In January of this year, QAD’s CTO Tony Winter and Senior Director of R&D Mary Ann Guthrie provided a Channel Islands briefing to Axendia Inc. Axendia’s President Dan Matlis and one of their chief analysts, Dave Somers attended to hear about QAD’s Channel Islands initiative and they recently posted an article with their observations on their blog, Life Science Panorama.
Axendia meets with customers, industry experts and FDA officials frequently, and Dan and Dave both previously worked for Medical Device and Pharmaceutical companies. They know about the daily challenges companies face in the complex and highly regulated Life Sciences industry and spend much of their time helping customers understand how technology can address their unique needs.
In the article, Axendia observed that, “Historically, ERP systems have been designed and built strictly for function. The relationship between function and the user experience has been lacking, and navigating through these systems often requires memorization of function keys and bulky “Reference Sheets.””
In an industry beset by regulatory challenges, increasing competition and commoditization of products, Life Sciences manufacturers need to become more efficient and effective enterprises. In turn, users themselves are striving to become more effective and they look for ways to remove barriers to efficiency in cumbersome and complex manual processes. Users need solutions that allow their tasks to be streamlined and accelerated by supporting systems.
Axendia noted that, “QAD has set out to reinvent the ERP User Experience, to revolutionize the way people interact with their ERP products. The result is not a superficial patch of an existing platform but an in-depth examination of what users require from their applications to support an effective enterprise. The Project Channel Islands user experience (UX) initiative represents the four islands off of the coast of Santa Barbara which are visible from QAD’s headquarters; but what the initiative is really all about is a four phased development and implementation to provide interfaces associated with basic functionalities that are attractive, usable, and that can help improve insight from the user perspective while aiding in efficient, simplified operations.”
Beyond the tedious daily tasks users must perform, Life Sciences companies are striving to remain focused on innovation and adapting to novel approaches to manufacturing like personalized medical devices as well as emerging technology trends like the Internet of Things (IoT).
“To support the rollout of the UX projects, QAD has redeveloped their architecture using modern API approaches to enable the UX to flex for specifics roles, users and customers, and to be far easier to evolve and adapt going forward. The modern API approach also makes it far easier to add new UIs as they become popular, and even offers “No UI” which is useful for IoT and robotic use cases.”
A reinvented user experience and modern solution architecture can serve as the platform to drive inefficiencies and non-compliance out of the system and simplify operations. With this approach organizations and users can embrace quality throughout the enterprise, focus on innovation and achieve their goals to improve, enhance and save patient lives.
This is a summary of an article by Axendia. Reprinted with permission. To read the complete article visit here.
