for GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) and SSCC (Serial Shipment Container Code).

SRM & Procurement Module

IFS SRM & Procurement™ lets you track supplier interactions and source components with the RFI/RFQ process resulting in Supplier Agreements or Purchase Orders. The enterprise resource planning solution will streamline your procurement administration, from requisitions to orders, through delivery monitoring and goods arrival. This helps achieve better pricing from suppliers through centralized purchasing and is well-suited for multisite companies operating in a global environment. Purchasing of both direct and indirect material is managed, including support for authorizations. Supplier schedules can be used to facilitate forecasts and call-offs in repetitive environments.

Supplier Schedules Module

IFS Supplier Schedules™ improves your administrative efficiency by reducing the number of transactions requiring user input. It is ideal for high-volume manufacturing environments, leveraging repetitive partnerships with a continuous and high-volume flow of order information. For example, the IFS enterprise resource planning solution allows employees to communicate up-to-date material requirements to suppliers with a minimum number of transactions. In addition, IFS Supplier Schedules make it easier to generate, approve, and release schedules, with several delivery pattern options.

Supply Chain Planning Module

IFS Supply Chain Planning™ supports integrated planning across a supply network, including multiple sites and legal entities. Forecasts and actual demands are captured at the end-point of the supply chain, turned into time-phased supply plans, and transferred to external suppliers or internal manufacturing sites. This improves the integration between sites resulting in reduced inventories and improved customer service. It enables efficient, simultaneous planning of all sites within a planning network. Parts defined as multi-site planned are planned simultaneously on all sites in the planning network. Distribution orders are used in the planning process for immediate communication of demand and supply between sites and throughout the multi-site product structure for multi-site planned parts.

Supply Chain Summary Module

The IFS Supply Chain components, together with manufacturing, form the basis for the supply chain management solution. These components offer the simplicity you need to better visualize product flows and use the system efficiently, as well as easily adapt to different distribution models and working methods. This functionality gives you the agility you need to grow and support change throughout your enterprise. It allows you to take advantage of real-time communication throughout the order-to-delivery chain.

Warehouse Data Collection Module

IFS Warehouse Data Collection™ is developed to meet the customers’ demand for a​“one-stop-shop” solution for their warehouse operation, including a process-driven user interface for mobile devices. The characteristics of the solution developed can be described as follows: Customer requirements for the efficient and robust process to be met by configuration; Solution includes a standard transactions library and support printing of labels and documents; and Enable long-term support for multiple client platforms, e.g., PC, Phone/Pad Apps.

Warehouse Management Module

IFS Warehouse Management™ helps you manage the entire warehousing process from goods receipt to point of issue. The enterprise resource planning solution includes support for traceability, shelf life management, consignment stocks, handling units, put-away, and a range of reservation options. Warehouse activities are, to a large extent, task driven and reported with barcodes and handheld devices for efficient and accurate real-time processing. The component also includes a basic solution for reorder-based planning and automated generation of order proposals. Internal issues of material in stock are managed using Material Requisitions. The solution gives you support for standardized integration between trading partners using GS1, including support for GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) and SSCC (Serial Shipment Container Code). Also included is the possibility to plan and hold inventory in remote locations, typically stocks of consumables or spare parts.

CRM Features

• A single solution and single user interface to manage every aspect of your customer relationships — from the first point of contact, from the lead to the prospect, right through to the ongoing care of a mature customer
• The single-user interface within the enterprise resource planning software means there’s no need for users to log into separate CRM and ERP systems to find the information they need to make the right decisions.
• If the information is in the IFS CRM solution, then it’s also in your back-office enterprise software and vice versa. What’s more, because there is no need to integrate and synchronize two separate systems, the data is up to date and accurate, so decisions made are based on the status as it is now, not what it was hours — or even days — ago.
• Sales professionals should have the information they need in order to manage their customers and prospects. IFS Lobbies provide users with an at-a-glance view of the situation for a particular role or process, drawing their attention to key tasks and relevant information
• The functionality makes it easy for companies to manage relationships with their own customers and prospects, follow up on leads, manage calendar and day-to-day actions, set up and coordinate marketing campaigns as well as manage opportunity pipelines efficiently.

IFS CRM provides business processes vital to customer relationship management. They manage the customer interaction chain from the sales lead, through the sales cycle, to the ongoing support and service of the customer. Our sales and service concept allows a business to focus on where it adds value to the customer through product, service, and support.

IFS Applications 10 includes a range of unique modules that set it apart from other enterprise resource planning systems. These features, many of which are geared toward the manufacturing industry, are a major part of why IFS ERP software consistently receives high grades in its performance in both discrete and process manufacturing applications. 

IFS Engineering Summary/Features

The IFS Engineering components make it easier for you to specify and configure design elements, products, assemblies, and facilities. They ensure quality by streamlining your administration of all related documentation, including revisions. Everyone in your organization gets the information they need, enabling access to continuously updated data for technical, administrative, and financial decisions. Integration between purchasing, engineering, and manufacturing processes gives you a true cross-company picture.

IFS PDM Configuration™ 

Supports engineering design, configuration control, and follow-up of items and products. Advanced revision management capabilities help you comply with complex regulations. Its powerful​“best-fit” search and copy functionality lets you reuse items and designs, making it easier to standardize products and parts.

IFS Engineering Change Management™ 

Simplifies and speeds up your engineering change processes using change requests as well as change orders. It lets you receive, review, check, and approve changes before implementing change orders.

IFS Project Deliverables™

Lets you coordinate complex deliveries throughout their life cycles — from tendering, detailed design, procurement, manufacturing, and/or assembly to installation, testing, delivery, after-sale support, and maintenance.

IFS Asset Design™

Gives you powerful tools for supporting engineering processes and provides a framework that creates and maintains information about objects in plants, power grids, fiber-optic networks, and many other types of structures or facilities. You can directly import project information from suppliers and consultants. Tightly integrated with IFS Project and IFS Purchasing, it supports EPCI projects and material management efficiently. Together with IFS Maintenance, it provides complete asset life cycle support, even for large revamp projects, without disrupting the maintenance processes.

IFS General Summary/Features

The core of IFS Applications 10 is a flexible and powerful cloud ERP system with numerous user-friendly cross-functional components that streamline, simplify and handle critical processes found within most industries. Through the many business modules found within this complete ERP solution, businesses have access to the cutting-edge tools they need to excel in key functions such as supply chain management, customer relationship management (CRM), field service management, and inventory management. 

IFS Document Management™

Gives you full control over your company’s documentation. It handles the creation and development process for documents and includes easy-to-use search tools. Other functionality of the IFS enterprise resource planning solution includes workflow, templates, version and release management, support for invoice scanning (OCR), and redlining. 

IFS Quality Management™ 

Provides a fully integrated solution that streamlines and standardizes quality management data across the entire value chain. It covers a wide area of functionality from quality control, including Control Plans, SPC Charts, and Capability Indices, to quality assurance areas such as FMEA, Quality Audits, Non-Conformance Reporting, MRB, and CAPA.

IFS IoT Business Connector™

Reduces risks and accelerates your IoT initiatives by helping you transform raw data into actionable insights that are planned and optimized in IFS Applications. IFS IoT Business Connector provides a reference architecture, all the plumbing to get things working, the IoT Discovery Manager to manage insight discovery using Microsoft Azure IoT Suite, and the IoT Controller used to configure the right action to be taken in response to IoT observations.

IFS Business Reporting and Analysis™

Helps you understand and analyze your business with pre-built analysis models for everything from finance and HR to sales and procurement. The Analysis Models are accessible from Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft PowerBI®, IFS Lobby, and the most popular reporting and analysis tools. IFS Business Reporter is an Excel-based business reporting and planning tool. It can be used as a reporting tool or as an integrated part of budgeting and business planning.

IFS Lobbies™

Provides an at-a-glance view of real-time information in IFS Applications based on your role or the processes you work in. You will clearly see what to focus on and what needs your attention, and you can quickly see problem areas or where there are exceptions to deal with. IFS Lobbies™ is easily tailored to your business’s unique needs. 

IFS B2B™ solutions

Lets you invite your customers, suppliers, and subcontractors to participate in your business process via the intuitive and easy-to-use browser-based IFS Aurena user experience. Processes covered include subcontracted manufacturing, service, subcontract work order, sales, and procurement.

IFS Human Capital Management Summary/Features

IFS Human Capital Management components save you time and money by helping you manage your company’s most valuable resources cost-effectively. You get fast, accurate analysis that meets all your company’s human resources key needs for personnel development. You also get the essential processes for workforce management and successful strategic human capital management.

IFS Employee and Organization Management™

Maps position and organization structures within your company into the system and defines work requirements and benefits applicable to employees. Providing controlled access to employee data simplifies the management of employee information while serving as the foundation for the comprehensive operation of all employee-related processes, as well as in the context of multi-company and matrix organizations. The solution also consists of processes for headcount planning, vacancies, disciplinary and grievance processes as well as employee surveys.

IFS Employee and Manager Self-Service™

Provides a complete manager and employee self-service tool that ensures high data quality and employee involvement. Managers perform HR-related tasks to match their needs. Employees update their own employee data, apply for leave, time and expense reporting, update their qualifications, etc.

IFS Development and Training Management™

Manages employees in terms of professional development processes. These processes include reviews and appraisals, employee performance, training and development activities, managing career and succession, and comprise the following functionality.

• IFS Training Management provides comprehensive support for organizations with internal training operations. It enables you to compile internal training requirements and use them as input for planning training events while automatically updating employee files after courses have been completed. Proactive training suggestions can be automatically created based on qualification gap analysis results. The self-service solution provides employees and managers with an efficient and easily accessible tool to manage and analyze qualifications information to support the business needs of an organization from the employee development and training perspective.
• IFS Qualifications and Employee Development help you create strategic human resource plans and processes for your company by defining your organization’s qualification/skill/competency requirements and mapping them to your available resources. Once the requirements are defined and mapped, you can use them for recruitment, employee development, or a listing of outdated or overrepresented competencies. In addition, skills and certifications are used to assign certain work to qualified individuals. Processes for reviews, appraisals, and employee performance are provided.

IFS Expense Management™ 

Helps streamline and simplify your company’s expense management and reporting system by automating everything from tax calculations to travel allowances and import of credit card transactions. It provides the possibility for advance payments, supervisor authorization of advances, mileage, miscellaneous expenses, and entertainment. After approval and authorization of the expense sheet, the employee is reimbursed either via the connected payroll system or directly via the Employee Payment component, which supports transfer to a bank account or cash payment. 

In addition, the expenses can be connected to a project activity and/or to a work order to facilitate follow-up and actions. The self-service functionality provides employees and managers with an efficient and easily accessible tool for employee expense reporting, approval, and authorization.

IFS Time and Attendance Management™ 

Makes it easier to manage information on the working hours of your employees and provides functionality for reporting and authorization of employees’ presence and absence. Wage code distribution and the calculation of flexi-time, overtime, shift premiums, etc., are automatic and checked against central rules. Moreover, you save critical time when employee input simultaneously feeds project, maintenance, or production systems. In addition, the authorized transactions can also be transferred to an external payroll system. This provides enhanced control over employees’ absence periods, including actions required, along with absence planning and requesting a solution. The self-service functionality provides employees and managers with an efficient and easily accessible tool to create, maintain, authorize, and analyze time and attendance transactions.

IFS Payroll Transactions Interface™ 

Is a framework that provides the logic needed to transfer time and expense transactions to a third-party payroll system. It contains logic for starting a payroll transfer, removing and/or re-running a transfer, and following up on already transferred results. 

IFS Health and Safety™ 

Enables you to streamline health and safety processes in your organization to facilitate compliance with standards specified by regulatory bodies and helps drive continuous improvement across your organization. It covers a wide area of functionality from incident and illness tracking to actions taken, safety management, risk assessment, medical examinations, material hazard information, first aid licenses, and distribution lists to alert the appropriate people once an incident has been filed.

IFS Recruitment™

Supports recruitment processes through a framework that enables recruitment data exchange with a third-party applicant tracking system (ATS). Personnel requisition requirements can be sent to an applicant tracking system for processing and candidate selection. Then, selected candidate information can be sent back for further processing and initiating onboarding activities.

IFS Maintenance Summary/Features

As part of a complete enterprise asset management (EAM) system, IFS’s asset management components enable you to anticipate and adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the world around you. Easy to work with and access, the solution contains the comprehensiveness and depth of functionality that you need for day-to-day asset requirements as well as continuous development and improvement. IFS offers you functionality for maintenance scheduling and work orders but also extends the EAM solution with human resources, purchasing, risk management, finance, document management, and more, making it a powerful application. 

IFS Equipment™

Manages and structures information about your machines, buildings, ventilation systems, transport systems, and/or any asset you need to maintain, whether it is a production facility or a complex delivery facility. Both functional and serial objects are handled with full cost control.

IFS Work Order™ 

Makes your maintenance operations more efficient, cutting direct and indirect costs and reducing the loss of revenue due to downtime. It manages all tasks affecting your maintenance organization — fault reporting, preparation, planning, execution, and final reporting. The graphical work order scheduling tool enables you to handle resources, skills, and operations by using drag-and-drop functions. Complete traceability via information access layers provides complete follow-up and analysis management. It also provides support for personal and equipment safety. 

IFS Preventive Maintenance™ 

Helps you manage schedules for regular preventive maintenance. You can organize and prepare all kinds of tasks in a facility. You can also schedule tasks according to your own maintenance parameters, such as machine condition, specific events, a calendar, or even whether an employee or contractor must perform the tasks. IFS Preventive Maintenance also manages tests required by various authorities as well as general, recurring tasks.

IFS Maintenance Planning Board™ 

Enables you to plan resources more efficiently by streamlining work order scheduling and activity planning, providing a common way of planning preventive maintenance and initiating corrective maintenance. The graphical drag-and-drop interface lets you make changes quickly. 

The IFS Maintenance Planning Board (MPB) schedules and optimizes planned maintenance activities based on constraints like availability of staff, material and tools, calendars, criticality, and priority of work. IFS MPB also features a unique capability to take operational plans into account when scheduling to disrupt operations as little as possible and make sudden changes in operations as an opportunity to perform maintenance. Through integration with IFS Human Resources, it enables you to automatically compare personnel needs with the availability of various competencies.

IFS Complex MRO™ 

Helps you provide superior customer service and reduce costs through leaner, more efficient MRO operations. By aligning personnel, material, and other resource requirements, you can reliably meet due dates and improve turnaround times. 

IFS Overall Equipment Effectiveness™ 

Enables you to increase revenue by making it easier to evaluate proposed improvements in equipment performance and to balance between KPIs to operate as effectively as possible. It manages all operational events, such as availability, performance, quality, and OEE. The solution has an easy-to-use graphical interface for operators and process engineers.

IFS Projects Summary/Features

The IFS Projects components make it easier for you to manage the complete project life cycle. Fully integrated with other IFS components such as financials, procurement, inventory, customer orders, manufacturing, engineering, human resources, document management, and asset and service management, the solution is used by many types of businesses that use project principles to manage their business, including project-based manufacturing, engineering, construction, contracting and infrastructure, EPCI and R&D organizations.

IFS Sub-Contract Management™ 

Makes it easier for you to manage simple or complex subcontractor activities and to support the business of sending out invitations to tender, recording responses, monitoring the negotiation process, and tracking the conversion from tender to contract. You can track progress and make valuations based on valuation methods such as progress and quantity installed. The solution has strong change management capabilities, so you can more easily manage variations to scope. You can send work instructions to your subcontractors, receive invoices and applications from the subcontractor and generate valuation certificates. The IFS Sub-Contract Management functionality can be used by any company that manages complex sales contracts with suppliers and subcontractors and finds it difficult to manage this using standard Purchasing.

IFS Contract Change Management™ 

Allows the user a formal process to manage change orders for existing contracts through the life of the contract. It provides full financial control with integration to IFS Projects Budget and Forecasts. It also provides the ability to send change requests through an approval process and to see the history of changes.

IFS Project Management™ 

Is a complete solution for planning and follow-up of projects. Project-oriented information can be monitored and maintained centrally through the complete project life cycle. IFS Project Management allows you to create projects using user-defined WBS. Templates can be used to establish business process consistency. Costs, revenue, hours, and quantities can be associated with the project WBS. Progress and Earned value are supported. All costs are tracked at all levels of the WBS, including Estimate, Baseline, Latest Forecast, Committed, Earned Value, and Actual. The Projects component holds the project plan, which is then used to generate the sub-plans for other areas such as procurement, engineering, manufacturing, installation, and construction. The project code part embeds the project dimension into GL and allows for the comprehensive financial management of a Project.

IFS Planning and Scheduling allows you to schedule project schedules in IFS. Gantt display options are available, and the planning logic supports dependencies and constraints. Resource planning and simulation are also supported. IFS Applications provides bi-directional integration to tools, such as Microsoft Project or Primavera.

IFS Project Budgeting and Forecasting™ 

Provides you with comprehensive functionality to manage project cost control. User-definable project forecast types enable you to support multiple versions of project estimates, budgets, forecasts, reviews, etc. IFS Project Budgeting and Forecasting provides functionality to manage project budgets and forecasts for both cost and revenue.

Multiple forecast versions plus one active budget version can be managed for each project, and it is possible to budget and forecast in different currencies. Project budgets or forecasts can be created and managed for all levels of the Work Breakdown Structure (Project, Sub-Project, Activity), as well as all levels of the optional Cost Breakdown Structure (Node, Cost/Revenue Element). Snapshot functionality is provided to capture the project status at a specific date and time, thus providing a static view of the project to allow forecasting from that point onwards. The system supports Estimate to Complete (ETC) and Estimate at Complete (EAC) principles. Budgets can be controlled by cost (CBS) and work breakdown structures (WBS). Spreading rules are available, including S Curves and Straight-Line logic.

IFS Risk Management™ 

Allows you to define project risk assessments. User-definable risk templates help establish consistent working practices. Potential problems and consequences are defined, so you can manage the actions and responses required to mitigate the risk.

IFS Project Reporting™ 

Allows you to process project cost transactions against a project, including time, expenses, materials, and other types of miscellaneous costs. For the project manager, it is a tool for project administration and for tracking time and costs related to project activities via follow-up functionality. The financial flows are fully supported and include cost accounting and complete invoicing features. You can also use the component as the basis for billing clients where reimbursable contracts are needed and attach price lists to projects to define the rates to be used.

Call Center Module

IFS Call Center™ enables you to effectively provide case handling as well as call center services to your customers for field service or product support. IFS Call & Case Management also supports thorough analytics by bundling a set of prepackaged measures for all parts of the process. Cases and tasks can be managed through advanced solutions for queue and escalation management. Customer views with information about open cases, work orders, due invoices, etc. are available. All communications around a case or task are logged in a journal. Tasks can be connected to different handover references like work order, purchase order and customer order.

Dynamic Scheduling Module

IFS Dynamic Scheduling™ enables you to optimize your mobile workforce by dynamically scheduling multiple business-defined constraints, such as skills and SLAs, to improve customer service and work efficiency. A highly scalable scheduling solution, it includes the Dynamic Scheduling Engine for handling day to day scheduling and dispatching of activities to resources in real time, an intuitive scheduling workbench for exception management and an appointment booking engine, which allows appointment slots to be generated in real time for future dates.

Mapping (Virtual Map Integration) Module

IFS Mapping (Virtual Map Integration)TM enables you to visualize driving routes, alerts on due jobs and efficiently plan last-minute jobs. It provides virtual road and satellite maps with overlay information about ongoing and planned jobs and is integrated with Microsoft Bing Maps for Enterprise (software and service). GPS coordinates can be fetched to an equipment object addressed through a BizAPI. Work orders can then be displayed on the map to visualize and estimate the driving route (time and kilometers) for field technicians. It is also possible to visualize information through configurable icons, information boxes and alerts. Any business object such as customers and sales orders in IFS Applications can be configured to be visualized in the map.

Mobile Work Order Module

IFS Mobile Work OrderTM supports separate and route work order processes and is applicable for Enterprise Asset Management and Service Management solutions along with manufacturers carrying out internal maintenance work in large plants and facilities. It also provides the flexibility of ​“store and go” features for field technicians to continue to work and report on work orders without connectivity. 

Service Management Module

IFS Service Management™ handles customer warranties, agreements and other additional services needed for both field technicians and for after sales purposes. The component also contains support for service contract management that allows the user to specify and control the service level for each customer and for each service object as precisely as ever possible. Once the service pricing and invoicing of services is agreed on with a customer, it can be set up using the Contract Management functionality and automatically controlled and followed during the entire contracted period. Services can then be invoiced periodically, after each service activity or as a combination of both. Fixed prices can be set up as well. Furthermore, the extent and scheduling of preventive maintenance activities can be specified for each service object.