Q. I'd like to upgrade my QAD solution; however, I'm concerned about the disruption it will cause to my business. I'd like to use QAD Global Services to help with this project. What types of services are available to assist me with my upgrade?

A. Thanks for asking. Many QAD customers would like to upgrade their solution and are looking for the right suite of services to help them accomplish that goal. QAD Global Services now offers a comprehensive range of upgrade implementation options, as well as a portfolio of ongoing Application Management Services. You can choose the upgrade option that is best for you.

QAD Global Services offers the following three specific upgrade options. While these options serve as a framework, we would be pleased to work with you to develop an even more customized plan:

Technical Upgrade—This upgrade option provides a like-for-like solution upgrade with no new functionality deployed. With this upgrade option, you retain all of your existing business processes. This upgrade option provides a low cost, low risk, minimally disruptive upgrade that allows you to stay current, position for the future and remain Sarbanes-Oxley compliant.

Standard Upgrade—With this upgrade option, QAD Global Services assists you in adding selected new functionality, while keeping most existing business processes in tact. When undertaking a standard upgrade, you are able to improve selected business processes with new QAD functionality. In deploying the latest QAD technology, a Standard Upgrade allows you to preserve your QAD solution investment, while simultaneously minimizing business impact and remaining Sarbanes-Oxley compliant.

Re-Implementation—In a re-implementation, QAD Global Services undertakes a complete re-installation of QAD GXE with application-enabled re-engineering of business processes. This service set helps eliminate “application erosion” via the documentation of all processes, the creation of training material and the establishment of desired governance standards. Re-implementation maximizes your software ROI, increases sustainability and ensures the very best use of your QAD investment.

We know Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is a compelling business objective driving many of our customers’ decision to upgrade their QAD solution. QAD Global Services brings considerable domain expertise in configuring the QAD solution to enable your Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. QAD experts can assist you in every area of compliance enablement including, but not limited to:

– Security policies and procedures
– Change management policies and procedures
– Disaster recovery policies
– Backup and recovery procedures
– Service-level agreement policies
– Coding standards/reviews
– Testing procedures/policies
– Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) procedures

Many QAD customers are comfortable with the initial QAD upgrade activity, but are concerned about maintaining their upgraded QAD solution over the long term. In recognition of this very legitimate trepidation, QAD Global Services is developing a range of Application Management Services to alleviate the resource-intensive effort of maintaining your QAD applications. In the next Excellence, we will discuss QAD’s range of Application Management Services and help you in diagnosing how they may be relevant to you.

Ready to upgrade? Contact your QAD sales rep or you QAD Services Practice Manager to get started right away. You can also request more information from QAD Global Services at our QAD Web site. Best of luck!