The IFS Partner Evaluation Kit

Score every IFS partner on the same nine dimensions rather than on the demo: delivery capacity and who is actually on your project, certified IFS Cloud skills by discipline, implementation methodology and phase gates, data migration approach, integration landscape, security and architecture, commercial model and change-order behaviour, hypercare and evergreen release management, and references at your revenue scale. The most useful question in any IFS partner evaluation is simply "name the people who will be on my project and show me their IFS certifications" — the answer separates firms that deliver with their own certified consultants from firms that will staff your program after they win it. The evaluation kit on this page lists the questions under each dimension so your team can lift them straight into an RFI or RFP scorecard.

A useful IFS RFI asks for five things a brochure cannot fake: a completed requirements matrix mapped to IFS Cloud capability (standard, configuration, or custom layer for each line), a reference architecture showing the integration landscape and where data resides, the named delivery team with individual IFS certifications, an implementation plan with phase gates and the client-side roles you must staff yourself, and three references at comparable revenue and complexity. Add a security questionnaire and evidence of insurance if AI or cloud components are in scope. ESS responds promptly and agrees a response date with you when your RFI arrives, because selection teams work to their own calendar, not a vendor's.

Differently, not cheaper-but-worse. A tier-1 SI brings scale, global rollout capacity and a brand that is easy to defend internally — and, typically, a pyramid staffing model where the people who pitch are not the people who deliver. ESS is a North America IFS Gold Partner with 15+ years of IFS expertise and 18 individual IFS Cloud certifications across nine credentials; the consultants in your evaluation meetings are the consultants on your project, and the same team stays on through hypercare and support. For a single-instance or few-site IFS Cloud implementation or an Apps 8/9/10 to IFS Cloud upgrade, that continuity and the depth of ESS's custom-layer and integration experience matter more than headcount.

ESS's IFS work runs at enterprise scale today: 1,900+ custom-layer objects on a single IFS estate, 46 IFS components extended and 220+ integration endpoints around IFS, alongside delivered programs including an IFS Cloud implementation for a Swedish energy utility, real-time integration for Shanghai Metro, IFS to Baan integration and Ariba and Walmart API integrations. For a growing, mid-sized organization, that is the relevant proof point — not partner headcount, but whether the partner has already run an IFS estate as complex as the one you are asking them to build. ESS backs it with 25+ years in ERP and 100% client retention. Ask for the reference calls; they are the fastest way to verify any of it.

For a useful response rather than a generic one: your current IFS version (or incumbent ERP), site and legal-entity count, approximate user count by role, your integration inventory, rough transaction volumes, and your target go-live window. If document processing is in scope, add monthly document volumes by type. With that, ESS can return a realistic plan, a defensible estimate and a clear view of the key risks and how they will be managed. If the evaluation is under NDA, ESS will sign yours rather than insisting on its own paper.

Yes — for AI document processing on IFS, ESS runs a scoped proof of concept on your own documents rather than a scripted demo. Send a representative sample of real customer orders, purchase order acknowledgements or supplier invoices under NDA, and ESS returns measured field-level extraction accuracy, an achievable straight-through-processing rate and an exception taxonomy showing exactly which documents would need a human and why. That gives an evaluation committee measured numbers on their own data to put in a business case, instead of a vendor's benchmark on a vendor's sample. For implementation and upgrade work, the equivalent is a paid readiness assessment that produces an estate inventory, a customization-debt report and a sized cutover plan you own regardless of who you select.