In the Press – June 2011
06 July 2011
Below are UNIT4’s UK press coverage highlights from June
Eversholt Rail: on the right track with UNIT4
Accountancy Age
The rail industry faces constant change. Eversholt is no exception having been formed in 1994 as part of the privatisation of British Rail. In February 2010 the company was rebranded to Eversholt Rail Group and purchased by Eversholt Investment Group - a consortium consisting of 3i Infrastructure, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and STAR Capital Partners. The old legacy IT systems did not provide Eversholt with flexibility to extract the wide range of financial and management information needed to enhance and grow the business. The level of organisational change Eversholt has been subjected to over the last few years had created a necessity to review its ageing IT infrastructure group-wide.
Accountancy Age published the full UNIT4 case study and it is available to download from the site
Survey results: Why are businesses selecting SaaS accounting?
Accmanpro
Most surveys concentrate on attitudes of buyers looking to make a binary decision between SaaS and on-premise solutions before they enter the buying cycle. Few review the position after a decision is taken. It is important to look at the situation after the event because it provides insights into the factors currently playing into the decision process. Circumstances will vary depending on the solution selected but I had not seen any hard evidence of what is happening in the mid-range of buyers. FinancialForce recently polled some of its users to discover why they selected their solution.
Version One hails the contribution of its Partners at annual Partner Day awards
AccountingWeb
Document management and imaging software author Version One has acknowledged the valuable contribution made by its business partners at its annual Partner Sales Conference and Race Day, held this year at York Racecourse. Version One presented awards to partner companies and individuals in recognition of their outstanding successes with the award winning technologies.
UNIT4 Business Software claimed Version One’s coveted ‘Business Partner of the Year 2011’ award for the second year running, while Infor Enterprise Software Solutions was nominated ‘International Partner of the Year 2011’. The Eclipse Group also collected Version One’s ‘New Business Partner of the Year 2011’ award.
Julian Buck, Version One’s Managing Director, says, “Our strong relationship with UNIT4 means that we view them more as an extension of our own team than as another vendor. This engagement extends from sales and marketing through to development, support and professional services. The significant contribution that UNIT4 has made to our revenue growth, combined with their willingness to work closely with us at every level, makes them a worthy winner of our ‘Business Partner of the Year’ award once more.”
UNIT4 pushes shared service centres
FT
UNIT4, the Netherlands-based enterprise software vendor, has caught the cloud bug. Shared Journey, UNIT4’s new cloud-based offering, is aimed at public sector and commercial organisations running Agresso Business World, a business software suite, or Coda Financials, an accounting package used mostly by multi-nationals.
Mindful of the cloud hype, UNIT4 has taken its time pondering how best to pitch cloud computing to its customers. It has ultimately decided to offer a cloud-based platform that does something they would otherwise struggle to do themselves, namely, built a shared services centre -- hence the name.
There is a well established trend in the UK and other countries for regional public sector bodies with small and inefficient IT operations to pool their IT resources with neighbouring regions, so creating a larger more efficient shared IT centre. UNIT4 argues that its approach allows each organisation within the shared service to obtain all the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining full independence.
Shared Journey is an example of how UNIT4 is challenging the accepted wisdom that mid-range business software vendors face a bleak future in a consolidating industry. Indeed, UNIT4 added 75 new customers in its flagship UK division last year.
UNIT4 chipping away at SAP
TechMarketView
UNIT4, the Netherlands-based ERP provider, has acquired a new customer, nuclear power specialist Magnox, who will pay £2.5 million to put Unit4’s Agresso Business World ERP suite in place. What is notable about the deal is that Magnox is replacing SAP with UNIT4.
According to Andrew Taylor, Head of Project Delivery for Magnox, “We were feeling increasingly limited by our existing system as we could not make the changes required at the speed of change we were experiencing.” It’s no surprise that Magnox’s statement chimes with the key feature of the Agresso ERP suite and UNIT4’s core marketing message - and if this was the only indicator that UNIT4 was achieving something of note it would not be significant.
However, it is the latest in a steady stream of positive news (UNIT4: positive performance all round). The company is also confident enough to successfully tackle tier one vendors head on, particularly in the public sector (UNIT4 to challenge SAP in larger local authorities). Note also that during financial year 2010 the UK division alone added 75 new customers to its ranks (the UK is the largest single contributor to the overall UNIT4 group business).
So, what is the secret of UNIT4’s growing success? In my view, a key factor is an application architecture that does indeed allow for rapid and thus cost effective change. This brings down the long-term cost of ownership and is a counterpoint to systems that are infamous for difficult and costly management. Unit4’s assertion that at the end of an implementation project it aims to leave customers self-sufficient with no need for on-going work, and attendant costs, with either UNIT4 or service providers is also an enticing proposition and contrasts with the traditional ERP dependency model. Of course, post implementation assistance is unlikely to be completely ruled out but anything that reduces the requirement will be received positively. Outcome based value assessments are also good news.
It has a long way to go and is not in a position to seriously challenge larger competitors, but UNIT4 has demonstrated it can successfully chip away at their customer bases. We’ll continue to monitor its progress with great interest.
UNIT4 wins £2.5m contract with Magnox, replacing SAP.
FSN
UNIT4 has secured a new contract with nuclear power specialist Magnox Ltd. The contract is worth approximately £2.5million in software and services to UNIT4 and will see Magnox replace its SAP system and implement Route 66, the latest version of UNIT4’s Agresso Business World ERP suite…UNIT4 was selected because it would allow Magnox to adapt core systems and processes in a timely and cost effective manner, to reflect the ongoing programme of change across the organisation.
Xentrall selects UNIT4 business software’s Agresso Business World finance system
Kable
Xentrall, a shared services partnership between Stockton-on-Tees DC and Darlington DC, has selected UNIT4 Business Software’s cloud platform for shared services solution.
Under the contract, UNIT4’s cloud platform will deliver Agresso Business World as the finance system of choice to support the number of schools in the area applying to become independent Learning Academies.
From financial reporting to integrated reporting
FSN
The International Integrated Reporting Committee aims to harmonise environmental, social, governance and sustainability reporting practices and integrate them into an internationally recognised and adopted reporting framework that includes financial performance. FSN writer Lesley Meall looks at the progress so far, and considers the implications for finance professionals…
The software industry will have a role to play. “We can help our customers to meet integrated reporting standards by providing them with the sort of flexible reporting framework that will allow them to measure, manage and report on all sorts of performance measures,” says Dave Turner, Group Marketing Director with UNIT4, but it will still be a long time before ‘integrated reporting’ can be integrated from a technology point of view. “There seems to be an expectation that companies have systems that contain all of the information they are going to need to report on this wide range of performance indicators, but this is a myth,” he says.
Some UNIT4 customers are already going out of their way to report on sustainability, but it isn’t easy. Turner explains: “Even an organisation with a top-to-toe Agresso ERP that’s using our Sustain4 environmental performance management solution to collect information from other parts of the supply chain, can still struggle to find some of it,” let alone automate its collection. “When you talk to businesses about it, you find that they have one guy who sits there and rings up all of the country managers asking them for information, because a lot of it’s still buried in spreadsheets, or it’s being worked out on the back of a cigarette packet.”
‘Shared Journey' allows organisations to quickly set up and launch a shared services operation
CBR
Enterprise software provider UNIT4 has launched a new cloud platform for shared services for public and private sector organisations. Dubbed 'Shared Journey', the new cloud-based offering is available for UNIT4's Agresso Business World and Coda Financials enterprise software services.
The company made the announcement at the Grape Escape analyst event in Boston. It said that Shared Journey allows groups of companies, public sector bodies or not-for-profit organisations to work together to quickly set up and launch a shared services operation.
