Housing Authorities look to ERP solution to improve efficiency and help get people back to work

Agresso, the leading provider of agile Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has announced a +$1 million agreement with the King County Housing Authority (KCHA) to supply a full ERP suite, including financials, human resources and payroll, planning and budgeting, reporting and analytics, and more.  Agresso will be a key tool helping KCHA respond to regulatory change and find innovative solutions to improve options for low-income households.  KCHA's comprehensive evaluation process included solutions from Microsoft, JD Edwards and SunGard; Agresso was awarded the business based on its ability to manage ongoing change. 

KCHA participates in the Moving-To-Work (MTW) program, an initiative by Congress that empowers housing authorities to improve efficiency and increase housing choices for low-income households.  "The program provides us a degree of flexibility within the bureaucratic framework to develop better approaches.  To participate fully, we needed nimble financial tools like Agresso that could keep pace with our new ideas, and allow us to report in non-standard ways," relates Craig Violante, the director of finance for KCHA.  "For example, we developed an innovative way to fund our various programs and housing developments based on demonstrated need instead of a pre-set formula.  However, our old legacy system created roadblocks and inefficiencies; in contrast, the agility of Agresso will help us to take full advantage of the MTW program." 

"We see housing authorities as a great fit for Agresso," observes Shelley Zapp, president of Agresso North America.  "They experience unpredictable regulatory shifts and need to respond quickly and efficiently.  Agresso has seen much success in this sector outside North America, and just recently signed an agreement with Sovereign Housing Group in the U.K.  "We expect to see momentum build with North American housing authorities as our message of post-implementation agility spreads," adds Zapp. 

"Agresso will also provide the agility we need to respond to unexpected changes in the future," adds Violante.  "Public Housing and the Section 8 program are both highly regulated and Congress often tweaks the regulations from one year to the next.  Some of these tweaks can have profound impact on our finance department," he adds.  "For example, staff used to manage their housing portfolios from a central location.  But new Department of Housing and Urban Development rules changed this approach, pushing operations, maintenance and budgeting out to each individual site. This change created an enormous burden on our finance team.  With Agresso, we will be able to adapt to changes like these with ease, and focus our time and attention on our mandate."

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About King County Housing Authority

Since its establishment in 1939, the King County Housing Authority has played a key role in providing affordable housing options for the residents of King County, Washington. Through partnerships with local communities and nonprofit organizations, KCHA delivers affordable housing and related supportive services such as education, job training and social services to more than 40,000 local residents who earn less than the county median income. Our approach puts independence and self-sufficiency well within the reach of most families, usually within six years.  KCHA supports more than 17,000 households in housing dispersed among 23 suburban cities and the unincorporated areas of the county. King County - the 12th most populous county in the nation - has a population of 1.7 million and covers a geographic area of 2,130 square miles.

About Agresso

Agresso (www.AgressoNA.com) is a $500 million enterprise resource planning (ERP) company, listed in the Netherlands as Unit 4 Agresso (Dutch Stock Exchange EURONEXT-U4AGR) and one of the top five providers of ERP solutions for professional services and public sector organizations. Agresso offers a uniquely integrated data/ process/ delivery architecture designed specifically for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC)^TM.  Agresso is known as "The ERP Market's Definition of Agility" as it allows an unlimited amount of ongoing, post-implementation changes without the typical external IT costs and intervention that nets billions of dollars in revenue to the market leaders. Over 2,900 companies and organizations in 100 countries deploy Agresso Business World for both operational support and strategic management. The company's role-based, Web Services and Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA) enabled solutions include:  Financial Management, Human Resources and Payroll, Procurement Management, Project Costing and Billing, Reporting and Analytics, Business Process Automation, Field Services and Asset Maintenance, and CRM.