Noting that many manufacturers are emerging from the economic crisis with a downsized business model, manufacturing software specialist QAD Inc. today rolled out a new version of its ERP suite that it said is designed for speedy deployments and ease of use.
At the heart of QAD Enterprise Applications 2010 is a homegrown business intelligence product that can manage data efficiently and is easily accessible via built-in browser technology, the company said. Leveraging a star schema for data warehousing and new analysis tools, QAD Business Intelligence also taps into a new set of operational metrics that weighs the quality of data.
“There is a building thirst for more accurate data,” said QAD’s chief marketing officer, Gordon Fleming, in an interview with Managing Automation. The BI model in QAD 2010 manages data more efficiently by providing visibility into all of the KPIs that drive efficiency within a businesses’ operation, he said.
“In the old [BI] model, you had to keep defining the rules,” Fleming said. “The star schema [model] is easier to maintain … and allows end users to configure a lot of it themselves.”