Monthly Archives: February 2017

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Sheryl Connelly.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. Sheryl Connelly, the in-house futurist at Ford Motor Company, will deliver the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture at the University of Arkansas at 7p.m. Friday, March 3 in the Faulkner Performing Arts Center.

The event is free and open to the public; free tickets are available at the door only, and seating is limited.

Connelly is known for her ability to recognize consumer and lifestyle trends, identifying changes in customer attitudes and behavioral patterns that directly impact business strategy.

She was twice named one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business," by Fast Company and was listed among TechWeeks "Top 100 Innovators."

She will speak on how developing a futurist mindset and big picture perspective can help business innovate and remain relevant in a constantly evolving world.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Arkansas Distinguished Lectures Committee, Office of Student Activities, and the Division of Student Affairs.

The Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lectures program was established in 1972 by friends of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. It assists faculty at five campuses of the University of Arkansas System in obtaining outstanding visiting lecturers to communicate ideas that stimulate public discussion, intellectual debate and cultural advancement. Past speakers in the series at the Fayetteville campus include Jonathan Kozol, W.S. Merwin, Billy Collins, Isabel Allende, Buzz Aldrin, Howard Zinn, Daniel Janzen, Lee Lynd, and Rigoberta Menchu.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.

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Futurist to Give Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture at U of A - University of Arkansas Newswire

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--QAD Inc. (Nasdaq:QADA) (Nasdaq:QADB), a leading provider of enterprise software and services for global manufacturing companies, today announced that world-renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil will headline the speaker lineup for its annual customer conference,QAD Explore, May 8-11, 2017, at the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit.

Described as the restless genius byThe Wall Street Journal and the ultimate thinking machine byForbes, Kurzweilis one of the worlds leading inventors, computer scientists, authors, thinkers and futurists.His keynote speech will take place onTuesday, May 9.

Kurzweils inventions include the CCD flatbed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, and the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. He has written five New York Times best-selling books, including The Singularity Is Near andHow To Create A Mind. He is co-founder and chancellor of Singularity University.

Kurzweil also invented the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments (Kurzweil Keyboard) for which he received a 2015 Technical GRAMMY Award for outstanding achievement in the field of music technology. A recipient of the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. He holds 21 honorary doctorates.

We are incredibly lucky to have Ray Kurzweil delivering a keynote at QAD Explore 2017, said QAD Chief Marketing Officer Carter Lloyds. His insights into the wide-ranging effects that computers, the internet and artificial intelligence have on the world are fascinating. With so many of our customers looking to leverage innovations like machine learning and the internet of things, its the perfect time to make Ray a part of our biggest event.

Explore is QADs largest annual event where customers, partners, sponsors and QAD experts come together for a week of informative sessions, hands-on training, manufacturing industry-specific presentations and networking. Theagendaprovides updates on key trends in manufacturing, strategic developments in the industries QAD serves, and information on new solution developments. Attendees will hear from over75 speakers, including QAD executives, customers and manufacturing authorities.

In addition to over 60 speakers, Explore features more than 40 workshops and hands-on training classes, many of which count toward APICS continuing education credits. The QAD Solutions Expo provides ample opportunities for sponsors and other members of the QAD community to exhibit, demonstrate and solicit feedback on their products and solutions.

Customers can register for the event atexpore.qad.com/register. QAD is offering an early bird registration fee of $1,295 (a $600 discount) for those who sign up byMarch 31. Full-price registration extends through the event. Registration includes access to more than 40 sessions, invitations to the Welcome Reception and the closing night off-site dinner, meals during the event, electronic access to all presentation materials, and access to the Solutions Expo show floor.

For the latest updates on QAD Explore 2017, follow @QAD_Community on Twitter, and look for #QADExplore.

About QAD The Effective Enterprise

QAD Inc. (Nasdaq:QADA) (Nasdaq:QADB) is a leading provider of enterprise software and services designed for global manufacturing companies. For more than 35 years, QAD has provided global manufacturing companies with QAD Enterprise Applications, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that supports operational requirements, including financials, manufacturing, demand and supply chain planning, customer management, business intelligence and business process management. QAD Enterprise Applications is offered in flexible deployment models in the cloud, on-premise or in a blended environment. With QAD, customers and partners in the automotive, consumer products, food and beverage, high technology, industrial products and life sciences industries can better align daily operations with their strategic goals to meet their vision of becoming more Effective Enterprises. For more information about QAD, call +1 805-566-6000, visitwww.qad.com.

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

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 Companys business, future economic performance or any of the assumptions underlying or relating to any of the foregoing. Forward-looking statements are based on the companys 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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World-Renowned Inventor, Author and Futurist Ray Kurzweil ... - Business Wire (press release)

Advertising and marketing have been consistently evolving, innovating and improving. New ideas, strategies, tools and choices of media are consistently being bloomed at a rapid pace especially when it comes to digital. Gone are the days where mere impressions or social media likes determine the very success of a digital campaign. In other words, popularity and awareness does not translate to revenue actual conversion does.

Very often, digital has been misperceived as an entirely new platform that generates magical instant results and is much superior compared with traditional media (thats up for debate). Many marketers neglected marketing fundamentals entirely by adopting irrelevant digital trends and clichs, just because competitors and other brands seemed successful doing it. At the end of the day, digital is just another media, but a rather modern and advanced one which consists of tools that traditional media would like to have but it is still media.

By neglecting marketing fundamentals, along with the core value of what their respective brand represents, mimicking winning trends just to drive unprofi table responses will only dilute the overall brand experience in the long run and obviously, it will only contribute to low sales conversion rates. Instead, starting off with the right mindset is a great start to realise actual goals and identify specifi c responsibility for each digital media to refl ect the overall integrated marketing mix.

Regardless of the traditional push strategy or search marketings direct response pull strategy, each media must be pathed to be consistent and seamless across the entire consumer journey. The biggest mistake would be implementing standalone digital campaigns that are not consistent with offl ine campaigns, just to target audiences within the digital market share. This is a misconception that the digital target audiences much differs with the offline audiences. There are over 21 million internet users in Malaysia, 81% of which access the internet via smartphones daily these are the very same audiences that access both offl ine and online media. In other words, they are the same group of people!

We all call it the digital era, but I call it the transparent era. In digital, every possible customer interaction, response and conversion are well recorded. For internet marketing agencies like us? There is nowhere to hide data and fi gures will never lie. With the adoption of a data-driven focus, it enhances marketers commitment in delivering fi gures-based performances which translates to tangible results revenue.

From a performance marketing point of view, marketers that are able to identify actual cost per-lead (CPL) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) have the edge to signifi cantly reduce marketing costs and realigned investments into profi table marketing efforts conversion optimisation (CRO). The right critical marketing decisions will result in effi ciency and effectiveness, and it will subside the overall dependency of cost reductions in other internal departments manufacturing, R&D, HR, logistics, etc. In a holistic sense, it will greatly position the importance and impact of marketing.

As we progress towards 2017, we tend to hunger for the latest digital offerings to stay competitive, and in the hope that implementing new innovations will bring drastic improvements. With such a constant shift of digital objectives, are we really meeting our goals? Its best to take a wider view of past campaigns and optimise it to its fullest potential.

Digital rarely does mistakes, but humans do who knows what we have missed? After all, digital is not a sprint, its an effort-driven marathon just like traditional marketing.

The author of this article is Joseph Ting, CEO, Locus-T Online.

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The Futurist: The right mindset for digital marketing - Marketing Interactive