How a parent company brought a newly acquired major manufacturer onto vanilla IFS Cloud in 5 months, on time, on scope and on budget.
from kickoff to go live
budget adherence with zero cost overruns
IFS Cloud with minimal customization
The Challenge
After acquiring a major manufacturer, the parent company needed to onboard it fast. Time is the enemy in M&A: every month without integration meant less visibility into the acquired business, and its legacy systems were unstable or incompatible with the parent.
A standard ERP rollout runs about 18 months, and a multi year, heavily customized program was an unacceptable risk. The board wanted the value of the deal realized quickly.
The Approach
To hit a 5 month mandate, the usual habit of heavy customization had to go. The new rule was simple: change the business process to fit IFS Cloud, rather than code the software to fit the legacy process. Speed came from choosing not to build what the business did not need.
The Solution
- Vanilla first design: out of the box IFS Cloud functionality, removing months of bespoke coding and greatly simplifying testing.
- Scope shield governance: strict stakeholder governance that redirected customization requests to business process change; only critical regulatory needs got through.
- Compressed timeline: discovery, configuration, testing and go live sequenced into 5 months instead of the 18 month industry norm.
- Evergreen platform: an architecture with no accumulated technical debt and a simple, low cost upgrade path.
The Results
Delivery
5 months
from kickoff to go live, precisely on the planned date
100%
budget adherence with no overruns from development delays
Integration
Purely vanilla IFS Cloud with zero technical debt
The acquired manufacturer brought into the parent company with zero operational disruption