Case Study: Jakob AB unites global sales and production and saves time and cost with IFS Cloud

IFS seamlessly unites multiple global sales and production operations across six countries for Jakob AG

Jakob AG, a Swiss family-owned specialist in custom rope, cable and engineered steel products founded in 1904, ships bespoke solutions from manufacturing sites in Switzerland and Vietnam and maintains sales offices in the US, Austria, Germany and France. Rapid international growth exposed limits in its legacy proprietary system—poor intercompany support, manual re-keying and limited real-time visibility—while a small internal IT team needed an enterprise-grade ERP to streamline configure-to-order workflows, supply-chain planning and multi-currency finance.

Jakob implemented IFS Cloud with partner bytics in an 18-month, phased rollout (Vietnam live July 2022, USA October 2022, wider roll-out from January 2023), creating a single-instance shared workflow and modified Configure-to-Order process with Excel imports and auto-generated configuration IDs. The solution eliminated duplicated data entry, enabled batch processing of orders, automated invoicing and multicurrency consolidation, and delivered 24/7 access—resulting in faster, more accurate order flow for 80–100 daily shop orders, significant time savings (an expected ≥0.5 hour per salesperson per day), improved visibility and lower costs, with plans for a customer self-service configuration tool within 12–24 months.

Jakob AB