QAD User Group Conferences vs the QAD Explore Conference – What’s the difference?

Posted on: March 30, 2016 | By: Craig Thompson | QAD Practice News

In the QAD Community, customers have a few conference options that are focused on helping the manufacturing and distribution companies utilizing the QAD ERP Application to support their business processes.  Many of our customers ask us, “which one should I attend” and “what’s the difference”?  Our answer to the first questions is always “both, if possible”. Many folks do attend both but there is also a large number of folks that are required to choose one or the other. In order to help our customers determine which one to attend, when they can only pick one, we thought it might be helpful to lay out some of the key differences.    

  • Conference Focus:
    •  Explore is all about the future of the product (i.e. where QAD is putting their R&D dollars and what new functionality you can look forward to), learning about other customer successes in your industry and getting hands on training.  Last year, as an example, QAD announced the investment they have been making in the User interface and then had a short demo of the beta version—-very cool stuff!  Must be a current QAD customer, prospect or partner to attend this conference. 
    • QAD User Groups focus more on helping folks get more out of what they already have (old version or new, any industry—-here is something our company did and how we benefited, may or may not work for you, you decide), and the range of attendees is broader (anyone can attend, including vendors that are not QAD Partners).
  • Networking
    • Explore draws 800+ attendees from all over the world, including all the QAD approved vendors/partners and QAD Inc executives.  Due to the focus on the future, Explore attracts more executives than the QAD User Groups and they provide opportunity for those folks to network with others in their industry/vertical, regardless of their location. 
    • The QAD User Group caters almost exclusively to the hands on end users of the QAD application and it is more regional in nature, as opposed to Industry in nature.  There is a Midwest, West Coast, Rocky Mountain and South-East user groups, each with their own conference schedule.  If you want to meet other QAD customers in your region, this is the best place to do that. 
  • Investment
    • QAD User Groups are all not for profit organizations and very inexpensive for end user to attend—–$95/attendee.
    • QAD Inc is a for profit publicly traded company and the Explore conference is a bit more costly—–$1,295/attendee.
    • Sponsors and Vendors (like us and QAD) still foot the majority of the bill for both conferences, so both are a good value for QAD customers—-hence our recommendation to attend both.
    • Location has a lot to do with the added cost for Explore as well.  For example, the Midwest User Group was recently held in a nice and quiet Chicago suburb, called Lincolnshire, whereas Explore is going to be in the heart of downtown Chicago on Michigan Avenue (our city’s gem).  

For more information on both QAD's Explore or the QAD User Group Conferences contact Logan Consulting your Chicago based QAD partner.