The only constant in the manufacturing industry is change. Competition drives it. Technology fuels it. The accelerating pace of change impacts the markets manufacturers serve and the way in which they manufacture. The ability of ERP software to respond to change, to deliver fit over time and continue to support new business processes, will determine its effectiveness. Many traditional ERPs were not designed for change and do not support “last mile” functionality unique to a manufacturer. To overcome these limitations, traditional ERP relies on customizations which requires considerable time and cost to implement and maintain. As vendors release new ERP versions, customizations make upgrading incredibly difficult; each customization needs to be tested in the new release and many will break and require redevelopment. The combination of poor initial fit and longterm inflexibility inevitably leads to the need for a new ERP, but unfortunately many manufacturers repeat the death cycle of ERP by investing in another inflexible ERP. This results in higher IT costs, but more importantly, higher business costs and risks and an inability to respond to change and opportunities.
QAD Adaptive ERP enables manufacturers to maximize the return on their ERP investment by easily achieving greater levels of fit today and rapidly responding to change tomorrow. It is built with industry best practices for global manufacturers based on QAD’s deep industry-specific expertise. The result is faster implementations and greater fit out of the box.
Manufacturers face barriers that interfere with their pursuits of improving customer satisfaction, growing market share and become more efficient in operations and supply chains. Everchanging customer and regulatory requirements, emerging business models, trade complexity and an active merger and acquisition environment contribute to the fact that change is the one constant in manufacturing. In addition to needing to respond to change, given the ongoing digitization of manufacturing, companies must constantly work to avoid commoditization. It is increasingly difficult to remain differentiated. To complicate matters, the evolution of advanced technologies puts manufacturers under pressure to keep up or fall behind. All these forces impact manufacturers on many fronts, including hiring, training, dealing with new technologies, restructuring, adding and divesting sites, distribution, meeting customer requirements and managing complex supply chains. Manufacturers still look to ERP and related supply chain solutions for a system-of-record, but increasingly also need such solutions to help address change. For example, an ERP with a brittle user experience and outdated architecture makes it difficult for the manufacturer to update business processes, meet user preferences and adopt advanced technologies. Manufacturers looking for agility to better execute on their strategy need ERP that adapts and extends quickly and provides decisionmakers actionable insights. A flexible ERP supports a manufacturer’s specific requirements that contribute to differentiation. How can a manufacturer future proof an ERP’s user experience, business processes and analytic insight to help respond rapidly to a shifting business environment? What ensures that ERP and related solutions meet a manufacturer’s evolving requirements without creating rigidity in the system?
The QAD Enterprise Platform provides manufacturers the means to adapt QAD Cloud ERP to meet changing business
and user requirements. Based on a modern microservices architecture, QAD Enterprise Platform makes it easy to extend,
add or modify functionality, data and processes. It simplifies upgrading and the adoption of advanced technologies. It
provides QAD Cloud ERP the core capabilities to help manufacturers digitize their operations, customer experiences and
supply chains.
The QAD Enterprise Platform includes a set of layered services, referred to as Foundation Services and Core Model,
that span the considerable needs of a modern web-based and mobile ERP software and supply chain solution for manufacturing
users, developers, managers and value chain partners. Foundation Services: Provides a comprehensive set of services for infrastructure management, platform management and application development than ensure reliability, availability, security and ease-of-use.
Core Model builds on the concept of Foundation Services by providing higher level sharable business components related to master data. Core Model provides the ability to seamlessly blend and share information across the platform, effectively delivering one version of the truth while reducing the number of data integrations. Services provided by Core Model include: Domain Entity, Address, Customer/Supplier, Attributes, Chart of Accounts, Calendar, Currency and Exchange Rates, Daybook, Item and Site, Codes and Global Tax Management.
QAD Enterprise Platform, applying Foundation Services and Core Model, provides users and developers 5 technologies
that support a rapid response to change.
The rapid response technologies of the QAD Enterprise Platform are designed to efficiently and effectively meet the changing requirements of manufacturers. They allow manufactures to maximize the return on their ERP investment by achieving betters levels of fit to required business processes, ensuring improved operational, management and strategy alignment now and into the future.
Download QAD Enterprise Platform brochureManufacturers try to continuously improve operational efficiency and accuracy. Effective use of ERP software and supply chain solutions contribute to achieving that objective. Manufacturers face, however, challenges associated with hiring, training, restructuring, new role definitions, mergers and acquisitions and adding or merging sites. Brittle application user experiences interfere with establishing best practices and processes, onboarding users and contributing to efficiency and accuracy as the business evolves. To keep users of critical applications like ERP and supply chain working effectively, the
solution needs to adapt to users’ preferences, changing roles and organizational standards. Users in decision-making roles require real-time indicators, notifications and relevant analytics to make smart decisions and take associated
business action on a timely basis. Users also need to dynamically measure performance and collaborate with others involved in business processes, and to track down and prevent exceptions. To make accessing applications easy, manufacturing ERP and supply chain solutions need to support standard browsers and native mobile user experiences. In addition, new user interfaces will eventually supersede today’s popular user interfaces; how can manufacturers future proof the user experience to take advantage of new user interfaces as they emerge?
BENEFITS
The Adaptive User Experience (UX) provides manufacturers an adaptable and device-independent user experience that
supports personalization for each role, activity and user. Users of QAD Adaptive ERP and other QAD Cloud apps use the
Adaptive UX to simplify and speed-up task completion and to ensure decision-makers have access to analytics-based
insight to make smart decisions. The “Action Centers” provide an intuitive means to take business actions, collaborate
and track and prevent exceptions. The UX also includes select native mobile applications for QAD Adaptive ERP and the
flexibility to meet new user interface requirements as they emerge. Users can easily personalize their experiences, in
terms of menus, fields and other UX attributes.
The Adaptive UX provides manufacturers the choice to use HTML5 and native mobile user interfaces for QAD Adaptive
ERP and related solutions. With the UX, users can access QAD Adaptive ERP and other QAD Cloud apps from virtually
anywhere on modern browsers and mobile devices. Key capabilities include: