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IFS aims to double Asia Pacific growth

By Yap Cheng Theng, ACC on August 15, 2000

Summary

Industrial & Financial Systems (IFS) hopes to catch the Asia Pacific's e-business tidal wave and double its business in the region this year.

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KUALA LUMPUR--Industrial & Financial Systems (IFS) hopes to catch the Asia Pacific's e-business tidal wave and double its business in the region this year.

The developer and supplier of e-business applications, despite having a presence in eight countries--Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Sri Lanka and China--and represented by distributors in four--Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and India--had not been gaining significant revenues from the region.

The region is currently contributing less than five percent to its worldwide sales compared to the US alone which is contributing 25 percent.

The Sweden-based company recorded a turnover of US$240 million (RM912 million) and had an overall growth of 75 percent in 1999.

"We have been successful in Europe and US. Now we want to focus our approach in Asia Pacific. Our market share in Asia is small but growing fast. The region has now recovered from its economic slowdown and we hope to catch the rising tide again," said IFS Group vice president and president of R&D Michael Hallen.

Reviewing its strategy, Hallen said the company will now focus on four major markets to up its sales. These are Malaysia, Singapore, China and Australia.

It has also identified four sectors--telecoms, energy, service management and trade and logistics--as its key driver for growth.

The company yesterday signed on Deloitte & Touche Management Consulting Sdn Bhd as a strategic partner in sales and marketing, consulting and implementation of e-business solutions.

It also recently appointed its Malaysian subsidiary, IFS Malaysia as the e-business competency center for Asia Pacific.

"Malaysia is one of the 10 places in the world where we have our research and development (R&D) teams. The team here is focused on developing multimedia content to be incorporated into our software and applications," Hallen told Malaysia.CNET.com in a phone interview.

IFS Group spends up to US$60 million worldwide on R&D and has about 700 people worldwide in this division. The R&D team in Malaysia accounts for less than 20 people.

The company introduces two major releases a year and is currently in the midst of launching the IFS Application 2000 release into the Asia Pacific market, having started off in Shanghai last week, in Kuala Lumpur yesterday and today in Singapore.

"The major highlight of our new product is the use of object-oriented system designed to easily assist traditional businesses wanting to move into the e-business environment. It has 50 functional business components and comes with 10,000 well-defined object models which they can pick and choose from," said Hallen.

IFS Applications include web-based ERP components, Internet storefronts, customer relationship management (CRM) applications, connectivity to other ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions, and collaboration with process control systems with a variety of e-commerce engines.

IFS customers in the region include DiGi Telecommunications Bhd, Port Tanjong Pelepas, Asia Pulp and Paper Ltd (Malaysia) as well as PT Pupuk Kujang. Indonesia.

Today, the company included National Semiconductor Corporation to its list of clientele.

IFS said it will provide its e-business and enterprise solutions software for use in National's manufacturing operations support. The deal includes installation at National's assembly sites in Malaysia and Singapore.

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