The IFS Cloud features hiding in plain sight

Your IFS Cloud already has features, such as lobbies, workflows, scheduled Quick Reports and Page Designer, that can replace spreadsheets and manual reports. You find them by starting from your teams’ workarounds and holding every release update up against that list.

Your IFS system is running and your users can get their work done. Many companies treat their ERP system as a workhorse that just needs to keep running, rarely as a source of continuous improvement. New features that could make a manual report obsolete then stay unused.

How do you find the features your teams could use better?

Compare the features available in your release and licence agreement with what your teams use in practice. An IFS system may offer functionality that your organisation has not configured or adopted. That makes the opportunity concrete without assuming that every organisation leaves the same proportion unused.

The cost isn’t in the licences themselves; you pay for those either way. The real cost is what your people do because the system isn’t working for them, and often against them.

Think of the spreadsheets maintained alongside the ERP. The manual planning done in Excel, because the advanced planning module was never configured. The hours finance spends merging data that should come from a single source.

“We saw a client where shop floor employees were making five or six extra scans per order. Neatly configured during the implementation, for a reason that made sense at the time. But that reason had been gone for years. Nobody had questioned it, because the system kept asking for it.”

Patrick shakes his head. “Your company changes. Your processes change with it. But your system does not know that unless you tell it.”

That mismatch has real costs. At a manufacturer of large waste processing machines, Eqeep automated the incoming invoice flow. The finance team now saves at least eight hours a week on repetitive work.

Patrick: “They did not realise how much time they were losing. Only when we mapped it out did they see it. Eight hours, every week, doing work the system could handle.”

At a German machine builder, the inbound order process was automated via electronic data interchange (EDI). Every order now saves five minutes of admin. The existing team focuses on quality control and customer satisfaction instead of data entry.

Which IFS Cloud features replace a spreadsheet or manual work?

Often one of the configuration and reporting tools in IFS Cloud. Five examples from the IFS documentation follow, each next to a familiar workaround.

• A spreadsheet overview someone updates every week. A lobby shows what matters at that moment on one page, with counters, lists and charts drawing on IFS Cloud or external sources. From an element, users click through to the page in IFS.
• A weekly report someone compiles and emails by hand. A Quick Report of the SQL Statement type, written by someone who knows SQL, can run on a fixed schedule. IFS then emails the result as an Excel file to the chosen users, or checks it into Document Management.
• A fixed sequence of manual steps. According to IFS, workflows can eliminate repetitive manual tasks by automating steps. Business analysts and subject matter experts can configure them without custom development.
• Financial reports merged in Excel. IFS describes IFS Business Reporter as a reporting tool that extends the capabilities of Microsoft Excel, while the data stays in IFS Cloud.
• Fields nobody uses, or entries people keep forgetting. With Page Designer you hide fields, make them mandatory or change labels and layout. This can apply per company, user group or user.

Whether a tool is available to you depends on your release, licence agreement and access rights. People decide: your process owner chooses which workaround goes first.

Why do new features stay unused after a release update?

Because keeping up takes time that daily operations rarely leave. IFS Cloud gets two release updates a year and usually a service update every month. What you can do with your processes grows every six months, including AI in IFS Cloud.

But every update needs an impact analysis and testing. Users then need training, and the new features need configuring. For an internal IT team, this feels like an extra project on top of daily operations.

So the update gets installed on the technical side, but the new functionality often never gets used. The system is up to date. The way people work is not.

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Which workaround can this release update remove?

Start from your own workarounds and hold the release update up against them. Ask key users and process owners which lists, reports and duplicate entries they keep outside IFS. That list is your yardstick. A new feature that touches none of those workarounds gets a lower priority.

IFS describes new features on its blog and on the releases page of ifs.com. For 26R1, for example, IFS names MRP Simulation. It lets planners model demand shifts, supply disruptions and capacity constraints against real planning data, without touching the live plan. If your planner runs such scenarios in Excel today, that is a candidate.

Before applying a release update, you run an impact analysis in the Release Update Studio. It flags customisations that overlap with the update, and workflows that call an API with a known breaking change. That analysis is about risk. It does not show which new feature could replace a workaround.

Check what is going away as well. For features IFS deprecates, IFS publishes a plan on the IFS Community with the replacement. One example, custom event actions using Execute Online SQL, is covered in IFS development and optimisation.

Your process owner decides, feature by feature, whether to configure it now, plan it for later or leave it. Under the IFS support policy of February 2026 you must run one of the four latest releases; IFS maintenance and support explains what that involves. Let the review ride along with those updates. Plan your upgrade.

Is one administrator enough?

For daily operations, often yes; for improvement, in practice almost never. Many organisations have one or maybe two functional administrators. They handle daily questions, put out small fires and keep the system running. They’re indispensable.

That leaves little time to study each release, talk to departments about improvements or find the unused module that would add most value. Administration has become reactive, because incidents consume all available time. You’re paying for a system that can do far more, and using it like a calculator.

How do you get sustained attention for improvement?

By giving improvement a fixed place in how your application is managed. Within Eqeep’s application management, you can choose a dedicated team with release guidance and periodic reviews, plus reports on usage, incidents and improvement opportunities. A team with direct lines to IFS then analyses every release and proposes which manual process an existing feature could take over.

Hiring another consultant for a one-off project won’t do this. For a fixed monthly fee, you get access to a complete team of IFS specialists. That’s how you move from reactive management to proactive optimisation.

Not every company needs this. If you have a large, experienced IFS team with time for continuous improvement, you’ll manage just fine on your own. But be honest about your internal capacity. If your administrator is mainly busy resetting passwords and closing tickets, little time is left for the future.

Questions about IFS Cloud features

Which IFS Cloud features can replace a spreadsheet or manual work?

Often configuration and reporting tools in IFS Cloud, depending on your release, licence agreement and access rights. Lobbies show counters, lists and charts on one page; scheduled Quick Reports email an Excel file to fixed recipients. Workflows automate recurring manual steps, and Page Designer hides fields or makes them mandatory.

How often does IFS release new features?

Twice a year, usually with one release update in spring and one in autumn. According to IFS, service updates, usually monthly, can also contain smaller improvements.

Who decides which new features we adopt?

Your own team, with the owner of the process that changes. Eqeep reviews each release for functionality relevant to your processes. Your team then chooses what to configure now, what comes later and what stays as it is.

Can we set up lobbies and workflows ourselves?

Yes, with the right access rights. IFS counts lobbies, workflows and Page Designer as configuration, which customers typically do themselves or have someone do on their behalf. IFS prefers that work to sit with power users, experienced users whom Eqeep calls key users, or with application consultants. Creating or changing a lobby requires an appropriate permission set.

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