If you have 20millions dollars to spend and want to manage a complex business organizations, go SAP, If you only want to manage a manufacturing plant with 1 million dollars go QAD.
While this statement has been the standard response for a lot of years, it is no longer true.
Both SAP and Oracle now sell solutions targeted to small and medium businesses. (see
http://www.sap.com/solutions/sme/index.epx) Oracle also now sells a much cheaper version of their database called standard edition, in case any tells you that of underlying databases that mfgpro supports (progress and oracle) progress is cheaper.
Oracle Applications is also targeting small and medium businesses, so my guess is QAD as a company is either going to wither up and dry, or be bought.
WSONG does a good job comparing the similar functions between SAP and QAD, but I'll give you a high level comarison that hopefully will paint a clearer picture.
QAD likes to place itself into the 'ERP' category of vendors out there (even renaming MFGPro to QAD Enterprise) , but it falls far short of the delivering the functionality of a true ERP system.
Here is what wikipedia has for ERP software definition.
1)
Manufacturing
Engineering, Bills of Material, Scheduling, Capacity, Workflow Management, Quality Control, Cost Management, Manufacturing Process, Manufacturing Projects, Manufacturing Flow
2) Supply Chain Management
Inventory, Order Entry, Purchasing, Product Configurator, Supply Chain Planning, Supplier Scheduling, Inspection of goods, Claim Processing, Commission Calculation
3) Financials
General Ledger, Cash Management, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets
4) Projects
Costing, Billing, Time and Expense, Activity Management
5) Human Resources
Human Resources, Payroll, Training, Time & Attendance, Benefits
6) Customer Relationship Management
Sales and Marketing, Commissions, Service, Customer Contact and Call Center support
7) Data Warehouse
and various
Self-Service interfaces for Customers, Suppliers, and Employees
MFGPro (or QAD Enterprise) does well at #1, so-so at #2, seriously lacking at # 3, so-so at #4, and completely misses at #5,6 & 7.
Well, #7, they do have a product they sell outside of MFPPro called QADBI, which I believe is still at version 1 or 2, and does not work well at all, and since it is available for only a Progess database, it does not support star-schemas which is a necessary funtion of a data warehouse. (Not sure what they were thinking - I think they are still learning in this area)
SAP and the likes (Oracle/Peoplesoft) are true enterprise products. MFGPro - think 'shop floor' software. Even the larger tier-1 companys that use mfgpro, use it more in a manner as plant software, and they have it reporting data back to SAP or Oracle E-Business suite.