QAD Champions of Manufacturing 2025 | Sanjay Brahmawar, QAD

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Sanjay Brahmawar

CEO

QAD

play_circle_outline QAD Appoints Sanjay Brahmawar as CEO, Aiming for $1 Billion Revenue Growth in Four Years

play_circle_outline QAD is revamping product quality and innovation based on customer feedback.

play_circle_outline New talent and leadership are being brought in to ensure effective transformation at QAD.

play_circle_outline Emphasizing collaboration between systems and users to improve manufacturing processes and output.

play_circle_outline QAD is optimistic about the future of US manufacturing and its strategic importance.

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Sanjay Brahmawar, QAD

Sanjay Brahmawar

CEO QAD

In this interview from the QAD Champions of Manufacturing event in Dallas, Texas, QAD Inc. chief executive officer Sanjay Brahmawar joins theCUBE Research’s Scott Hebner and Paul Gillin to share his vision for the company and the future of manufacturing. Brahmawar explains why he returned to his manufacturing roots, how QAD is targeting mid-market manufacturers, and why a people-first approach to AI is central to closing a growing capacity shortfall. He outlines how QAD’s Champion AI strategy is designed to give frontline workers “superpowers” by amplifying t... Read more

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What factors influenced the speaker's decision to join the company? add

What feedback did the customers provide regarding their experience with QAD and what actions were taken in response? add

What changes have been made to the leadership and how have those changes impacted the organization? add

What is the role of the agentic layer in the context of Champion AI and its integration with various ERP and connected workforce solutions? add

What is your outlook on the future of manufacturing in the United States? add

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Sanjay Brahmawar, QAD

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Paul Gillin

>> We are back. Paul Gillin with Scott Hebner here at the QAD Redzone Champions of Manufacturing Conference in Dallas, Texas. We've been talking with all kinds of QAD people over the last couple of hours, and now we have the head honcho, Sanjay Brahmawar, the new CEO of ... New, I say just a little over three months, CEO of QAD, formerly Software AG, formerly IBM. First of all, thank you for joining us, spending some of your valuable time today with us.

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Well, it's a pleasure being here. Thank you so much for joining us here and being here at our Champions of ... It's the first Champions of Manufacturing event, so we are really happy to have you here.

Paul Gillin

>> You're making some big changes. You came over from Software AG, billion-dollar company. This company is around 350 million or so. What attracted you about moving to a smaller company like this?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Well, we are about half a billion in size because we are the manufacturing ERP side plus the Redzone connected workforce with an ambition to grow the company to a billion in about four years, both organic and inorganic of course. But to your question, what attracted me to come here. Look, my origins, they started with manufacturing and I spent a lot of time in manufacturing and industrial implementing systems in those environments. And so it's an area that I've always been very, very interested in. I spent a lot of time in. So when I finished at Software AG and I was approached for this role, it was that excitement about manufacturing, getting back to something, A, I love, but also the systems and the technology that make a difference in manufacturing. I was excited by that. And then, of course, I think when you think about QAD, we have capabilities that really address the mid-market manufacturers, and I believe that this is the time for manufacturing. It's a great opportunity in manufacturing and we can support these clients, make that transition.

Scott Hebner

>> One area I want to get your perspectives on is which has become crystal clear, and I think it's actually a unique attribute in my experience, is you guys are big time people, right? I mean, even the name of the conference, Champions of AI, which implies that AI agents are champions for the actual workers, and you've made it crystal clear during the keynote and all your colleagues that were here with us so far today made it really clear that this isn't about replacing people, it's about giving superpowers to the people that are on that manufacturing floor and that are responsible for the manufacturing process. Can you unwind that a little bit and unpack it, that thinking?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's a very important point. Look, take it back a little bit into the context of manufacturing today. While there's so much of funding investment, there's a strategic understanding around manufacturing. It's important for economies, it's important for countries, but the reality is that we got 500,000 open jobs in the US today. So there is a capacity shortfall in manufacturing, and this is not going to get any better. By 2033, it's going to be 2 million open jobs. So the way we look at it is that, look, two things. One, the people that are in manufacturing today, we've got to empower them and we've got to make them more effective, because that is one way to address this capacity shortfall. The second thing is we've got to change the systems to become systems of action, because we want to attract the next generation of talent and you're not going to attract these next generation of talent with these green screens and old systems. So that's the second side of it, but that is why Champion AI was ... The whole thinking behind Champion AI was we want to create champions or agents and capabilities that help the people that work with them become champions. So that's the whole-

Scott Hebner

>> Yeah, my point about the uniqueness of how you expressed it was a lot of the companies I talked to, and it's quite a few, there's always a cost reduction element to it. And what I'm hearing here is your customers aren't necessarily looking for cost reduction, they're looking for speed, efficiency, better decisions, right?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Yeah. And they're amplifying the potential of their people. So if you can get 26% productivity improvement, you can get the output of four lines in the cost of three. So flip it over a bit, right? So it's not that our clients are not conscious about cost. They are very conscious about cost, but you look at it the other way, I've got the same people and I can do another production line. I don't have to open a production line. So that's the way our clients are looking at it. And every agent that we have created and that we are exposing to our clients today has that thinking in what is the problem we're trying to solve and what is the real impact or material impact to our client's operation.

Scott Hebner

>> One more question on this line, just the macro view, and I'm not talking about just manufacturing, but just in general for AI. A lot of people out there saying, you read this all the time, that's going to take everyone's jobs. I don't believe that's going to be the case. I actually think five years from now, you're going to see a net increase. Now, while there's not manufacturing, but automation type roles, task automation that may go down in terms of the amount of jobs, I think it's going to spark knowledge workers, right? So what's your view from a macro perspective on agentic AI, AI just on the employment picture in general?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Yeah, I mean look, I think there's a reason why we broke up the agents that we are delivering in three buckets. We said the first bucket is actually something that takes the mundane out. And everybody who's working with a system or working on certain processes has certain mundane activities they do today that are not really value add but have to be done because you've got to prepare yourself to do the really high value add activity. So when you apply agentic AI and you apply these capabilities, you are allowing these people, these qualified professionals to actually use their powers on the right things and so they can do many more of those right things. And so in just a simple ways, a normal user or business user in the system today with the capability of championing should be 3x to 4x more powerful. And someone literally we are supercharging these people. And somebody who's a super user in the system is going to be like 10x to 100x more powerful, right? And that's the way we look at it, right? I think, look, there will be some reshuffle of jobs here and there, but I am fully with you. This is going to be net additive in manufacturing. And actually, we are going to work pretty hard to address the shortfall that exists today.

Paul Gillin

>> You said during your keynote this morning that you've met with about 75 customers in the last three months. You also made a kind of remarkable statement that QAD had let you down. What changes do you have to affect in customer attitudes to show them that this is a new company? And how are you specifically going to bring them up?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> I mean, I think first of all, I think it's really important that you listen to your customers and you try to not take away the messages that you want to hear. And so I tried very hard to just try to get unfiltered messages from my customers. And what is it that they are experiencing today? I did not read from one of those 75 customers that they did not love QAD. I got the love, they love QAD, they have been loyal to QAD, but they wanted to tell me also saying, "Hey, for the last three, four years, we are missing that attention, that quality of the product, that response time, that innovation, that keeping up with pace with what we are facing in our environments. How do you deal with those challenges?" So I took those messages straight. I took them the way they said to me and I synthesized that into, "Hey, we've got to step up the game here. We need to match up to our client's expectations or exceed those expectations." And that's how I brought the whole company together and said, "Hey, it's not acceptable to me that our clients feel like that about our product." So to answer your question, the first thing is the product. For me, everything starts from the product. If you are not able to create high-quality products or innovative products, then everything else becomes a slog, honestly, because you can't set your way out of it.

Paul Gillin

>> Is that a problem you have to address?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> No, this is what we've been working, right? So for the last six months, we have worked tirelessly on making sure that our product quality is at the level that we can stand confidently in front of clients and say, "Hey, we believe this can be deployed well and it will hold its ground very clear." And I'm very confident about that now. That's number one. And then number two was we pivoted. I pivoted the company very quickly within a couple of weeks to agentic AI, because it was becoming very clear that the way of engagement, the way of interacting, it is going to be through this agentic layer. So either we do it ourselves or somebody is going to disintermediate us and come up with an option for my client. So it was clear, we moved very quickly. We are so pleased with what we have built with Champion AI. Obviously, we haven't done it on our own, we've built it with partners. I announced the partnership with AWS today and with Boomi on the integration front. These partners have been instrumental in supporting that speed to get this within six months ready and to be able to demonstrate to our clients, so absolutely. Acknowledge that we let it go, we did not keep the attention to that expectation from our client, but this is what it is. And the conversation with Troy also, you can have setbacks in life. Companies can also have setbacks. We had a setback, we understood it, we've taken it and we are fixing and we are on the right path now, and clients appreciate that. They appreciate the honesty. They don't want to hear marketing messages. They want to hear the truth, where we are today. Of course, it's easier for a new CEO to say it when you come in because you can see it, but I think part of it is not just saying it and then not doing something about it. And so the proof of the pudding will be now when we see the feedback from clients, but I think we have brought ourselves to the right place now.

Paul Gillin

>> Another message that came out clearly today was the need for speed. What are you doing internally to spread that message and to get the organization centered around speed?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Yeah, and very good question, because it starts from your own organization. If you don't have the sense of urgency within the organization and we don't simplify within the organization, we're never going to be able to deliver that speed to value to our clients. So part of the work that we've been doing for the last six, eight months is simplifying the organization, making it clear within the organization, what is it that we are trying to do? What is our objective? What is our vision? What is our mission and how do we get there? These are some of the things that if they're not clear in an organization, you end up with a lot of ping ponging between different teams. So first thing is to clarify and make clear, what are we going to do and what we are not going to do? That's part of one of the things we've done. We've taken decisions of things we are not going to do, and that makes it simpler for people to say, "Let's put our attention to that." Number one. And number two is making sure you can hold people accountable. That's a very important part of being able to move with speed and be able to deliver things. So we've created that. We brought some new talent. I've changed quite a lot of the leaders, I have to say. I brought in people with great experience both on the content and the product side, but also on transformation. How do you deal with this kind of a situation? And that makes a big difference, because when you bring in an A plus player, they then look at the organization and bring the whole level of the organization up also. So that has been part of it also.

Scott Hebner

>> So we've heard so far about Redzone, Adaptive ERP, Champion AI and Champion Pace. Could you bring that all together and perhaps how it comes together for a customer, and then how all your customer conversations shaped that?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Yeah. When you think about a manufacturing environment, you have to think about it in the sense of maybe three core elements, right? One is you have processes that define what do you do in a manufacturing environment, end-to-end processes, right? Number two is you have systems that support those processes, systems that will record transactions, store your data, execute on your orders or your billing shipments, et cetera. So that's the number two. And then the third thing is the people. There are the people that basically are engaging with the system or running the processes or interacting with clients. So these are the three aspects. And the way we look at it as our manufacturing platform, it works on those three points. So Adaptive, I call it the brain. It basically has all the data, it stores all the transaction, it has the master map of all the processes and it's where we have the intelligence. Then we have Redzone that basically takes all of the information from that intelligent layer and brings it not through tons of BI reports or lots of dashboards. No, it takes it directly on a mobile device, iOS or Android. And it gives that information about OEE, your downtime, your next changeover, who is available, who's not available. It's somebody performing well, not performing. All of that information is available to that production worker at the point of work, which is so relevant and important. Because if it's not available at the point of work, often in manufacturing, things move so fast you cannot take action. You then leave it aside and you say, "Okay, tomorrow or day after when the next shift, when we get time, we will address the problem." With Redzone, you're addressing the problem there and now. So that's the second part, which is empowering the frontline. And then the third part really is how do you get that intelligence and how do you enable that? And that's the agentic layer. And the agentic layer is across both. So it's across the ERP as well as the Redzone capability. And this agentic layer will keep building and growing. And the way we've designed it is that in some ways it is agnostic to the ERP or the connected workforce capability it's using. So Champion AI does not insist on our client that, "Hey, you only have to use QAD or you only have to use Redzone." It could be that a client has a different connected workforce solution or they have a different ERP. It does not matter. Champion AI will allow them to bring in information from all possible places, use the agents and the agentic layer to be able to interact and then do their activities. So that's the way we are thinking because that's the nature of our client base. They're not all QAD house.

Paul Gillin

>> We are so early in the agentic era now, and it's become a buzzword over the last year. Where do you see agents evolving? I mean, when you look five years down the road, if you can do that, what will agents be doing that they're not doing today?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> I think you're spot on. There's so much noise and everything has an AI attached to it. I think the bubble is going to burst. There's no doubt about it. But the truth also is that there is true capability. There is true technology that can be leveraged and it is moving at a fast pace. So the question really is, do you have a real problem that you're trying to solve, or you're making up something and then looking for a problem to put that solution and sell that solution too? And I think that's going to differentiate us in the market, particularly software companies. We've gone down the path and said, "We are identifying very specific problems that we know our clients have talked a lot to us about. We are not easy problems to solve." If they were easy, they would've been solved with machine learning and everything so far. There are problems that require a lot of end-to-end understanding and being able to get an access to data and then be able to apply capabilities like agentic AI. And I mentioned in my keynote that the problem we chose is inventory carrying costs. If you look at a mid-market manufacturer, the top cost, the third-highest cost is actually inventory carrying costs. So your first cost is the cost of capital machinery that you use in your plant. The second cost is people, cost of people, and the third cost is inventory carrying costs. So how do you reduce this? It's not that easy because you've got to think of all the variables and you've got to think of the risk of a stock-out. Because when you have a stock-out, it has a lot of costs associated. So human beings usually will tend to be on the more conservative side and would not want to have a stock-out. But with the agentic capabilities, we can look end-to-end, understand the inbound coming, the impact of any delays, understand the replenishment times, understand what is the inventory at hand. You then understand what sales orders you have, you understand your production schedule, if there are any delays. All of those variables, it's very difficult for one single human being to really ... So this is where agentic capabilities are very, very relevant. And you get an understanding of what can you do with those replenishment levels, what are acceptable when you think about risks that you can take against a stock-out and the machine can, obviously ... And let's say the agentic capabilities can offer better recommendations, and we've done that now with clients and simulated it to very significant reductions in it.

Scott Hebner

>> My observation is that you're on the leading edge, the leading of the curve of the next wave of ROI, because a lot of the AI has been used now for pure task automation, some workflow automation. When you start getting into agentic and you start applying it around decision intelligence and you're enabling people to make better decisions, which is really not so much about data, it's about knowledge, it's about making judgments. Everything I've learned since I've been here, that's where you're heading with this. And I think that's going to be what the next frontier of AI is going to shape over the next couple of years is from automation to decisions. And you guys are doing that, which is good.

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Yeah. But when you discuss with mid-market manufacturers, they'll often tell you it works really well because Michael does it perfectly. Michael knows exactly what to do. Now, if you took Michael out of the loop, there are not that many people who would know what to do. So that's another thing that Champion AI helps with. Champion AI is understanding all the things Michael is doing and is able to bring that up. So when there's a new person who comes in, let's say they are training somebody or bringing somebody in, that new person has the opportunity to ask Champion AI, "Okay, what was done in this situation in that particular case? What pops up what Michael was doing? And why was Michael doing it? What did we learn with all the things Michael has been doing and has been doing it to perfection?" Okay, now we can start industrializing that gut knowledge, that experience. And at the end of the day, if you bring young talent into manufacturing, you've got to give them those kind of abilities. That's what they have today with ChatGPT and Groq and anything else that they use. They have that to their hand. So if they don't have it in the manufacturing environment, they're not going to get excited about working. So this is exactly the way we are thinking.

Paul Gillin

>> QAD is an international company. You have customers all over the world, a lot of attention the recent years given to the state of US manufacturing and whether manufacturing has a bright future in the US or not. What's your opinion on that?

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Well, I mean first of all, I think there's clearly a lot of investment flowing into manufacturing. The numbers are mind-blowing, 2 to 3 trillion. Now, till you see that flow down and really get manifested, it takes time of course, because manufacturers don't move so fast. They need to understand all the variables and then they make decisions around facilities and production lines and where to open them or where to close them. I do think we'll start seeing the manifestation of that in a while. But to answer your question, I am very bullish. I feel that there is an absolute clear understanding in both the economy as well as in the government that manufacturing is strategic for the US and that plays to obviously the strength of all the audience we had today, but also to what we are focused on. QAD is maniacally focused on manufacturing. So we are very optimistic about that thing. We also understand there is a big shortfall in capacity in manufacturing. And if we can bring solutions that address that shortfall and help manufacturers deploy faster, bring these capabilities quickly, they will be also using that investment and those dollars coming in much, much faster and be able to respond quickly. So I'm very optimistic. I think this is going to be very good for manufacturing in the US. Also, we are very excited about playing an important role in that.

Paul Gillin

>> All right, Sanjay Brahmawar, thank you so much for taking some of your valuable time at this event. A lot of people want to talk to you. I'm grateful to you for spending some time with us.

Sanjay Brahmawar

>> Thank you so much. Gents, it was a fantastic catching up again and really appreciate having this chat with you. Thank you.

Paul Gillin

>> A lot of energy at this conference. We'll be back. This is theCUBE. Paul Gillin with Scott Hebner from the QAD Redzone Champions of Manufacturing Conference in Dallas. This is theCUBE, the leader in technology news and analysis.