Kinnerton Confectionery Chooses QAD Demand Planning and QAD Production Planning in the Cloud

Kinnerton Confectionery Chooses QAD Demand Planning and QAD Production Planning in the Cloud

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., June 28, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- QAD Inc. (Nasdaq: QADA) (Nasdaq: QADB), a leading provider of flexible, cloud-based enterprise software and services for global manufacturing companies, today announced that Kinnerton Confectionery, Britain's largest independent manufacturer of chocolate and novelty confectionery, has chosen QAD Demand Planning and QAD Production Planning in the cloud.

In 1978, Kinnerton became the first brand to manufacture and sell chocolate in the shape of children's characters in the United Kingdom. Headquartered in London, it is currently the fifth largest chocolate producer in Britain. With manufacturing sites in Fakenham, Norfolk and Sherburn-in-Elmet, Yorkshire, a distribution center at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, a sales office in Australia and a technical office in Hong Kong, the company employs approximately 1,000 people. Kinnerton manufactures in a nut-safe environment and sells licensed, branded and private-label products to major supermarket chains as well as to regional and discount retailers across the United Kingdom. It is one of Britain's leading producers of seasonal goods including popular licensed children's characters such as Peppa Pig, My Little Pony and Thomas & Friends. Kinnerton is a subsidiary of Zertus GmbH.

Kinnerton has used QAD's Food and Beverage ERP solution since 1996 and recently upgraded to the latest edition of QAD Enterprise Applications. During the course of the Customer Engagement process with QAD, Kinnerton explored the possibility of using QAD supply chain solutions to help it better cope with the frequent changes in demand, promotions and seasonality that make forecasting challenging for food and beverage companies. Kinnerton relied primarily on spreadsheets and switching to QAD will enable the company to forecast more accurately while reducing inventory levels and improving service levels.

"As Kinnerton has grown, we realized that we need more robust business planning and to improve the way we forecast demand and plan production," said Matthew Davies, IT director at Kinnerton parent company Zertus UK. "With the QAD Demand Planning and QAD Production Planning solutions, we will be agile and responsive while reaping the benefits of having a fully integrated demand and production planning tool. This new solution is being introduced to support the introduction of a Sales and Operations Planning process and will help to improve visibility across the supply chain, improve factory efficiency and reduce overall lead times. We will be able to forecast and plan far more efficiently than before."

QAD Demand Planning provides memory-resident planning and simulation which enables rapid evaluation of planned promotions or new product introductions and promotes timely response to demand fluctuations. QAD Production Planning helps manufacturers optimize production plans in order to maximize efficiency and better meet customer needs. It gives users the ability to plan collaboratively and includes decision support capabilities to visualize, analyze, simulate and understand production requirements and capacities.

Kinnerton selected the QAD solutions for a number of reasons including:

• QAD supply chain solutions integrate seamlessly with QAD Enterprise Applications
• QAD's longstanding relationship with Kinnerton
• QAD's proven customer results in the food industry

"Kinnerton has been a QAD customer for quite a while, and during that time, there have been changes to their business that gave us the opportunity to help them evolve in ways that improved their growing company," said JC Walravens, vice president of QAD EMEA.  "It's gratifying to see customers use QAD integrated products in conjunction with QAD Enterprise Applications to get the best out of their business. Like a lot of our customers, Kinnerton saw the advantages of the cloud."

About QAD – The Effective Enterprise

QAD Inc. (Nasdaq: QADA) (Nasdaq: QADB) is a leading provider of flexible, cloud-based enterprise software and services for global manufacturing companies. QAD Cloud ERP for manufacturing supports operational requirements in the areas of financials, customer management, supply chain, manufacturing, service and support, analytics, business process management and integration. QAD's portfolio includes related solutions for quality management software, supply chain management software, transportation and global trade management software and B2B interoperability. Since 1979, QAD solutions have enabled customers in the automotive, consumer products, food and beverage, high tech, industrial manufacturing and life sciences industries to better align operations with their strategic goals to become Effective Enterprises.

To learn more, visit www.qad.com or call +1 805-566-6000.

"QAD" is a registered trademark of QAD Inc.  All other products or company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contacts:

QAD Inc.
Scott Matulis
Public Relations
818-451-8918
publicrelations@qad.com

or

Evan Quinn
Analyst Relations
617-869-7335
industryanalyst@qad.com

Note to Investors: This press release contains certain forward-looking statements made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, statements regarding projections of revenue, income and loss, capital expenditures, plans and objectives of management regarding the company's business, future economic performance or any of the assumptions underlying or relating to any of the foregoing. Forward-looking statements are based on the company's current expectations. Words such as "expects," "believes," "anticipates," "could," "will likely result," "estimates," "intends," "may," "projects," "should," "would," "might," "plan" and variations of these words and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. A number of risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These risks include, but are not limited to: risks associated with our cloud service offerings, such as defects and disruptions in our services, our ability to properly manage our cloud service offerings, our reliance on third-party hosting and other service providers, and our exposure to liability and loss from security breaches; demand for the company's products, including cloud service, licenses, services and maintenance; pressure to make concessions on our pricing and changes in our pricing models; protection of our intellectual property; dependence on third-party suppliers and other third-party relationships, such as sales, services and marketing channels; changes in our revenue, earnings, operating expenses and margins; the reliability of our financial forecasts and estimates of the costs and benefits of transactions; the ability to leverage changes in technology; defects in our software products and services; third-party opinions about the company; competition in our industry; the ability to recruit and retain key personnel; delays in sales; timely and effective integration of newly acquired businesses; economic conditions in our vertical markets and worldwide; exchange rate fluctuations; and the global political environment. For a more detailed description of the risk factors associated with the company and factors that may affect our forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and, in particular, the section entitled "Risk Factors" therein, and in other periodic reports the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission thereafter. Management does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law.

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SOURCE QAD Inc.