Bristol, UK, August 15, 2011, UNIT4 Business Software Ltd, the UK division of UNIT4, the world’s leading provider of business software for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC™), has responded to the inquiry by the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) into government IT strategy published at the end of July by engaging with central government teams that can benefit from a fresh approach to the technology supporting shared services.
According to the Cabinet Office strategy document published at the same time, titled Government Shared Services: Strategic Vision, their Efficiency and Reform Group Shared Services team will carry out the due diligence exercise over the next three months, in order to develop a business case for shared services across government. Central government is rapidly progressing towards widespread sharing of services, whilst trying to move away from ‘Big ERP’ towards more effective IT providers. There is also significant ongoing change in the Cabinet Office’s shared services strategy, requiring flexibility in how public bodies with shared services respond to the changes to be announced in November and beyond.
“Adoption of shared services in central government has to be faster and built on evidence of success in local government and the private sector,” says Anwen Robinson, Managing Director of UNIT4 in the UK. “Central government is sharing some of their processes and people, but not yet sharing IT infrastructure effectively, often as a result of poorly researched buying decisions made last decade. In looking again at these decisions, central government departments, agencies and non-departmental public bodies can escape the small number of expensive suppliers in areas like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to make a huge cost saving and find a solution more fitting to today’s needs and economic pressures. By looking at new ways of getting the right IT in place to support shared service centres, public sector innovators can deliver cost effective transformational change and find the path to more collaborative ICT choices for back-office ICT infrastructure.”
UNIT4 is in consultation with central government to offer:
- A discussion about the strategic benefits of UNIT4’s low cost approach, presenting the alternative to ‘Big ERP’ and sharing how other public bodies are making a success of shared services.
- Delivery of IT efficiency and cost saving estimates for the specific outcomes that UNIT4 can deliver to the public bodies it supports.
- Regular updates with insight into the emerging central government consensus around shared services and the technologies available.
UNIT4 offers a choice of deployment models for shared services, including its new cloud offering called Shared Journey. This provides low cost, subscription pricing and means minimal internal IT cost while delivering the security, customisation and group efficiencies required by central government. The incentive driven pricing model also allows groups of public bodies to scale and grow as required, the more members that join the lower the monthly fee becomes for the other individual members. Other UNIT4 government customers are benefiting from cross-departmental shared services. Some are spinning-out their shared services operations as a social enterprise based on a new Re4orm service developed by UNIT4; this allows them to outsource shared services, deliver the technology backbone for other public bodies and benefit from a commoditised shared services environment.
UNIT4 research findings from 54 councils in the UK announced recently confirm that its local government customers are spending considerably less to run their ERP systems than their counterparts working with the two ‘Big ERP’ brands. In many cases, councils using Agresso are spending up to 3.5 times less in annual running costs, with almost half the number of full time equivalent (FTE) staff supporting the software.
“Now is the right time for Finance and IT Directors to consider alternatives to ‘Big ERP’ systems and look elsewhere for examples of experience and success,” continued Robinson. “Shared services is an area of substantial change which costs money to keep up with. Changing strategy means public bodies need the agility and flexibility to change tactics and ICT systems need to keep up, and ensure a low total cost of change while delivering vital public services efficiently and effectively.”
UNIT4 has more than 300 public sector customers in the UK alone and is the number one supplier of ERP systems to local government and post-16 education in the UK. Agresso Business World is also used by central government organisations including the Department for International Development (DfID), The Crown Estate, Audit Commission and the House of Commons and House of Lords. In 2006, UNIT4 became the first ERP supplier to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the trading arm of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC Buying Solutions), offering a framework for the provision of shared services which provided all public sector organisations significant discounts on Agresso software, licences and services. Agresso is widely used by the public sector on a global basis, and is the market leading solution among central government in countries including Norway and Sweden.
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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).
For more information on UNIT4 or any of its operating companies, please visit the website at www.unit4software.co.uk or follow us on Twitter @UNIT4_Group.
