Bristol, UK, 19th July 2011, UNIT4, the world’s leading provider of business software for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC™), today released an Analyst Insight report from industry analysts Aberdeen Group highlighting the importance of a best-of-class technology strategy in the new age of cloud computing. The report, titled ‘The Best-of-Class Strategy Makes a Return in the Cloud Era’ analyses UNIT4 and how the company’s Coda Financials solution enables the finance executive to have a no-compromise approach to financial modelling and applications choice.
The key point raised is that finance executives should be able to add, keep or change business applications without losing control or increasing the risk of non-compliance, irrespective of how or where these applications are deployed.
“The latest Aberdeen Business Review of over 1,400 companies uncovered their top objectives under the finance function,” said William Jan, Senior Analyst, Financial Management and GRC at Aberdeen. “The two most notable objectives, as compared to the response from other corporate functions, are profitability/margin growth and cost reduction. Only by leveraging solutions with the best features and functionality that support their underlying business processes will they achieve this. Deployment of applications should be a secondary consideration.”
The report defines Best-of-Class as the freedom for an organisation to integrate/interoperate with best-of-class financial applications, regardless of deployment method. Although many organisations are driven to leverage Software as a Service (SaaS) for cost saving reasons, it may limit their application choices and ability to adapt to a highly dynamic and competitive environment.
“We have said for a long time that our customers benefit from a wide choice of applications and deployment options enabling them to remain versatile in their strategies and operations and able to manage change factors easily,” says Ton Dobbe, VP of Product Management at UNIT4. “The ability to embrace change as a result of organisational restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, a change of strategy, regulatory requirements and so on will provide the competitive edge organisations require today.”
Coda Financials provides finance executives with Best-of-Class enterprise accounting features and functions delivered via a choice of deployment methods including on-premise, hosted and SaaS. Its unique Link Architecture is designed to support interoperability between private cloud and on-premise deployments as well as connectivity to other key business applications, however they are deployed. The Aberdeen report is available to download here.
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About UNIT4
UNIT4 is a global business software and services company aimed at helping dynamic public sector, and commercial services organisations to embrace change simply, quickly and cost effectively in a market sector it calls 'Businesses Living IN Change' (BLINC)™. The Group incorporates a number of the world’s leading change embracing software brands including Agresso Business World, our flagship ERP suite for mid-sized services intensive organizations and Coda, our best-of-class financial management software.
With operations in 17 European countries, as well as 7 countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Africa and sales activities in several other countries, its revenue was €421.7 million in 2010.
In the UK we focus strongly on the public sector, where we are the leading provider of ERP systems to local government and post 16 education organisations, as well as having a considerable presence in the emergency services and health sectors. We also focus strongly on professional services organisations and a range of commercial sectors including Financial Services, Retail and Media and Publishing. Overall we aim to be the UK’s foremost business software company, providing solutions that transform the delivery of public services and comprehensively support commercial organisations in their ability to adapt and prosper in rapidly changing environments.
UNIT4 is headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands and has over 4,000 employees. It is listed on Euronext Amsterdam and is included in the Amsterdam Midcap Index (AMX).
