IFS to enter India, again

By Balaka Baruah Aggarwal

NEW DELHI: Swedish ERP major, Industrial and Finance Systems (IFS), which made a brief foray into the Indian market in 1997, is coming back. And, this time to stay, or so it claims. With its tie-up with IIS Infotech, IFS will offer its third generation component-based ERP package--IFS Application 2000, which the company claims is the only component-based ERP software in the market that allows companies to pick and choose components of the modules and build a customized package instead of buying an entire ERP package.

Component-based ERP shall be the future, claims Mark Rabjohns, President of IFS. Quoting the Gartner Group to support his claim, he says, "By 2001, 60 per cent of all ERP will be component-based." The product is targeted at the process industries, utility sector and engineering companies and plans to capture around 3-5 per cent of the market share over the next two years.

IIS is actively promoting the product by creating awareness through seminars and by targeting educational and training institutes. The consultation, implementation and support will be provided for by IIS. According to IFS, the country is only now ready to embrace ERP. Rabjohns opines that in 1997 the Indian market was too nascent. Having said that, he was quick to add IFS was ready to capitalize on the need created in India over the last two years by ERP majors like SAP, BAAN, and Oracle. As of now, all the modules are available in the market except the finance module, which is being modified to address local issues. The price of the product is not known but is learnt that it will be competitively priced.