Our firm has been delighted to see the increased activity in the QAD space. We are seeing companies moving forward with QAD upgrades, re-implementations and additional modules. We believe this reflects the positive benefits and return on investment companies can gain through these QAD projects. As most of you have seen in industry reports, a majority of companies only use 20%-30% of their ERP capabilities. At Logan Consulting, we actually feel this is not as bad as it sounds. However, it certainly indicates there may be room for improvement. We'll explain our thinking behind why we feel this can be both good and bad.
On the good side, our philosophy is that business needs, business processes and competitive advantages should drive the level of a company's QAD use. While we humbly believe we keenly understand the entire QAD package and most if not all modules, after being in the QAD business for almost 18 years, we don't address the project by asking "how should we implement all of this software?". On the contrary, we start with the business needs, processes and competitive advantages. We look at how the software's capabilities support the core business needs. We also look at how QAD can be used to further a company's customer service or reduce costs. It may very well be that only a relatively modest percentage of QAD is required to achieve the business needs, especially when leveraging the tools inherent in the .NET interface and reporting framework. And, of course, this business versus software focus results in fast, cost-effective, high-impact, high-ROI projects. These projects may involve implementing unused functionality in the currently installed version or may involve upgrading to the latest released versions, both the standard and the enterprise editions.
On the bad side, we have seen many cases of businesses failing to properly take advantage of QAD's ability to better support their core business needs, processes and competitive advantages. How do these companies get to this state? It can start with the initial implementation being software versus business focused. It can result from inadequate initial training. It can result from inadequate ongoing, recurring training. It can result from job attrition - key users leaving the organization without proper knowledge transfer. It can result from inadequate documentation of business processes and procedures. Whatever the reason, these companies can benefit from better use of their QAD software. In addition, QAD is continually developing new software and adding capabilities to existing software. Outstanding organizations want to know which modules and enhancements make sense for them.
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