IMPERIAL BRANDS

The Challenge:

MINIMIZING RISK AND MAINTAINING BUSINESS PROCESSES

Imperial Brands has been a QAD customer for more than 20 years. They have been managing their business on an on-premise ERP system and, after an assessment with their QAD team, recognized the added benefits they would receive by moving to the QAD Cloud.

Imperial Brands’ management worked closely with QAD on how best to solve their dilemma. It quickly became apparent that moving their on-premise system to QAD ERP in the cloud was the most effective solution for Imperial Brands.

“In the space of a morning meeting, we were able to establish that we could dramatically reduce our risk by moving our ERP solution to the QAD Cloud and allowing QAD to manage the services we were previously running in-house,” states Broe.

Imperial Brands needed a solution that would allow the company to continue utilizing QAD support while keeping their business processes intact.

The Solution:

MOVING TO THE QAD CLOUD WHILE KEEPING ESTABLISHED PROCESSES

“We did have to go through a consensus building process, but we got people onboard quite quickly,” states Broe. “Our team was committed to this project and we knew we could make it a success.”

The cloud migration project encompassed the implementation of QAD ERP in the cloud in 21 facilities across 18 countries. It allowed internal IT staff the time to work on other value-added projects because QAD ERP in the cloud is supported 24/7 by QAD Support. This simply transformed many variable costs into predictable costs.

“The migration to the cloud went very smoothly,” notes Broe. “There was no disruption to daily business and no training was needed. We don’t have to maintain our infrastructure systems anymore. QAD does all that for us. I have rarely seen such great teamwork as there was between the Imperial and QAD teams. The meticulous detail in the technical planning and testing was in a class of its own.”

The Benefits:

MONEY SAVED AND BUSINESS AS USUAL

The greatest benefit Imperial has seen with the migration to QAD ERP in the cloud is business continuity. Just as their manufacturing processes have seen little change over the years, they were able to move to the cloud with little change to their business processes.

Some other benefits Imperial has seen with their move to the cloud include:

• No retraining or reworking of systems

• No hardware upgrades will be needed in the future

• 24/7 global support by QAD now and in the future

• Imperial Brands now has guaranteed uptime of 99.5 percent on QAD ERP in the cloud

• Data security is now with QAD Cloud data centers which are SSAE 16 certified — the highest global standard for data center security

• Ability to scale quickly, adding or reducing users as needed

• A more stable environment with the QAD Cloud including a better disaster recovery plan and back up arrangement

“Moving to the cloud has far exceeded our expectations,” concludes Broe. “The QAD team provided us with a great understanding about how the cloud is different, how it works and what it can do for us. This was invaluable.”