The manufacturing landscape is shifting beneath our feet. With nearly 40% of the U.S. manufacturing workforce over 55 and retirement looming for many of these experienced professionals, the industry faces a stark reality: by 2030 (just four years away!), there could be 2 million unfilled manufacturing positions across the country. Half a million jobs sit vacant today.
These aren’t just statistics. They’re warning signals that demand a response. And that response needs to be strategic, comprehensive, and grounded in technology that empowers the workers you have while preparing your organization for the workforce realities ahead.
We’ve built that response into QAD Adaptive, our latest platform powered by Champion AI. But we also know that getting from where you are today to where you need to be isn’t a simple flip of a switch. That’s why we’re offering something we believe every one of our customers should take advantage of: the Champion Benchmark, a free, consultative engagement designed to map your optimal path to QAD Adaptive.
Why This Matters Now
The workforce challenge isn’t coming. It’s here. As experienced employees leave the manufacturing workforce, they take decades of institutional knowledge with them. The workers who remain need to focus on higher-value activities: analysis, problem-solving and innovation. They can’t afford to spend their days navigating through multiple screens or manually executing repetitive tasks that could otherwise be automated.
This is where modern ERP becomes crucial. Your system should be more than a repository of records. It needs to be a system of action. One that doesn’t just tell you scrap occurred, but helps you understand why, identifies contributing factors, and suggests preventive measures. QAD Adaptive represents our answer to this challenge, combining enhanced platform capabilities with AI-powered functionality designed specifically for manufacturing environments.
The platform includes a completely redesigned web UI that enables all key workflows, rigorous quality assurance that makes it the most thoroughly tested version of QAD ERP in our history, and an integration platform built on Boomi technology. We’ve also introduced new capabilities in warehouse management and production scheduling, replacing older modules with intuitive, graphical interfaces that make complex tasks more manageable.
But most importantly, we’ve embedded Champion AI, our agentic AI ERP layer, throughout the platform. This includes productivity agents that automate mundane tasks, implementation agents that streamline deployment, and process intelligence that surfaces insights from your operational data. For food and beverage customers, there’s catch weight and batch balancing. For automotive, we’ve introduced a new Honda package. The functionality is both broad and deep.
The question isn’t whether QAD Adaptive can address your challenges. The question is: what’s the best way to get there?
Defining Your Path Forward
That’s exactly what the Champion Benchmark is designed to answer. As Wojciech Sieron, QAD’s Manager of Business Consulting, explained in a recent webinar, “The main and the only goal of the Champion Benchmark is to define your optimal path to QAD Adaptive.”
It begins with a simple letter of intent, which kicks off the engagement. Once approved, we assign a lead business consultant who serves as your guide through the entire process. Before the main workshop, you’ll complete a Champion Benchmark questionnaire that helps us understand your environment, your key business challenges, your database and domain structure, your most significant customizations, and relevant financial information that will help us quantify potential benefits.
Then comes the workshop itself, typically one and a half to two days of focused, collaborative sessions. This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a deep dive into your current state and your desired future state, led by our business consultants, services team, and cloud solution architects.
During the workshop, we examine everything from your strategic objectives and ERP strategy to your business hurdles and the specific databases, domains, and sites in scope. We look at your business processes, discuss your top customized areas, and explore questions like: Should you pursue a big bang approach or a sequenced upgrade? How should interfaces be handled? What’s your data migration strategy: full history, open balances only, or something in between?
We also introduce you to new Adaptive functionalities and discuss critical topics like user adoption and change management. The goal is to leave the workshop with a comprehensive understanding of both the opportunities and the challenges ahead.
What You’ll Walk Away With
About a week after the workshop, you’ll receive the Champion Benchmark findings presentation. This deliverable has two essential components: the “how” and the “why.”
The “how” is your step-by-step implementation roadmap. It includes your prescribed instance strategy, your implementation sequence, detailed timelines, and specific recommendations for your environment. One customer we worked with, for example, decided to consolidate their multiple databases into two instances: one for North America and one international. Some of their databases could be converted directly, while others required an open balance approach due to structural changes and the older versions they were running.
The timeline visualization helps you see the entire project at a glance, which often surfaces important considerations. As Wojciech noted, “Having this on a slide, and having that discussed, brings additional value and mitigates the risks that the potential project can entail.” Perhaps September isn’t the right time to roll out to Business Unit 2 because it’s your busiest period. These insights matter.
The “why” is your business case—the quantified justification for moving to Adaptive. We project potential reductions across key areas like premium freight, material costs, labor expenses, SG&A costs, and inventory carrying costs. We show these benefits ramping up over five years and compare them against your total cost of ownership to calculate your return on investment and break-even point.
This isn’t theoretical. These are projections based on your specific environment, your business hurdles, and the capabilities that Adaptive brings to the table.
Start Your Path to QAD Adaptive ERP
Getting started is simple. The Champion Benchmark is available at no cost to QAD customers. Whether you work directly with us or through one of our enabled partners, the engagement follows the same rigorous process and delivers the same comprehensive insights.
In a recent webinar poll, 67% of attendees told us they value both the implementation roadmap and the business justification—they need to understand not just how to upgrade, but why it makes business sense. That’s exactly what the CBA delivers.
Manufacturing is entering a new era, one where technology doesn’t just record what happened but actively helps you understand, respond, and improve. Where AI doesn’t replace workers but elevates them to focus on what humans do best. Where ERP becomes a competitive advantage, not just a system of record.
Your journey to that future starts with understanding where you are today and mapping the most effective path forward. The Champion Benchmark is that first, critical step.
Ready to define your path to QAD Adaptive? Request your Champion Benchmark today and discover how we can help you navigate the upgrade journey with confidence. And if you’d like to learn more about what we covered in our recent webinar, including detailed Q&A from customers like you, watch the full replay.
