Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD: A Life Sciences ERP Comparison · 2018-07-01 · 3 Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD: A Life Sciences ERP Comparison 1. Introduction Investing in ERP is serious

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Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD: A Life Sciences ERP Comparison

by Merit Solutions

Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD:A Life Sciences ERP Comparison

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Content 1. Introduction 32. Microsoft Dynamics AX 4 2.1 Manufacturing 4 2.2 Globalization 4 2.3 Financial Management 5 2.4 Customization 53. QAD Enterprise Applications 5 3.1 Manufacturing 5 3.2 Enterprise Financials 5 3.3 Customer Management 5 3.4 Supply Chain Management 5 3.5 Service and Support 6 3.6 Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) 64. Evaluation Criteria: Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD 6 4.1 Implementation Time 6 4.2 Ease of Use 7 4.3 Costs 7 4.4 Business Intelligence 8 4.4 Validation 9 4.5 Technology and the Cloud 105. Rationales and Roadmaps 11Notes 12About Merit Solutions 13Additional Resources 13



1. Introduction

Investing in ERP is serious business. Systems can cost anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and implementing—or replacing—an ERP system is a huge investment in time, capital, and corporate resources. As such, the evaluation of ERP solutions is a critical and sometimes daunting task. According to Aberdeen Group, to successfully evaluate ERP solutions, top-performing enterprises focus on a variety of criteria that ensure the ultimate solution can support their business effectively for a long time.2This paper examines two major solutions in the ERP arena—Microsoft Dynamics AX and QAD Enterprise Applications—across a range of key evaluation criteria. Let’s start with a basic description of each solution, followed by a discussion of how these solutions address implementation time, ease of use, costs, business intelligence, technology, cloud environment, and product roadmap.

Enterprise resource planning is defined as the ability to deliver an integrated suite of business applications. ERP tools share a common process and data model, covering broad and deep operational end-to-end processes, such as those found in finance, HR, distribution, manufacturing, service, and the supply chain.ERP applications automate and support a range of administrative and operational business processes across multiple industries, including line of business, customer-facing, administrative, and the asset management aspects of an enterprise. However, ERP deployments tend to come at a significant price, and the business benefits are difficult to justify and understand.Look for business benefits in four areas: IT cost savings, business process efficiency, as a business process platform for process standardization, and as a catalyst for business innovation. Most enterprises focus on the first two areas because they are the easiest to quantify; however, the latter two areas often have the most significant impact on the enterprise.1

Since the 1990s, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been the foundational software for running commercial enterprises. Leading analyst Gartner defines ERP as follows in their IT glossary:




2. Microsoft Dynamics AX

Designed for midsize and larger companies, Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta) is a multilingual and multicurrency ERP software suite with core strengths in manufacturing and e-business that also provides powerful functionality for the service and wholesale industries. With complete end-to-end scalability and flexibility, Microsoft Dynamics AX enables multinational companies to take control of operations and promote growth.Microsoft Dynamics AX seamlessly merges with Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL Server, BizTalk Server, Microsoft SharePoint, and Windows to connect customers, vendors, and employees by integrating all business activities. It raises productivity and ensures relevant insight with the automation of critical business operations. The full integration of applications within Microsoft Dynamics AX for financial management, customer relationship management, supply chain management, human resource management, project management, and analytics helps foster collaboration, increase performance, and lower costs.In addition to core accounting, Microsoft Dynamics AX offers a range of functionality, including: • Financial Management: General ledger, accounts receivable and payable, bank management, budgetary control, share service support, compliance management • Business Intelligence: KPI dashboard; standard, ad-hoc and analytical reports; role-tailored, pre-defined, multi-dimensional data views • Sales and Marketing: Campaign automation, lead/opportunity management, CRM connector • Supply Chain Management: Inventory management, multi-site warehouse management, trade agreements, order promising, distribution planning, quality management • Project Management and Accounting: Project accounting, invoicing, cost control, work breakdown structures, integration with Microsoft Projects

Microsoft Dynamics AX can be tailored to support the specific needs of manufacturing businesses while delivering a low total cost of ownership (TCO). It supports build-to-order, engineer-to-order, and build-to-forecast supply-chain models across both discrete and batch-process manufacturing modes and is particularly suited for mixed-mode manufacturing environments.

Microsoft Dynamics AX can help drive global business opportunities as it supports high transaction rates and thousands of users across multiple sites. With built-in languages, currencies, and legal requirements for more than 30 countries, Microsoft Dynamics AX simplifies international business processes.

2.1 Manufacturing

2.2 Globalization




Microsoft Dynamics AX delivers a range of financial capabilities to help consolidate accounts with subsidiaries or distribution centers worldwide. Employees can access accounting, reporting, and detailed analysis according to customized security credentials.

Microsoft Dynamics AX can be fully customized to aid in collaborating more effectively with customers, partners, employees, and suppliers. Within the MorphX development environment, developers can design, edit, compile, and debug, all within a single screen. This all-in-one scalable solution offers capabilities at a customizable rate according to need.3

QAD Enterprise Applications (QAD) has been a leading ERP solution for global manufacturers in the automotive, high-tech, food and beverage, consumer, industrial, and life sciences industries for several decades. QAD supports multiple local languages and country-specific business practices and legal requirements. QAD’s domain architecture enables users to configure ERP to match their organizational structure, including support for shared services. QAD’s functional suites include those listed below.

Manufacturing supports mixed-mode manufacturing, including tools for planning, scheduling, cost management, inventory and material control, quality, reporting and management, shop floor control, and reporting in discrete, repetitive, batch, and formula process and co-product/by-products manufacturing.

Enterprise Financials streamlines day-to-day financial operations and supports the needs of large complex global manufacturers and small single-site companies. It includes general ledger allocations and consolidations, sophisticated budget modeling, and supports IFRS and multi-GAAP reporting and taxation to meet regional reporting requirements.

Customer Management supports all aspects of the customer lifecycle such as customer acquisition, sales order management, product configuration, fulfillment, pricing, and trade activity management.

Supply Chain Management spans a range of functions from purchasing to warehousing and transportation management, and includes demand planning and sales and operation planning.

2.3 Financial Management

2.4 Customization

3.1 Manufacturing

3.2 Enterprise Financials

3.3 Customer Management

3.4 Supply Chain Management

3. QAD Enterprise Applications




Service and Support helps manufacturers manage installations, parts, and repairs, warranties and service, and engineer scheduling.

EAM supports plant maintenance activities, including preventive and predictive maintenance based on elapsed time or item count from equipment, maintenance work orders, and service requests. It tracks rotable inventory and includes tracking to comply with safety and cleanliness standards.4QAD Cloud ERP is the software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment option for QAD Enterprise Applications. QAD’s Enterprise Applications architecture allows customers to choose to deploy their systems in a blended configuration. In this option, customers may elect to deploy to some of their sites using QAD Cloud ERP, integrated (or not) with their on-premises solutions. This capability is useful for companies making structural changes such as mergers or acquisitions, or when strategically moving IT systems to the cloud.

Implementation time is key in that faster implementation drives down costs while speeding time to value. Prolonged implementations may not only be astonishingly expensive, but can also erode confidence and executive support for the ERP project.QAD has long been positioned as a pre-configured, ready-to-go solution that a manufacturer can rapidly drop in and go to work with. While this may speed implementation, it also limits what QAD can ultimately do. Compared to Microsoft Dynamics AX, QAD is a smaller solution with fewer options, and a lesser ability to scale because the user is “boxed into” the solution.Further, the commonly held belief that QAD is de facto much faster to implement than Microsoft Dynamics AX is no longer valid. Merit Solutions’ development of AXcelerateSM enables the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX faster and with fewer resources than previously possible, rivaling the implementation time of QAD. AXcelerateSM is a robust, pre-configured Microsoft Dynamics AX solution that is rapidly deployed in the cloud using Microsoft Azure. AXcelerateSM consists of pre-built business process models, best-practice configurations, implementation and data migration templates, training documentation, reporting and standard customizations, all of which creates a solution that can be “dropped in” with standard configurations or used as an “accelerator” for global deployments.“AX is a larger product with much greater functional capabilities than QAD, and as a longer-term investment for a company looking to implement ERP, AX makes more sense because it has HR functionality, superior business intelligence, a retail module, and more,” says Nick Sarno, Director at Merit Solutions. “So with AX, companies can implement a more robust solution in a quicker timeframe by leveraging our AXcelerateSM offering, allowing AX to compete with a pre-configured offering such as QAD.”This changes the game in implementation time.

3.5 Service and Support

3.6 Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

4.1 Implementation Time

4. Evaluation Criteria: Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD




QAD has long had issues with user friendliness; users have not been happy with the interface but had to work with it in companies that implemented the solution as a less expensive, faster path to introducing ERP into operations. “Given that QAD’s flagship product was built in the 1980s, it now has a somewhat dated look and feel to it,” says Sarno.The company has made efforts to address this concern in recent times, but Gartner still references user experience as a caution in its assessment: “The UX re-architecture is a work in progress, and customers should look carefully at the associated UX choices in order to maintain or enhance productivity.” 5QAD’s challenge in this area is one of Microsoft Dynamics AX’s principal strengths. The solution works just like the ubiquitous Microsoft Office 365, integrated directly into it, and is intuitive and quite user-friendly due to the commanding presence of the Microsoft offerings. “It works from a web-based browser, there’s no hardware to install, and you pull up windows just like you do in Office,” notes Sarno. “In terms of ease of use, it’s a very familiar face; users understand it, know the icons it employs, and aren’t ‘challenged’ by the screens they face. The learning curve is therefore shortened, and rapid productivity follows.”Microsoft Dynamics AX can operate on all modern devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and is browser agnostic. Given all these characteristics, it is a more modern interface than QAD.

Determining the costs of an ERP implementation is not a straightforward task, as no two implementations are the same. Many factors affect the ultimate cost: type of system and functionality required, size of the organization, user access levels, etc. In fact, the ERP software cost is only a fraction of total implementation costs that include the database management system, infrastructure, human resources (internal and external), and of course recurring costs, which all need to be factored into the equation.Both Microsoft Dynamics AX and QAD Cloud have the advantages of being software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. Gartner defines SaaS as “software that is owned, delivered, and managed remotely by one or more providers. The provider delivers software based on one set of common code and data definitions that is consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers at any time on a pay-for-use basis or as a subscription based on use metrics.” 6The advantages of SaaS include: • Lower barrier to entry •Reduced time-to-benefit •Rapid prototyping •Lower hardware and maintenance requirements •High scalability and integration •Vendor responsibility for upgrades, uptime, and security •Anytime/anywhere access •Higher adoption rates (i.e., higher productivity) •The ability to pay as one goes

4.2 Ease of Use

4.3 Costs




Because of the longstanding reputation of QAD as a low-cost entry to ERP and the fact that Microsoft Dynamics AX is a more robust ERP with greater functionality, there has been a market perception that by definition QAD will be a less expensive solution than Microsoft Dynamics AX.This is simply not the case. The comparative costs of QAD and Microsoft Dynamics AX will vary according to the requirements of the organization implementing an ERP solution. One can’t say that QAD will cost less than Microsoft Dynamics AX, or vice versa, in every instance. One can say that the costs between the two are typically competitive.As an example, Merit Solutions has had clients in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors that have reported that QAD would cost millions more than Microsoft Dynamics AX for software and hosting over a ten-year period. From the perspective of an end user, Microsoft Dynamics AX is simple and straightforward from a cost perspective; user licenses are per user per month, and include all the hosting costs. In terms of hosting and maintenance, the costs of Microsoft Dynamics AX are minimal.

In 2009, Aberdeen Group released a report that would prove prescient; it heralded the rise of BI tools in relation to ERP.7 The driver: leveraging BI functionality to tap into ERP data for increased visibility into what actually makes a business work.8 “BI tools have reached a level of maturity that can elevate executives from the depth of the details, bringing them to a higher operating level where they can add strategic value to the organization,” noted the authors. “The ability to provide better decision support with integrated enterprise data is an important factor in turning data into actionable intelligence.”Today’s best enterprise solutions turn information into action through business intelligence reporting capabilities, as well as provide BI tools for data gathering, analysis, monitoring, and forecasting. With these, organizations can identify opportunities faster and with greater clarity, minimize risk, and improve management insight.This ability is a major differentiator between Microsoft Dynamics AX and QAD: AX provides a breadth and depth of reporting and business intelligence that QAD does not, due to the BI tools that Microsoft owns. “In our perspective, and in our understanding from clients, QAD users typically have to buy a third-party reporting package because QAD is not sufficient out of the box,” says Sarno. “What’s more, the number of pre-built reports limits their flexibility, and some—their financial reporter, for example—require considerable IT support for business users.”Among the business intelligence capabilities incorporated into Microsoft Dynamics AX: • Power BI: Power BI is a cloud-based business analytics service that provides users with a single view of the most critical data within an organization through interactive data visualization tools. Power BI users can create reports and dashboards by themselves, without having to depend on any IT or database administration. Using live dashboards, Power BI makes it easy to monitor a business’ health with real-time data. The Power BI service makes it easy to create rich interactive reports, and provides anywhere/anytime access with its native Power BI Mobile apps. The bottom line, for Microsoft Dynamics AX users, is that Power BI transforms a company’s ERP data into rich visuals for users to collect and organize so they can focus on what matters most.

4.4 Business Intelligence




• Insights for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, powered by InsideView: Insights, powered by InsideView, is included with Microsoft Dynamics AX’s CRM functionality to deliver industry-leading market intelligence directly into an organization’s CRM workflow. Through Insights, InsideView integrates its market intelligence within Microsoft Dynamics to support sales and marketing professionals.For sales, this functionality: • Provides market intelligence via the tool that sellers live in every day. • Streamlines and accelerates sellers’ research efforts. • Increases CRM adoption by offering sellers real-time data and insights. • Improves data accuracy with direct data sync.For marketing, this functionality: • Delivers customer data directly into marketers’ day-to-day workflow. • Scores and routes leads based on complete data. • Removes the risk of error by keeping data in the system. • Improves overall data accuracy with automatic data sync.InsideView maintains a strong partnership with Microsoft. InsideView began as a single SaaS solution, created to empower sales professionals to be more informed and win more deals. Today, it is a technology platform for sales, marketing, other business leaders, and their operations teams. The platform produces market intelligence, delivering it whenever and however needed to drive success from lead to revenue. • Sales Analytics: The analytical tools included in Microsoft Dynamics AX help confirm the best sales opportunities while showing organizations their strengths and weaknesses, information that enables the creation of more effective, “smarter” sales techniques. The sales analytics tools enable the measurement of different parts of the sales process against one another, enabling users to pinpoint opportunities and devise more effective strategies to seize them.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or any other food and drug regulatory agency around the globe, asks not only that a product meets its specification; they also require the process or processes, procedures, intermediate stages of inspections, and testing adopted during manufacturing to produce consistently similar, reproducible, desired results that meet the quality standard of product being manufactured. Such procedures are developed through the process of validation. Validation is establishing documented evidence that provides a high degree of assurance that a specific process will consistently produce a product meeting its pre-determined specifications and quality attributes.8 A properly designed system will furnish a high degree of assurance that every step, process, and change has been adequately evaluated before its implementation.ERP software plays an increasingly key role in helping companies provide validation that satisfies regulatory mandates (e.g., FDA 21 CFR part 11, FDA 21 CFR part 820). From an enterprise perspective, an ERP system is key to managing FDA-mandated documentation because it integrates all external and internal information in a single system. Manufacturers in FDA-regulated industries (e.g., Life Sciences) must consistently validate ERP software with each vendor update that impacts an enterprise’s core IT functionality.QAD has established a strong position in producing the validation needed in highly regulated industries by providing “test scripts” that users can start with to validate a QAD instance in a client environment.

4.4 Validation




These have proven effective in saving significant time and labor required in the validation process, and are among the reasons QAD has established a strong presence in heavily regulated manufacturing sectors.Merit Solutions now provides comparable validation capabilities with Microsoft Dynamics AX and MAXLife Life Sciences ERP. “Before MAXLife, no one had a leg up on Microsoft Dynamics AX validation,” says Sarno. “With AX and MAXLife, we can compete with QAD on an equal footing in validation because we also provide scripts to ease the burden and cost of the validation process.”Life Sciences organizations face operational, informational, and regulatory challenges, including increasing business transaction volumes, globally dispersed supply chains, and the need to align people, processes, and systems with work streams that can scale. Microsoft Dynamics AX and MAXLife enable them to meet these challenges without the enormous costs of Tier 1 systems, or having to customize generic ERP systems to fit the unique needs of their industry.

From a technology perspective, Microsoft Dynamics AX has a number of straightforward advantages over QAD. For clients with a limited IT footprint, Microsoft Dynamics AX offers a robust, open platform in contrast with QAD. Being SaaS-based, there is no IT support needed to run the solution. Being open, it integrates very well with other solutions; an organization can even pull other ERPs (e.g., SAP) together with Microsoft Dynamics AX, underscoring the openness of the software and the ease of linking with other systems. Moreover, being based on the Microsoft technology stack, its technology is readily understood due to broad familiarity, and there is no lack of Microsoft resources to draw upon.QAD’s technology presents a different perspective. Unlike the open platform of Microsoft Dynamics AX, QAD Enterprise Applications is a very proprietary program. For in-house IT personnel to support QAD, a certain level of familiarity with Linux and Open Edge Progress (Progress) is necessary. Without that in-house capability, QAD can become costly to maintain.There is another concern about QAD for potential users. As Gartner notes in its most recent Magic Quadrant, “Should QAD remain solely on the Progress database, this will become more of an issue in the future, as Progress resources are increasingly difficult to find. Additionally, other databases (for example, SQL Server 2014) are beginning to incorporate technology advancements, such as in-memory and high-speed embedded analytic capabilities. Furthermore, clients are beginning to express concerns about the medium- to long-term implications of remaining on the Progress platform.”9From a cloud perspective, both QAD and Microsoft Dynamics AX provide single-tenant hosting with exceptional security protocols. QAD deploys QAD Cloud ERP on IBM’s globally integrated network of cloud centers. Microsoft Dynamics AX is deployed on Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform and infrastructure created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. According to a recent article in InfoWorld, “Amazon, Google, and Microsoft know what it means to run hyperscale public clouds, while IBM is learning.”10

4.5 Technology and the Cloud




5. Rationales and Roadmaps

Both QAD and Microsoft Dynamics AX present compelling cases to those mid-market organizations considering ERP solutions. Their presence on Gartner’s most recent Magic Quadrant underscores that point. In that quadrant (which delineates niche players, challengers, visionaries, and leaders), QAD is plotted as a “niche player” while Microsoft Dynamics AX is a “visionary.” It is important to remember that this study is a snapshot in time, and that companies move as they change along the two axes that define the quadrant: ability to execute and completeness of vision.11QAD’s strengths are its reputation as a pre-configured, fast to implement, economical ERP solution with deep functionality in the industries it targets. Microsoft Dynamics AX’s strengths are its Microsoft genealogy (both in terms of reputation and technology) and that it is an open, more comprehensive ERP solution that can be used in a variety of ways. Microsoft partners (such as Merit Solutions) are principal drivers in extending the core AX solution for targeted vertical sectors. In terms of product development, QAD has invested in improving its analytics visualization and data-discovery capabilities through internal re-architecture and the use of new partners, and it continues to develop its Cloud ERP with an eye towards increasing uptime and speeding deployment.Last year, Microsoft made a major organizational change, separating the Dynamics business unit into its constituents, reassigning its core R&D and go-to-market groups, and making Dynamics part of the normal Microsoft structure rather than a separate business system group. This move strengthened Microsoft Dynamics AX and positioned it for further improvement. Here’s how Gartner assessed the reorganization: “This should deliver major benefits for Microsoft Dynamics AX customers and prospects because it exposes all of Dynamics’ solutions to the rest of the business, when beforehand, only its CRM solutions were really visible and championed in other divisions.”12Moreover, Microsoft has acquired LinkedIn and Xamarin, both having clear potential for Microsoft Dynamics AX, the former in furthering HR capabilities, the latter in mobile application development.Finally, the announcement of Dynamics 365, the recently released CRM-ERP cloud bundle that points to the road ahead, demonstrates how Microsoft’s focus on business processes will change how customers buy and use business apps. Dynamics 365 combines three Azure-hosted Microsoft services: the cloud version of Microsoft’s Dynamics AX ERP suite, Dynamics CRM Online, and the “Project Madeira” small-business financials offering. Dynamics 365 will be integrated with Office 365, the Office Graph, and, some time after Microsoft’s acquisition receives approval from regulators later this year, LinkedIn.Considering the scale and scope of Microsoft’s product development, and specifically how it relates to Microsoft Dynamics AX, it’s not surprising that some will try to portray it as “too comprehensive” for midmarket companies looking to start down the ERP path, or adjust the one they are on; but a comparison vis-à-vis QAD on evaluation criteria suggests this is far from the case.As the American futurist Stewart Brand once observed, “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.” That seems a good reason to make sure you’re not being steamrolled by preconceptions.




Notes

1. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), IT Glossary, Gartner, 2016,

2. Castellina, Nick, “Are You Asking the Right Questions When Selecting an ERP System?” Aberdeen Group, June 2015.

3. ERP Software Systems Index for Manufacturing, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Top10ERP.org, https://www.top10erp.org/microsoft-dynamics-ax-products-20.

4. QAD Enterprise Applications, QAD, Inc.,

5. “Magic Quadrant for Single-Instance ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies,” Gartner, December 2015.

6. Software as a Service (SaaS), IT Glossary, Gartner, 2016,

7. Hatch, David and Jutras, Cindy, “The ERP/BI Connection: Adding Value through Actionable Intelligence,” Aberdeen Group, July 2009.

8. Wailgum, Thomas, “ERP and BI: A Match Made in Heaven, If You’re in Data Hell,” CIO, August 4, 2009.

9. Ibid, Gartner, December 2015.

10. Knorr, Eric, “2016: The Year We See the Real Cloud Leaders Emerge,” InfoWorld, January 4, 2016.

11. Ibid, Gartner, December 2015.

12. Ibid.

http://www.meritsolutions.com/https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/enterprise-resource-planning-erp/https://www.top10erp.org/microsoft-dynamics-ax-products-20https://www.qad.com/documents/brochures/qad-2015-enterprise-applications-brochure.pdf


Merit Solutions is a global business process consultant and systems integrator with offices in North America and Europe. We are a focused-strategy company with the goal of being the very best at helping clients automate, grow, and transform their business through process mapping and optimization, change management, and innovative IT consulting and development services.

Merit Solutions works with clients to understand and triangulate their exact business needs in terms of people, workstreams, and enabling systems. From future state business process mapping to systems analysis, fit-gap process definition and scoping, sourcing, design and deployment, integration with other systems, and on-going support - we provide end-to-end global services that help clients successfully transform their business and build a foundation that continuously flows value to their customers.

Our clients are typically medium to large, global enterprises who are challenged by inefficient workstreams that cost money, waste time, and reduce quality; information flows and systems that no longer support the goals of the company; and lack of visibility into business data which impedes effective decision making.

Related resources to this white paper include:

• Using ERP to Prepare for Commercialization • ERP in Life Sciences • Microsoft Dynamics AX vs SAP

Information on Merit Solutions or other publications can be found on www.meritsolutions.com

1749 South Naperville Road, Suite 200 | Wheaton, IL 60189 | +1-630-614-7133

About Merit Solutions

Additional Resources

http://www.meritsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Using-ERP-to-Prepare-for-Commercialization.pdfhttp://www.meritsolutions.com/resources/whitepapers/ERP-Evaluations-What-You-Need-To-Know.pdfhttp://www.meritsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ERP-in-Life-Sciences.pdfhttp://www.meritsolutions.com/resources/whitepapers/Microsoft-Dynamics-AX-vs-SAP.pdfhttp://www.meritsolutions.com/

1. Introduction2. Microsoft Dynamics AX2.1 Manufacturing2.2 Globalization2.3 Financial Management2.4 Customization

3. QAD Enterprise Applications3.1 Manufacturing3.2 Enterprise Financials3.3 Customer Management3.4 Supply Chain Management3.5 Service and Support3.6 Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

4. Evaluation Criteria: Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD4.1 Implementation Time4.2 Ease of Use4.3 Costs4.4 Business Intelligence4.4 Validation4.5 Technology and the Cloud

5. Rationales and RoadmapsNotesAbout Merit SolutionsAdditional Resources

Documents

Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD: A Life Sciences ERP Comparison · 2018-07-01 · 3 Microsoft Dynamics AX vs QAD: A Life Sciences ERP Comparison 1. Introduction Investing in ERP is serious