Managment support (ERP)

ERP 4FACTORY: QAD Adaptive ERP

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.

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SOLUTION OVERVIEW

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.

• Built on the QAD Enterprise Platform, QAD Adaptive ERP make is easy to develop and maintain “last-mile” functionality that provides manufacturers with their competitive advantage. Extensions and new apps can be created in a low code/no code environment and, unlike intrusive customizations, do not create rigidity that interferes with upgrades
• Embedded analytics provide decision makers with actionable insights that reduce the time required to take action based on changing data and a changing competitive landscape.
• Continuous improvement projects typically focus on a narrow set of processes where
  the greatest return on investment can be achieved. The modular design of QAD Adaptive ERP
  allows customers to select only the areas of the application they want to upgrade − without needing to upgrade the entire application. This modular approach makes upgrades smaller, faster and easier.
• QAD Adaptive ERP supports users’ business requirements, preferences and roles through intuitive personalization and a flexible, modern user experience.
• QAD Adaptive ERP implements quickly and reliability, particularly in the QAD Cloud, and is supported 24×7, worldwide by a committed team of experts. It is a multi-language, multi-currency, multi-entity solution designed to meet the needs of global manufacturers – today and well into the future.

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QAD ENTERPRISE PLATFORM

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?

BENEFITS

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.

• Enhance user productivity by providing personalization that addresses changing roles, user preferences and workforces
• Gain share and reduce costs by quickly adopting advanced technologies in a business context, supporting digital transformation
• Gain real-time business insight for better decision making and key performance measurement with embedded analytics and sophisticated KPI tools
• Meet manufacturer-specific business requirements by quickly extending applications to help meet changing business priorities, processes and data needs
• Respond to new business opportunities and requests for deeper insight by easily adding apps using a dependable low/no code development environment
• Improve efficiency and customer responsiveness by upgrading to new versions quickly and flexibly due to modern RESTful APIs that buffer extensions and other apps from the impact of upgrades

PLATFORM FOUNDATION SERVICES AND CORE MODEL

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.

• Infrastructure Management handles configurations and related capabilities across deployments and network management. It provides services for infrastructure provisioning and disaster recovery. It ensures that apps can be developed, deployed and run without regard for the underlying infrastructure.
• Platform Management simplifies application lifecycle management associated with apps that run on the QAD Enterprise Platform. It includes tools that help with the development, deployment, management and promotion of
  apps from one system or instance to another. This includes a webbased integrated development environment (IDE) for building apps and tools for automated testing and code management. It also includes tools to build and manage development forums and documentation.
• Platform Services provide development/deployment technology services for app development, including User Experience, Mobile, Security, Integration, API Management, Analytics, Data Query, Browse, Globalization, Collaboration and Event/Task Scheduling. By centralizing Platform Services, apps across the platform deliver a consistent user experience and can leverage the full technology capabilities that underpin QAD Cloud ERP. Enhancements to Platform Services are instantly available for use by all apps.

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.

RAPID RESPONSE TECHNOLOGIES

QAD Enterprise Platform, applying Foundation Services and Core Model, provides users and developers 5 technologies
that support a rapid response to change.

• Personalization: Supports selfservice modification of a user’s or role’s screens and attributes using a simple graphical point and click interface
• Embedded analytics: Delivers insight in the context of business processes to decision-makers who can rapidly create and modify analytics, reports, KPIs and dashboards; includes custom alerts for notification of out of tolerance events
• Extensibility: Makes it simple to add or modify functions and data without rewriting the entire app and without interfering with future upgrades
• New apps: Easily and quickly create new apps that deliver additional functionality without adding to system rigidity, using no or low-code development tools
• Modularization: Allows customers to select the areas of QAD Cloud ERP they want to upgrade − without needing to upgrade the entire application and without being impacted by extensions and new apps built on the QAD Enterprise Platform

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.

ADAPTIVE USER EXPERIENCE (UX)

Manufacturers 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.

• Improve user productivity by letting users personalize role-based user experience.
• Decrease order handling costs by reducing the time and improving the accuracy required to handle routine inquiries and process orders and payments.
• Prevent fraud and untrained personnel from taking actions through role and process-based security that can apply to processes and UX attributes; administrators can control the standards for access and role definitions.
• Quickly adapt business process through flexible, visual process maps, which can be modified and used to initiate relevant processes.
• Become a more data driven organization using dynamic browses to delve into relevant data and associated reporting with the ability to build and modify KPIs.

ADAPTIVE UX SOLUTION OVERVIEW

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:

• Security: Each user’s logon security determines, based on role, which menus and “Action Centers” the user can access. Users can have more than a single role and can modify roles.
• Personalization: Users ca alter dashboards, menus, save “Favorites,” simplify forms, hide and unhide fields, adjust panels and save views for their, and others’, use.
• Action Centers: For many users, the first thing they will see in their business day is their Action Center. Users can track real-time KPIs, based on Embedded Analytics, which are determined by role but can easily be modified. If an exception condition exists, users can drill down into relevant data and export applicable information to a PDF or Excel – and share it. Action Centers include builtin collaboration, notifications and alerts that help ensure that users take appropriate actions in a timely fashion. The Activity Feed maintains a full audit trail of actions, helping to answer questions and detect root causes of errors or exceptions.
• Process Maps: While frequent users often personalize and tune their experiences, less frequent users often rely on standard or pre-configured menus. The Adaptive UX includes built-in process maps, which can be customized, so users can visually understand their work stream as it relates to menus. They also can access functions they need just by clicking on the particular process in the map.
• Role-based: The Adaptive UX comes with over 40 standard role-based menus and dashboards, of which nearly half include end-to-end business process. The out-of-the-box role-based experiences are for workers in sales, service, requisitions, purchasing, asset management, financial setup, product structures and more.
• Data browse and reporting: Each screen automatically includes a related browse, which enables users to quickly view, filter and report on underlying data. Users can also combine data sources in real-time and export the data. In addition, browses which require significant amounts of data are processed by a data lake, ensuring rapid performance.

See also:

• References of our customers
• Implementation of ERP, MES, PLM
• Implementation of bar code system

Case study: