Victoria, B.C. and Irving, TX – UNIT4 Business Software’s parent company UNIT4, the world’s leading provider of business software for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC™), today published a market report undertaken by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) which outlines the current software priorities of public sector organizations worldwide. The report finds that public sector organizations are under huge pressure to radically change their structures, the way they operate, their legislative compliance, their cost base and the services they deliver.
The report is based on TEC software selection project data and interviews with IT managers and C-level executives from UNIT4’s public sector customers in Western Europe and North America. It highlights three key initiatives that public sector organizations should consider:
- Moving more of their software to an on-demand model;
- Selecting business software that is architected specifically to support on-going structural and operational change;
- Adopting new forms of collaboration with other public sector organizations.
The report reveals how public sector organizations are being forced to consider replacing their business software because of the inability of existing legacy ERP to support changes such as new reporting requirements. Legislation like mandatory publication of all county/city spending to the public and stricter private data and communication security standards are forcing local and municipal authorities to look for new technology solutions.
TEC’s data also reveals trends related to particular requirements governmental organizations are looking for in their software. These include the ability to configure the user interface and perform drill-down, multiple record-searching parameters, cross-departmental shared functionality and integration with other applications as well as rule-based architectures allowing user control of structures and workflow without the need for code level programing.
“The government sector is still struggling with out-dated systems that are costing tens of thousands every time an organization wants to respond to a particular business change scenario,” said Ton Dobbe, VP of product management at UNIT4. “Although few admit it publicly, the sector has become reliant on such a small set of ERP vendors that they are locked into slow and inflexible systems that are not helping users or citizens. Such systems are exorbitantly expensive to run, mostly because specialist IT consultants have to be called in every time even the smallest systems change is required. The biggest single challenge that governments face is change – not technical change (such as updates, upgrades, new functionality etc.) but business change. They operate the most diverse of organizations in the most dynamic business environment; technology should facilitate adaptability but the government sector remains at a substantial disadvantage to the commercial sector due to past technology decisions.”
Public sector organizations are still reporting a lot of the same functional requirements they have always had, and the report shows how they are being prioritized. However, it concludes that new organizational structures mandate a change to the way they operate in the form of shared or collaborative services supported by modern, flexible software.
The TEC market report titled: “Changing Trends in Regional Government Enterprise Solution Requirements”, is available to download here.
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About UNIT4 Business Software
UNIT4 Business Software in North America (www.unit4software.com) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of UNIT4, a $576 million enterprise resource planning (ERP) company and a top six mid-market ERP software player globally. UNIT4 Business Software’s leading ERP product for organizations living in change, Agresso Business World, is widely acknowledged as the business software solution that delivers the lowest Total Cost of Change. The software’s unique VITA™ architecture allows for ongoing, post-implementation changes by business users, without the external IT costs typical of disparate systems.
Over 3,000 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, and Field Services and Asset Maintenance.
