Our Customers Get All Their Needs in One Software

IAS continues its journey as an ERP manufacturer as a global technology company today. The company offers a holistic service to its customers with consultancy and training services as well as software and hardware products. In addition to the ERP solution caniasERP, IAS gathered other innovations such as IoT, big data, AI (artificial intelligence), cloud solutions, iasDB, caniasIQ and e-Government integrations under canias4.0. We listened to Ilker Er, the company's general manager, about the latest developments in IAS, which continues to work to guide its customers on their Industry 4.0 journeys.

Could you briefly introduce your company? (establishment history, brief information about your products and services, and the authorization and quality documents you have)

Founded by Yaşar Hakan Karabiber in 1989, IAS started out as an ERP manufacturer. Until yesterday, our job was to provide an ERP software and service that companies can manage their business processes in a fully integrated manner with caniasERP. However, the era we are in has changed, we are in the age of Industry 4.0. Digitalization is happening faster than ever before. Today, people and companies do not want to be content with one-sided or limited solutions, especially in technology solutions. They prefer holistic solutions that respond to all their needs, and that's what it should be! IAS has always turned its face to the future. We are always prepared in advance for the future. For this reason, we have entered into radical changes in recent years. Now, we are not just an ERP company: we started to offer our holistic technology solutions to our customers under the roof of canias4.0. In the main title of canias4.0 technologies, in addition to our caniasERP solution, we offer many products, especially IoT, big data, AI (artificial intelligence), cloud solutions, iasDB, caniasIQ and e-Government integrations. We enable companies to access all technologies they may need in their Industry 4.0 journey with canias4.0. Today, with its technological solutions, IAS provides services in 15 languages ​​in 31 countries with more than 1000 customers, more than 30 thousand users and more than 50 business partners around the world. We continue our operations successfully with our partners and our offices in the World such as Germany, Turkey, India, United Arab Emirates, South Korea, United States and our head office in Switzerland.

What software products and solutions do you offer? What is the number of customers you have reached? In which sectors do you have predominantly software, products, services and solutions?

With canias4.0, we offer a holistic solution to companies' technology needs. As I mentioned before, our customers not only obtain their ERP needs but also their requirements such as big data, cloud, IoT, business intelligence applications, e-Government integrations with a single software, without the need for a third party software. Also, you know that in our age, we do everything on the web. Mobility and flexibility are of paramount importance to users. I think its importance has increased especially during the pandemic process. 21 years ago, caniasERP became the first ERP software that can run on the web. Now, thanks to our new web client product, it can work on any browser, regardless of device. Thus, our users can access caniasERP whenever they want and wherever they want. On the other hand, caniasERP is software that can run on the cloud for many years. Big data is one of the most important issues of our day and one of our important agenda items. We were aware that the database layer is very important for our work in this field. For this reason, we have developed our own database, iasDB, in the past years. iasDB has given us a very important freedom of movement. Especially in data-related works that require performance such as big data and machine learning, iasDB's customizable and developable functions provide a great advantage. Reporting is also an important need in today's world where there is so much data and information. We also had solutions in this area, but the canias IQ solution we developed in recent years is a very useful tool that enables our customers to report and visualize their data efficiently. One of the most important concepts of Industry4.0 is IoT. We can say that everything is connected to a network. Everyone has access to the Internet in some way, even if it is not, it is connected to our own network, in our own business. Therefore, collecting data from all devices, sensors and business centers on this network is much easier and more important than before. Our IoT solution, which we have developed, provides companies with a great advantage at this point. Our IoT solution has two pillars: the first is software and the second is hardware.

We Achieved Great Success in IoT Projects

In other words, with your IoT project, IAS has turned into a technology company that produces both software and hardware. Can you tell us about the IoT project and the hardware products you produce?

With our IoT Gateway software we have developed, it is possible to collect information from devices such as all business centers, production machines, vara external sensors or meters. IoT Gateway, a very useful tool; If the devices to collect information are suitable for this, it becomes possible to collect all information with only a middleware and transfer it to caniasERP without the need for any external hardware. In addition to this, we developed a hardware solution to collect information from machines and sounders that are not accessible over the network: IoT Box. You can think of it as a mini computer. caniasERP can run on it, it has its own browser and office applications. In addition, there is an entry-exit card on it. Information can be collected from the environment externally through the inputs on this card. We can collect information that we cannot collect with software over the network, thanks to the inputs on the IoT Box IO card, and we can send signals to the outside when necessary thanks to the outputs. I can briefly summarize it like this.

Can you detail the contribution of your IoT solution to digitalization in the industry? Could you please share the differences that distinguish you from your competitors?

Digitalization is an important concept, especially in the production area and machine park. Because, products are developed and produced there, but data is also produced. Digitalization is very important in order to collect this data, to make it meaningful, and to draw meaningful results from the obtained data. Especially in the data collection phase. Until now, collecting data produced in the production area was done with external systems. With possible MES solutions in factories, data was collected and stored somewhere, and then data was retrieved from there by the applications that needed it. As IAS, our aim is to eliminate this intermediate layer and collect data directly where it occurs and to manage it in an ERP program. Now, we access the production machines from within caniasERP and get the information directly from there. In summary, just like a person working in the accounting department of the company runs caniasERP on his desk, with this solution, the caniasERP system is operated in the assembly cell on the production line in the factory in the same way. This is a huge advantage for companies. Since it is both advantageous as an investment and there is no end to integration, problems such as data loss and data delay are eliminated. The data is received in real time, directly from the machine. I think it is not possible to come across software that can run this in the world. IoT is just one of the solutions we offer. While setting up canias4.0, our aim was not only to meet the needs of our customers for a good ERP, but to respond to all the requirements that will arise in the digitalization process. We enabled them to achieve this by using a single solution within a single platform. Today, a company that will start managing its business processes with canias4.0 will have all these digitalization solutions: it does not need to purchase a separate MES, CRM, web solution, database or any other software. All technological solutions that a company needs are offered with canias4.0.

Companies Using Technology Obtained Advantage in Pandemic

How has the pandemic affected you and your customers in 2020? What challenges / opportunities did you experience and how did you overcome them?

The pandemic that started in early 2020 is a situation that no one has ever experienced or predicted before. In the beginning, there was a great surprise, but now everyone started to accept the "new normals". As IAS, we cannot say that we have had difficulties during the pandemic process. With the advantage of being a technology company, we quickly adapted to the reconstructed business manners on digital media. Restrict access to suppliers in the Far East,through the process of the pandemic, especially from Europe in terms of the manufacturing industry has increased the demand for Turkey. We observe that our customers, who have been able to take digitalization and institutionalization to a certain level and use technology in their production processes, are doing well. This also applies to our prospects. Companies that produce at a certain level and have achieved a certain quality standard and digitalization have been advantageous during the pandemic process. This sudden need for digitalization has significantly increased the demand for innovative solutions we offer. In fact, companies had to learn the "importance of digital transformation", which we have been talking about for years, through experience.

We Have Great Expectations From 2021

Can you share your vision for 2021? Which subjects will you focus on? (R&D, export, new product development, new customers etc.)

As IAS, we believe that 2021 will be very important to us. We have major and minor targets for this year. First of all, this year will be a breakthrough year for us. We are in a great breakthrough and transformation both at home and abroad. We increased our staff by 50 percent in order to meet the increasing demand; and we had to do this to be able to respond to the request. In addition, we made radical changes in our administrative structure in order to make faster and more effective decisions. We have built an administrative structure that is much more flexible and can move much faster. We have big goals in 2021 and we know that we have the potential to achieve this. As a product, we aim to carry our work on big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to the next step in 2021. Again, one of our goals in technological terms is to spread the use of our IoT solution. We carried out three successful projects in 2020. All three companies had different machine parks. In these challenging projects, implementations were carried out in a very short time and successful results were obtained quickly. We think there will be a huge demand explosion for IoT in 2021. We also have serious goals in our operations in the global arena. We completed our work in 2020 to increase our activities, especially in the South Korean market. We believe that we will get the results of these in 2021. Likewise, there will be important developments in the German market in 2021.