GLOBAL AUTOMOTIVE MATERIALS MANUFACTURER

The Challenge:

ON-PREMISE ERP LACKS FLEXIBILITY AND SCALABILITY TO SUPPORT RAPID GROWTH, BUT MOVING TO THE CLOUD DOESN’T HAVE TO BE COMPLICATED

The automotive materials manufacturer had been successfully using QAD ERP on premise for years and, like many industry leaders, recognized the future of ERP is in the cloud. The company was experiencing rapid growth and needed to upgrade seven facilities in three countries, but it lacked an internal IT team and was looking for a quick and cost-effective cloud conversion that would standardize its global processes and pave the way for expansion.

“The company had fragmented processes running on legacy versions of QAD ERP. They had implemented sites independently, and wanted to create a more efficient core model to streamline operations and finance processes,” explains the QAD Senior Project Manager responsible for the project implementation. 

The legacy instance of QAD ERP had served their business needs well, but maintenance of their on-premise servers was a challenge. Over time it became harder and harder to deliver an acceptable up-time as the business expanded globally and systems were serviced by multiple third parties. Achieving fluid connectivity between different sites and on-premise installations was difficult and also created challenges for the manufacturer and its workers.

“From a daily functioning perspective, the company did not have a dedicated IT team to support business processes. Their IT team consisted of one individual who provided technical support, but best business practices were lacking. Each site was used to doing things its own way,” continues the Senior Project Manager. 

“Also, from a data recovery point of view, they did not have any kind of solution or backup. One year before we started this project, the entire system was down for a couple of weeks and the company was dependent on multiple third parties to get the systems up and running.”

Any manufacturer dealing with a large, complex operational footprint and limited IT resources knows how difficult it can be to standardize processes and implement enterprise-wide best practices. They need to get their people, processes and systems at every location on the same page before adding new components. At the same time, they also need to bring all of the organization’s data into a centralized location to help leaders respond to supply chain disruption, trade issues, regulatory changes and other challenges with speed and agility.

Companies that met all of these needs did so by making a switch to cloud-based ERP. Six percent of organizations selected cloud ERP deployments in 2017, but that figure swelled to 65.4% in 2023. Where organizations were once concerned about perceived data loss and costs associated with cloud-based ERP, they now recognize these solutions are secure, significantly more cost-effective, on average, and, most importantly, deliver unparalleled flexibility and scalability compared to on-premise ERP. 

“The company wanted to set up a global process but knew it would be difficult with each site functioning differently. It was important to have one model in use at all sites that would support expansion and the incorporation of new or acquired facilities,” explains the Senior Project Manager. “They were looking for a solution that could give them guaranteed uptime, access to the best cloud process practices and data recovery options.”

Implementing and integrating new software of any kind is a big decision and that’s where the automotive materials manufacturer’s true challenge emerged. They knew a cloud-based ERP would deliver flexibility, scalability and top-down control and were ready to upgrade their on-premise solution, but also had big plans for growth and needed a quick, seamless conversion process.

The Solution:

QAD ELEVATE UPGRADES MANUFACTURER TO QAD ADAPTIVE ERP IN JUST FIVE MONTHS

The company worked with QAD industry experts to identify the best route for upgrading to QAD Adaptive ERP and determined it needed to complete the conversion process within six months. QAD exceeded that goal and got seven facilities across three countries up and running on QAD Adaptive ERP with Adaptive UX in just five months through the QAD Elevate Program.

QAD understands that manufacturers are looking for benefits that a cloud-based ERP provides; process optimization, operational efficiency and real-time insights to make data-driven decisions. Unfortunately, the historical approach to ERP implementations and upgrades have included training, timeline and cost barriers. The solution is QAD Elevate, a program that provides existing QAD customers a rapid, low-cost, and prescriptive on-ramp to the latest version of QAD Adaptive ERP. 

The project steering committee agreed on splitting this cloud conversion into two phases. The first phase was focused on upgrading to QAD Adaptive ERP in five months. Once the company became accustomed to the new system, they would start the second phase to begin leveraging the personalization and extensibility capabilities. All work and training were completed remotely, with a dedicated QAD team leading the project at the site level and working together to ensure a smooth implementation with minimal disruption to the company’s operations.

“We identified an individual project owner at each site who took responsibility for communicating what got decided at a higher level to everyone at their site. We followed a couple of key communication strategies, which helped to ensure all seven sites across the three countries were aware at every point of time,” explains the Senior Project Manager. “The project sponsors say the implementation could not have gone better in any way.”

“One of the key things they wanted to do was to lay a foundation with a modern solution, QAD Adaptive ERP, to enable growth. Now, they have a list of projects that they want to execute on top of this new platform,” adds the Vice President of Consulting and Transformation Services Business Development at QAD.

The Benefits:

MANUFACTURER SECURES A QUICK, LOW-COST PATH TO QAD ADAPTIVE ERP TO BRING GLOBAL SITES INTO ALIGNMENT

“The company was looking for technology-enabled business improvement that met their budget and timeline needs, and that was fulfilled by the QAD Elevate program,” states the Senior Project Manager. “Users reported immediate improvements in connecting to the system and that QAD Adaptive ERP was much faster than their on-premise installation. This was enabled by new technology and automation tools that were not available in their previous system and they could do very easily in a cloud environment.”

These benefits are consistent with the findings in Nucleus Research’s analysis of the QAD Elevate program. The program, which is open to any customer running an on-premise version of QAD and leverages pre-built templates, a dedicated support team and other features, can help users move to QAD Adaptive ERP 50% faster than a traditional cloud conversion and deliver a cost-savings of up to 35%. 

The report also found that customers with six sites or fewer can expect to move to QAD Adaptive ERP in less than five months with QAD Elevate, or in eight to 10 months for more complex migrations. The automotive materials manufacturer had seven sites in three countries and was up and running on QAD Adaptive ERP in five months. Now, all of them are connected in a centralized solution that facilitates process standardization and lays the foundation for rapid growth.

QAD Elevate also helped the company eliminate the IT burden of moving to a cloud-based ERP while delivering all of the benefits. The program’s prepackaged nature, predefined and prescriptive factory delivery approach and dedicated QAD support team took a long list of IT-related concerns out of the conversion equation and simplified the process, resulting in a quick, high-quality deployment and reduced implementation costs.

“The factory approach is something we really invest in. From the customer’s perspective, the benefit is the right ratio of workforce education without disruption to their daily activities. We are able to do that effectively and in a very short timeframe through QAD Elevate as a program and QAD Adaptive ERP as a product,” explains the Senior Manager of Sustainability and Digital Manufacturing at QAD.

“The QAD Elevate project enabled the company to move to the cloud; we streamlined their business processes and now they’re planning to implement QAD Enterprise Asset Management,” adds the Senior Project Manager. The company is also utilizing functionalities in QAD Adaptive ERP that weren’t available in older, on-premise versions and is looking forward to leveraging QAD Action Centers and having new, meaningful KPIs to measure.

“QAD Adaptive ERP is the roadway to achieving business growth, and objectives like improved financials are a business destination. The QAD Elevate Program is an efficient and cost-effective vehicle that gets adaptive enterprises to their destinations in record time. Companies know they can’t rely on the same paths and vehicles they used to take in the past, but we can help them build on their journey and get to the next destination,” explains the Senior Manager of Sustainability and Digital Manufacturing at QAD.