Post Implementation Agility

ERP Systems Flexibility

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) can be a misleading metric for organizations. Focusing more on maintenance and upgrade costs, it overlooks the high costs of ongoing change management.

Agresso Business World is unique in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) industry for its primary strength, post-implementation agility, or the ability to make changes to the ERP system after it has been implemented.

Almost all major ERP software solution vendors offer limitless flexibility PRIOR to implementation. But once their systems are in place, customers are locked into the system configuration that reflects their requirements at the moment of go live. Any significant change to the configuration typically requires expensive IT or external consultant resources.

A survey completed by CFO Research Services shows that a typical company may spend an average of more than $1.2 million each year to maintain, modify, and update its ERP system. Eighty percent of the executives surveyed report that they have customized their ERP systems either moderately or extensively to adapt the product to their organization's unique business requirements.

For dynamic organizations facing frequent change, which UNIT4 refers to as Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC)™, the punishing costs of keeping their ERP systems in line with their business can often outpace licensing and maintenance fees.

"Total Cost of Change – A Superior Alternative to TCO.”
Brian Sommer
TechVentive, Inc.

A Better, Unique Alternative

In contrast, Agresso's post-implementation agility allows organizations to respond to change quickly and cost-efficiently. Business users themselves can make the changes they need right from the graphical user interface (GUI). The costs and risks associated with changing an ERP implementation are drastically reduced when the person doing it understands the business need and is authorized to make the change.

Change Is Inevitable – Are You Prepared?

A UNIT4 customer survey identified the major drivers of change within their organizations.

60% experienced significant change
More than 80% anticipated significant change in the future.

More than 80% of Agresso customers were able to address these changes internally, without expensive external consultants.

The changes originated from various sources and for most other ERP systems, these changes would represent major system re-work and significant costs. With Agresso, more than 80% of customers were able to address these changes internally, without expensive external consultants:

Source: UNIT4 BLINC survey among 120 customers at Agresso User Group - Dublin

Avoid Costly Consultants and Constrained IT Resources

Consider this excerpt from the Technology Evaluation Centers' Market Comparison Report analyzing how the leading ERP vendors address change. This table shows the kinds of changes that can be made easily from a user’s desktop (GUI), and which require IT or consultants to make expensive programming changes at the application level (APP).

Reorganization and Restructuring	Agresso	Oracle	SAP
Makes changes to move a cost center into a different division	GUI	APP	APP
Ability to make changes to new organizational processes and integrate them with different software systems	APP	APP	APP
Makes changes to existing methods of segmenting products or organizational structure (e.g., from product to regional or both)	GUI	APP	APP
Changes management by office to management by job type	GUI	APP	APP
Makes changes to financial organization system so history of existing structure and planned structural changes can be compared	GUI	APP	APP
Makes changes when departments are divided, including structural changes, responsibilities, and processes	GUI	APP	APP
Makes changes when parallel functions of an acquired company are integrated into a unified technological platform	GUI	APP	APP

Superior Agility Enables Superior Strategy

UNIT4's customers do not need to put off good business decisions because their ERP system can’t adjust. Our customers, including higher education and service organizations, run their businesses the way they need to and Agresso facilitates rather than hampers their decisions. This is not always the case with other more rigid ERP systems. CFO Research’s 2009 report “The High Cost Of Change for ERP” surveyed 157 finance executive across the US on ongoing ERP ownership costs. One executive admitted:

“We will not make custom modifications to the software; we will modify the business process if necessary or create an offline procedure”