Reflections on Midwest User Group 2026 Conference

Posted on: April 29, 2026 | By: Blake Moore | QAD Business Process, QAD Manufacturing, QAD Practice News

The 2026 Midwest User Group Conference was held at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare on April 19th-21st. Below are some of the key takeaways from the speaker events.

QAD’s New Leadership Is Listening — And Acting on It

If you attended the QAD Midwest User Group Conference this week, you heard QAD President Amit Sharma deliver one of the more substantive keynotes we’ve seen from QAD leadership in recent memory. Having spent the last seven months visiting 60 to 70 customers around the world, Amit came to the podium with real observations — not slide deck talking points — and the announcements that followed reflected that.

Here’s what stood out, and why it matters for your organization.

You No Longer Have to Wait for Adaptive to Use Champion AI

This was the biggest policy shift of the day. Until now, access to Champion AI — QAD’s suite of manufacturing-focused agents — was tied to being on the Adaptive platform. That requirement is gone. As of this week, Champion AI is available on whatever version of QAD you’re running today.

The practical implication: if procurement collaboration, supplier date management, or manual admin work is consuming time and creating errors in your operation, there’s no longer a reason to wait. QAD is backing this up with six months of complimentary access on a one-year contract — a sign they’re confident the technology will demonstrate its value on its own merits.

 

Spring 2025 QAD Midwest User Group Conference: Key Takeaways for Clients Navigating Uncertainty - Logan Consulting

 

A Structured Path Forward — Starting Where You Are

The second major announcement was Champion Advantage, a program designed around the reality that not every QAD customer is in the same place in their modernization journey. Rather than defaulting to “go to Adaptive” as the answer to every question, QAD is now offering four distinct starting points: get fast ROI through AI, build a business case through a complimentary benchmark assessment, assess your technical risk and complexity, or move directly to Adaptive if you’re ready.

The complimentary Champion Benchmark — a three to four day engagement where QAD experts assess your environment and build an executive-ready ROI model — is particularly worth exploring if internal alignment or budget justification has been a sticking point.

Taking the Mystery Out of Legacy Customizations

For customers who’ve been running QAD for decades, the biggest fear around modernization is often the customizations — code written years ago, by people who may no longer be with the company, doing things nobody fully understands. QAD demoed an AI-powered Customization Migration Tool currently in beta that extracts legacy customizations, generates plain-English functional and technical specifications, and maps a compliant migration path into Adaptive’s low-code environment. In one customer pilot, 500 customizations were processed in four hours.

This doesn’t eliminate the work, but it removes a lot of the uncertainty that has kept organizations stuck.

Our Take

What Amit described isn’t a rebranding exercise — it’s a genuine shift in how QAD is approaching its customer relationships. The willingness to open AI access across all versions, offer complimentary assessments, and tackle the customization problem head-on reflects leadership that is paying attention. This is consistent with what we have observed first hand with the new QAD Leadership team, looking to truly partner in a way that creates value for everyone. This is a refreshing and welcome change.

If any of these announcements connect with challenges you’re navigating right now, we’d welcome the conversation. Reach out to the Logan Consulting team to talk through what these changes mean for your specific environment and roadmap.