“React quickly and decisively” was the final counsel that Simon Ellis, Group Vice President at IDC, included in his article, The Adaptive Enterprise. Research from his team at IDC suggests that digital maturity – a defining characteristic of adaptive enterprises – is closely correlated with revenue and profit performance. Whether you’re making flooring materials or facilitating a cross-border cold chain, financial health through economic turns is the universal goal. When harmonized with people and processes, the near-infinite scalability of digital resources is a key factor in becoming a financially healthy adaptive enterprise that reacts quickly and decisively in the face of disruption. In a sea of seemingly qualified vendors, how does a company with complex manufacturing and/or supply chain operations act quickly and decisively to find the right partner? 

Consistency is Key

Let’s state what might be obvious – if a vendor can’t support a holistic approach to quick and decisive action, their solution might not live up to your potential. Said positively: the right partner can use a holistic approach to quickly unlock hidden potential not only in your systems but also in your people and processes. Let’s break that down.

Acting Quickly – Speed applies to three phases of engagement, whereas most vendors focus on the “daily use” bucket. While the importance of user experience should not be downplayed, the setup and support phases cannot be forgotten. Speed to benefit is increasingly important as the average time between competitive and global disruptions continues to shrink. A solution that can be implemented quickly will allow you to optimize your business faster and is more likely to be designed for your industry. Once the system is in place the SLAs for functional, administrative, technical, and infrastructural support become important. Though a cloud subscription has a higher sticker price than locally hosted maintenance costs, Cloud can deliver better ROI once the internal costs to stay up-to-date and maintain 24/7 uptime are factored in. 

Acting Decisively – There’s a difference between an implementation team asking, “how do you want to do this?” and “what are you trying to achieve?”. The former puts the responsibility on your organization, whereas the latter is an alignment with your organization’s goals. Projects stall and potential goes unmet when the open-ended questions are geared toward system configuration rather than business priorities. Decisiveness comes from your solution and implementation partner understanding your business challenges and goals to form a prescriptive path, which is only possible when they’re experienced in your industry. 

Acting Holistically – Though digital resources are the most scalable and gain value with use, Simon points out that “digital elements put more pressure on the physical” and therefore must augment them. This is only possible when people and processes are considered alongside systems and technology.  

Choosing the Right Partner to Help You Become an Adaptive Enterprise

QAD enables operational excellence and productivity in manufacturing and supply chain through our Industrial Transformation Platform. The Industrial Transformation Platform is how we apply our focus on people, process and systems across the design of our product, prescriptive implementation services, coaching, customer success and beyond. Born from a manufacturer’s need to digitally manage manufacturing and supply chain data and split off as a software company over 45 years ago, QAD remains singularly focused on these industry segments. In fact, the only solution in QAD Adaptive Applications that regularly addresses non-manufacturing or supply chain use cases (QAD Process Intelligence) supports our industry ethos through pre-packaged supply chain and manufacturing scenarios that other process mining vendors rarely focus on.

Here are some examples of how QAD is enabling the Adaptive Enterprise:

• 20-point OEE uplift while removing a language barrier: QAD coaches enabled Haviland to achieve measurable manufacturing improvements within 90 days
• An ERP upgrade and greenfield implementation in just months: Tsubakimoto UK trusted QAD Cloud and Effective On Boarding with expanding production capacity
• An automotive supplier regained their MMOG/LE Level A score: QAD’s industry expertise was foundational to removing key customer risk and overhauling processes 

To thrive in today’s rapidly changing business landscape, companies with complex manufacturing and supply chain operations need the right partner to become an adaptive enterprise. QAD supports a holistic approach that addresses people, processes, and systems, enabling quick implementation, optimization, and decisive action based on a deep understanding of the company’s goals and challenges. With QAD’s Industrial Transformation Platform, manufacturers and supply chain organizations are becoming adaptive enterprises every day. 

Find out more about how your company can unlock its potential.