Ep. 17: From the Show Floor (Again) at IFS Unleashed with Tyler Sarich and Steve Mould

Live from IFS Unleashed: Conversations with Tyler Sarich and Steve Mould
The Integrate Intelligently Podcast — with Jeff Bickler (CADTALK), featuring Tyler Sarich and Steve Mould (IFS)

Jeff: This is The Integrate Intelligently Podcast from CADTALK Software — a podcast about the people, programs, and processes that come together to make businesses successful. We're a software integration company, but we believe intelligent integration goes much deeper than software.

Hello, and welcome back to The Integrate Intelligently Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Bickler, with CADTALK. This week we're at IFS Unleashed in Orlando, Florida — the premier IFS world conference, where customers and partners from all over the world come together to see what IFS is doing with IFS Cloud and the new Industrial AI capabilities. With me today is a colleague I work with closely, Tyler Sarich. Tyler, great to have you here.

Meet Tyler Sarich
Tyler: Great to be here, Jeff — thanks for having me on.

Jeff: Excited to be here in Orlando with you, getting to reconnect with everyone in the IFS network. We've worked together for a while now — tell everyone a bit about yourself, where you're from, and what you do at IFS.

Tyler: Quick background — I've been with the company just over nine years now. I actually started on the implementation side, working directly with customers across manufacturing — project-based, discrete, and process manufacturing industries. About six or seven years ago, I moved into pre-sales, where I now cover the product from engineering through manufacturing, inventory, warehousing, and quality. I'm based in Chicago, so it was a nice short flight down here to Orlando.

Jeff: Like you, I started on the consulting side working directly with the product before moving into what you're doing now. For anyone in the audience less familiar — what exactly does "pre-sales" mean? I remember the first time I heard that term, thinking, how do you pre-sell something?

Tyler: Fair — it's a bit of an industry-specific term. Ultimately, on every deal, there's a sales rep or account manager building the direct relationship with the customer. My team and I are the functional experts supporting that relationship — we actually go on-site, learn what the customer's doing today, walk through their manufacturing process, their financials, supply chain, engineering bills of material, routings. We take what they're doing today and map it into an IFS solution — but it's not just replicating their current process, it's figuring out how we can genuinely make their operations easier and better.

Along the way, with companies running something like AutoCAD or Windchill, we often find we need to bring CADTALK into the deal, especially if they want true bidirectional integration with IFS. Out of the box, we can handle a standard Excel import into our PDM — but a lot of customers want genuine bidirectional collaboration, pulling that data into manufacturing materials or other areas of the software. Jeff and I have actually worked together and closed several deals bringing CADTALK into exactly that kind of scenario. Ultimately, pre-sales owns that full solution conversation during the sales cycle.

Jeff: I always joke that I'm basically the "demo jockey" — just there to show the product.

Tyler: Pretty much.

Understanding Pre-Sales at IFS
Jeff: How did you actually land in manufacturing and consulting to begin with — do you have a manufacturing background, an engineering degree?

Tyler: None of the above, actually. I started with IFS pretty much straight out of school, through what was essentially a new-starters program — bringing in people right out of college and educating them on ERP software generally, and IFS specifically. I began as a junior consultant on implementation, shadowing different senior team members for the first year and a half to two years of my career before taking on projects independently. That's really where my real-world experience came from — taking customers from project initiation all the way through go-live, while leaning on colleagues along the way to ask the right questions. Almost all of my actual expertise comes from direct, face-to-face customer experience in real-life scenarios.

Jeff: So not an engineer or manufacturer by trade — what did you actually study?

Tyler: Sales and marketing, specifically. I originally thought I'd end up in a straight sales career, and then once I joined IFS, I ended up gravitating toward the consulting side and genuinely fell in love with manufacturing and what we could do for customers there. I eventually brought my sales background back into the mix so I could present solutions to customers in a more consultative, solution-selling way — really weaving my formal education together with the real-world experience I'd built up.

Jeff: Same story for me, honestly — non-engineering, non-manufacturing background, and I learned almost everything the same way: working directly with customers, learning manufacturing and the underlying vocabulary in real time. One of the hardest parts for me starting out was just the sheer volume of new vocabulary — not just manufacturing-specific terms, but the fact that different companies use ten different words for the exact same concept. Take master data, an "item" — depending on the company, that might be called a part, a stock item, a stock code, an engineering part — endless synonyms for the same underlying thing. That was a real early challenge for me. What was the toughest part for you?

Tyler: Good question — I'd call it the "alphabet soup" of ERP. ERP itself is an acronym, Enterprise Resource Planning, but then you're learning MRP, Advanced Planning Board, ATP, all these different planning philosophies layered on top. Learning what each of those acronyms actually meant in practice was a real early struggle — CRP, Capacity Requirements Planning, and then everyone has their own verbiage on top of that. "Master planning" or "master scheduling" means something completely different depending on the company. In IFS's language, it's more about taking a forecast, building demand against it, and consuming that forecast over time — but to some customers, "master forecast" means something else entirely, closer to what's sometimes called S&OP, Sales and Operations Planning — another acronym for you.

So yes, alphabet-soup acronyms, but also, like you mentioned, genuinely customer-specific verbiage on top of that — a "shop order" in IFS is a manufacturing order, but some customers call that a "work order," which in IFS actually refers to a maintenance work order instead. Totally different meaning, customer by customer. Learning that vocabulary does double duty — it helps us tailor the conversation during a demo, which shows the customer we genuinely understand them, but we also essentially have to maintain an internal "IFS dictionary" mapping what they mean back to true ERP terminology.

Learning the Language of ERP
Jeff: I don't usually mention this, but I used to be a teacher — language was actually my background — so this resonates a lot. A huge part of consulting work is genuinely listening to a customer, understanding the vocabulary they use to describe concepts they already know well, and then translating that into terms everyone in the room can agree on. I remember, in demos and on projects, having a customer explain their engineering or manufacturing process, then translating that in my own head into how it maps onto the system, and reflecting it back: "so what I'm hearing is it works like this — we'd call this X, and in IFS that's called Y." Going back and forth until everyone's genuinely aligned on the fact that these different terms all describe the same underlying thing.

Tyler: Exactly — and ultimately we're still delivering the same value to the customer regardless. It's really about alignment — when we get into project planning and scoping, genuinely speaking the same language throughout the process is what carries you from implementation all the way to that true value-added ROI moment of bringing IFS Cloud live.

Consulting vs. Pre-Sales
Jeff: That makes a lot of sense. How many years total were you in consulting before moving to pre-sales?

Tyler: Just over two years — like I mentioned, a good chunk of that was the junior shadowing period before I started running my own projects, including a stretch as manufacturing lead on a couple of implementations. Most of my time was on the project-based manufacturing team — true engineer-to-order companies using our work breakdown structure, running the full APQP-style process: design, prototyping, manufacturing, and ultimately the sales cycle for that product.

Jeff: Did you prefer straight consulting, or did you always know you wanted to move toward sales-oriented consulting?

Tyler: Honestly, I like both — it's really a mixed bag depending on what you're after. In pure consulting, you're typically deeply embedded with one, two, maybe three customers a year — essentially married to that account, on-site or engaged with them weekly or monthly, which I genuinely enjoyed. Pre-sales gives me a very different kind of variety — I might work with anywhere from 20 to 50 customers in a year, across a huge range of industries. One of my favorite parts of pre-sales specifically is the plant tours and discovery calls across such different customer types — everything from a defense customer manufacturing jet engines to a pet food manufacturer, all running on some version of the same core IFS Cloud platform. Pre-sales lets me explore all of those different avenues. Both roles are genuinely fun in their own way — I'm drawn to the faster sales-cycle variety, and the sheer range of customers I get to work with day to day, which is really what pulled me toward this role.

Jeff: I was just going to add — Tyler was touching on his pre-sales and demo experience, and I relate a lot there too. My teaching background genuinely helped with presenting and being comfortable in front of a room of customers — you're essentially on stage, trying to deliver real value and show how you can solve the problems they're facing, because they're evaluating you just as much as the product. Tyler, I know you've got places to be — really appreciate you stopping by. Anything else before you head out?

Tyler: No, that about covers it — great to be here, thanks for having me, enjoy the rest of the conference.

Jeff: You too — and thank you for everything CADTALK gets to do alongside IFS here. It genuinely helps differentiate IFS in the market to be able to show live integration across engineering, manufacturing, and project delivery, rather than just walking through a PowerPoint like some competitors might. Really appreciate it, Tyler.

Tyler: Thank you, Jeff, and team.

Meet Steve Mould
Jeff: Welcome back to The Integrate Intelligently Podcast — I'm here with a special returning guest, Steve Mould, joining us all the way from the UK. Steve, welcome back for a second appearance on the show.

Steve: Hi, Jeff — a real privilege to be here at Unleashed. Exciting conference, great to see you again, and I'm really looking forward to the whole exhibition — the opportunity to be here with CADTALK and meet your customers is fantastic.

Jeff: Last time we talked, we covered your extensive experience with IFS — what do you enjoy most about coming to events like this?

Steve: It's a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, meet customers, and swap real experience. Everyone's got war stories from these implementations, and events like this are a chance to share that, listen to people's current concerns and challenges, and hopefully give them a bit of confidence and encouragement along the way.

Building Relationships at IFS Unleashed
Jeff: That makes sense. What I personally love about these events — since you're in the UK and I'm in the US — is that we simply don't get to see each other in person very often. Same with customers, honestly — we live in such a remote-first world now, everyone's a flat 2D face on a screen. It's genuinely nice to shake hands, share a meal, actually be in the same room, because you build a relationship so much more deeply sitting across a table from someone, sharing a pint or a meal, than you ever can purely through a screen. So for me, this is really about the people I work with regularly but rarely get to actually see.

Steve: How long are you here for the event?

Jeff: Let me flip that back to you, Steve — how long are you here for?

Steve: The whole event — I landed Saturday and fly back out next Saturday. Full itinerary, plenty of keynote sessions to catch. I'm genuinely excited to hear more about what IFS has been bringing to market — the AI message looks really compelling, something that should bring real benefit to businesses over the next two or three years. Sustainability is another big theme, clearly important to a lot of businesses right now, and I'm also keen to look at some of the ecosystem tools — things like Kaddra — that bring real efficiency and optimization gains. It's genuinely great to watch the partner ecosystem keep growing and maturing.

Jeff: What excites you most about what IFS has recently announced? You've been working IFS projects for what, 20-plus years now?

Steve: I've been in the ERP space about 30 years total, 25 of those specifically with IFS. Funny enough, we're actually back in Orlando, in this exact same hotel where I attended an IFS conference 20 years ago — so it's genuinely striking to see how much the ecosystem's grown since then: more customers, far more capability. It's exciting watching the business keep developing — and as I said, seeing friends, colleagues, and customers again is really what makes it worthwhile.

Jeff: After 25 years with IFS, you must know just about everyone by now.

Steve: There's a steady stream of new people coming in, and some of the folks I came up with are starting to retire now — makes me feel a bit old, honestly.

Jeff: Happens to all of us eventually. What sessions have you caught so far?

Steve: The keynotes, and the sustainability track. I've also got a number of executive meetings lined up to talk through how we can collaborate more closely going forward — I'm working on several active customer projects right now, so this is a good opportunity to build on those relationships directly.

Jeff: I think the real takeaway from what you're describing is how much this is fundamentally about relationship-building — relationships matter enormously, especially, in my experience, with manufacturing companies specifically. That trust you build in person really matters, because these companies are depending on the systems — IFS, CADTALK, whatever it is — to run their actual business. The stronger that relationship, and the more they see you as a genuine partner rather than just a vendor, the smoother the whole project tends to go, because everyone's clearly working toward the same shared goal instead of a purely transactional relationship.

Steve: Absolutely, Jeff — sometimes people make a significant investment and still aren't fully confident it's going to deliver the value they expect. Getting to come to an event like this and talk directly with people who've genuinely lived through it is really reassuring, and helps give them confidence for that next step.

Jeff: That's exactly it — coming to something like IFS Unleashed, seeing other customers who've had real success, talking to partners, consultants, and others across the ecosystem, gives people both reassurance and practical tips — "we tried this, it worked well," or "we tried this, it didn't." That's the real value of the community. Mark, the CEO, talks about IFS as a genuine community, and I think that's exactly right — it makes a real difference, because people can learn directly from each other. Even with something like 8,000 IFS employees globally, and however many thousands of customers, it still manages to feel like a genuinely small, tight-knit community when you get everyone together in one place.

Steve's Current Projects
Jeff: What does the next several months look like for you — more projects, more travel here in the US?

Steve: I'm fortunate to be working with a motorsports company right now, delivering a turnkey project spanning finance, procurement, straight through into manufacturing and engineering, plus the full supply chain and inventory management picture. Really strong team — both on our side and the customer's, very knowledgeable, and it's moving at a fast pace. After that, I'll be rolling onto a much larger, more global project — a private equity-backed group with around 23 different companies, none of which currently share a standard set of processes. That project is really centered on building a common, standardized process framework, then rolling it out across the businesses in a series of implementation waves — some centralized, some not. It's going to be a genuinely long-term engagement, and I'm excited to join that team and help deliver the investment value the private equity sponsor is expecting.

Jeff: What do you enjoy most about working ERP projects specifically? Thirty years in, what keeps you genuinely excited to keep doing this — I'd imagine after that long, it could start to feel repetitive?

Steve: You genuinely learn something on every single project, and so much of it comes down to relationships — meeting new people, working through different business challenges, and designing a solution that's truly going to deliver customer value. Every project is different, with its own unique challenges, even though a lot of the core design principles carry across — so you're constantly building on that accumulated knowledge and experience while still applying it fresh each time. That brings a lot of personal satisfaction, professionally, but also on a human level — you genuinely make friends, build new colleague relationships along the way. After doing this so long, I just love it — I love business challenges, finding genuinely creative solutions. I'm quite analytical in my approach, so from the outside it might look effortless, but there's a lot of work happening behind the scenes to make these projects actually succeed.

Advice for Aspiring Consultants
Jeff: If you were talking to someone still in university, weighing all the paths they could take — what would your pitch be for going into ERP consulting, or working somewhere like IFS?

Steve: My personal view is — I genuinely love teaching and mentoring younger people on projects. But I also think there's real value in first going into general business and getting hands-on experience actually doing the work a business needs done. Once you've got that real experience, you can bring it into a consulting role with genuine authority. It's important for fresh graduates to keep coming through the industry, of course, but honestly, some of the best consultants I've worked with are people who came from industry first — they've actually run sales operations, run manufacturing plants — and that real-world experience lets them speak with genuine confidence about how to implement an ERP successfully.

Jeff: I say this a lot, and it doesn't always land, because people know I'm the odd one out who used to teach — but so much of what you just described sounds exactly like teaching. The relationship-building, delivering real value to the people you're working with — sure, they're adults instead of students, but conceptually it's remarkably similar. I'd say if someone's genuinely passionate about helping people, teaching them, watching them improve — obviously they could become a teacher outright, but consulting is a real, viable path for that same instinct, and it can pay quite well too. You get to learn a business deeply and deliver real value from that understanding.

Steve: I'd add that there are different flavors of ERP consultant — some purely functional, some purely technical — but someone who brings genuine real-world business knowledge adds a lot more value in a consultative role. It's really about finding the right balance.

Jeff: I see that balance constantly too — it's not just functional versus technical skill, it's the soft skills layered on top, what people call EQ, that let you actually navigate all of it. Industry knowledge is critical, and like you said, people who've actually worked in the industry and lived through the pain can speak with real authority — "I've done this myself." At CADTALK, several of our team came directly from industry — worked with IFS, other ERPs, other CAD systems — and they genuinely know what it's like to live with that problem day to day. When they speak, it comes from real authority and real lived pain, and that's a powerful story that genuinely connects with customers.

I actually had a call earlier today with a new prospective customer running a fully homegrown ERP, integrated with their CAD system — something they'd built entirely in-house and were genuinely proud of. A big part of that call was really about listening first — understanding what they built, why, and how it actually works for them today — before getting into how we might help them move to something more modern, not just from an integration standpoint but the ERP itself. It really comes down to empathy — connecting with them, walking alongside them through that change, and helping take away some of the natural fear that comes with it.

Steve: A hundred percent — that emotional intelligence, that relationship, the work that goes into it — that's something I emphasize with our own teams too. It's easy for engineers, or technically minded people generally, to overlook, but you genuinely have to work at helping the customer feel confident that you're going to solve the problem together. That makes an enormous difference.

Jeff: Very similar to teaching, honestly — students walking into a new class are often genuinely terrified: "am I going to fail this class, is this teacher going to be tough on me" — the same anxieties we all remember having as students ourselves. It's a very similar feeling on these projects. Imagine being pulled out of your normal role at a company and dropped onto a project team you may not even know well — completely new territory, something you've likely never done before. Part of the consultant's job is making sure that person genuinely understands what they need to do, when, and how, and helping guide them confidently through that decision-making process — because if the wrong decisions get made at the wrong time, it causes real delays downstream. A consultant's real value is laying out the actual options clearly, offering an experience-based recommendation where it makes sense, and helping the team actually close out that decision so the project can move forward into design.

Jeff: That's exactly right. I remember when I first started at CADTALK, I was laser-focused on building up my technical knowledge, since that side felt genuinely new to me — the teaching and relationship side came naturally, since that was already my background. But I've seen the reverse just as often — people who come from a heavily technical background who I end up coaching more on the relationship and emotional side, because genuinely technical people tend to gravitate toward the hard problem-solving itself, which they love, but the relationship-building doesn't always come as naturally. Both are genuinely valuable skills worth developing deliberately.

Steve, I want to be mindful of your time so you can get to your other sessions — anything else you'd like to add about your experience here, or what's going on for you today?

Steve: Just that it's always fantastic spending time with you, Jeff. What you're building with CADTALK, and how you're working across the customer base here, is clearly resonating — I've heard plenty of people on the show floor say how pleased they are with how things are going. You're clearly adding real value. I'd genuinely encourage anyone listening with an integration requirement — stitching a PLM system into IFS — to get in touch with CADTALK, because this team has the real experience to help guide you through that journey. Thanks for the time today, really glad I got to drop by.

Jeff: Thanks a lot, Steve — enjoy the rest of the conference, and we'll talk again soon.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Integrate Intelligently Podcast from CADTALK Software. Don't forget to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss a future episode. Video versions are available on CADTALK's YouTube page, linked in the show notes. The Integrate Intelligently Podcast is hosted by CADTALK CEO Scott Bickler and COO Jeff Bickler; our producer is marketing manager John Thomas. If you'd like to share a story on the podcast or explore a partnership, email marketing@cadtalk.com and mention "podcast" in the subject line.