Application Management Services (AMS) with QAD, Third and final in a series

Customer Benefits Realized

As QAD customers evaluate the pros and cons of outsourcing the management of their QAD applications, it helps to learn about others who have already made the decision and are reaping the benefits. Let's take a look at a few examples.

A global multinational company using QAD applications at 20 sites located in EMEA, Asia Pacific, North America and Latin America found itself without a central IT strategy. Each site had its own server implementations performed by local consulting firms with different business processes and varying configurations. Three years ago, the company embarked on an initiative to globalize processes and reduce costs. They reviewed their QAD applications within their backbone ERP and decided to move to a QAD core model configuration deployed at each site.

One key objective of this global initiative was to avoid the need to expand the existing IT organization in supporting the new strategy, while they managed the harmonization of processes and rollout of the core model. During the detailed analysis of their requirements, it was clear that they needed to support the process standardization and core localizations, and to conduct local server health checks and surveys. Together, QAD Consulting and the customer defined the AMS solution that would fulfill their requirements. It included service level agreements, clear management and escalation processes, defined expectations, metrics and regular reporting.

This multinational has been using QAD Application Management Services for nine months with great results. Three IT resources that previously had been spending most of their time supporting QAD applications now spend their time on new projects, new business processes and standardization across this business. Recently the company decided to migrate all sites that are currently on QAD MFG/PRO 9.0 to QAD Enterprise Applications 2007 with the QAD.NET UI User Interface. This will further eliminate localizations and some local reports by the powerful browse functionality available in the QAD .NET UI.

Another global multinational using QAD applications in each of their manufacturing and distribution sites decided over two years ago to outsource some IT activities after a major corporate reorganization. Their initial assessment resulted in a decision to transition some of their IS and support activities to QAD Global Services. Their requirements included: improving support levels for their user community; ensuring properly configured and controlled environments for development, test and production; implementing a version control system and continuous monitoring; performing system health checks; and providing DBA support.

In addition to these "backbone" AMS activities, extended AMS services were provided to assist with change requests to existing applications, as well as major development projects and the implementation of new processes as required. This was accompanied by training sessions for the IS and the user community, based on assessments of their call profiles and call types. QAD Global Services used their 3-tier delivery model for training, so some of the training was provided on-site and other parts were delivered remotely through webcasts and exercises.

The customer has realized better cost control and cost avoidance with a dedicated technical and user support staff covering all required time zones 24 hours a day, five days a week. The documentation of processes and service levels combined with defined metrics, regular reporting and preventive initiatives for improvement have provided greater visibility and efficiencies. The customer is now able to rely on the deep technical expertise of the QAD team and has the flexibility to engage resources quickly for development and consulting services.

Yet another global multinational organization, who decided to employ QAD Consulting for services needed a regional approach. Nine manufacturing sites are supported with a focus on system health checks of the servers (e.g., disks, memory), as well as databases and file structures and all DBA work.

The customer was facing many challenges including a deteriorating Progress competency within their organization and the need to provide multilingual technical support to manage the requirements of their EMEA-based locations. As part of the QAD AMS solution, regularly scheduled maintenance activities are performed on the systems to ensure high systems availability and optimal performance. QAD Consulting helps to provide consistent high quality service with the ability to support multiple languages in different time-zones and shifts for each customer site.

To learn more about QAD Application Management Services (QAD AMS), read the QAD AMS data sheet or send your request to QAD Global Services