Service-Centric Cloud ERP and Enterprise Application Platforms ShortLists
The Constellation ShortLists present vendors in different categories of the market relevant to early adopters.
The purpose of the ShortList is to suggest end-users the key vendors to consider when looking for a specific solution.
Unit4 has been featured in two shortlists this year:
- Service-Centric Cloud ERP
- Enterprise Application Platforms
The Constellation ShortLists of vendors for a market category is compiled through conversations with early adopter clients, independent analysis and briefings with vendors and partners.
Unit4 Transforms From ERP to People Experience Suite
As part of their annual comparison research on the ERP market, Constellation research publishes Offering Overviews of the vendors in the main study. The Unit4 Offering Overview share data on the latest market trends and customers challenges and a view into Unit4 ERP current capabilities and future roadmap.
Based on conversations with more than 100 Unit4 customers, Constellation recommends that organizations meeting the following requirements consider this offering for their short list:
[…]
Forward-thinking buyers seeking a future of autonomous and self-driving applications;
SAP customers seeking change and modernization in the cloud;
Customers seeking strong planning and budgeting capabilities.
Ray Wang - Constellation Research
Midmarket Context: Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Service-Centric Enterprises
Following the publication of the Magic Quadrant for Service-Centric ERP, Gartner decided to publish an additional report to show vendors (whether present or not in the original MQ) that would be best suited to mid-sized enterprises.
This new focus on the mid-size market has been the result of numerous interactions with the Gartner analysts to get research aimed at these types of end-users that find vendor in the MQ ill-suited to their needs.
Unit4 has been mentioned as one of the notable vendors in this study.
Midsize enterprises evaluating ERP tools might find the products represented in the Magic Quadrant ill-suited to their organizational requirements. MSE CIOs can use this research to identify vendors and products aligned to size, scale and criteria that are critical to midsize enterprises.
Alexander Buschek, Denis Torii, Albert Gauthier - Gartner
Market Guide for Government ERP Solutions
Government organizations are continuing to invest in their ERP applications to modernize capabilities and enable innovation. This market guide provides CIOs with insights on the scope and evolution of government ERP products available today.
Unit4 has been mentioned as one of the notable vendors in this study.
Midsize to small governments are generally engaging with regional government-specific ERP vendors for their solutions, such as CentralSquare, TechnologyOne, Tyler Technologies or Unit4.
As ERP vendors — both regional and global — continue to invest in development of or partner with regional cloud providers, governments with traditionally few ERP options will soon find they have several. The increased competition will benefit governments in improved service levels, better terms and conditions and lower pricing.
Alia Mendonsa - Gartner
Unit4 Sharpens its Focus, Strengthens its Vertical Solutions
- Following our Analyst Summit in Boston, Mint Jutras published a report on Unit4 Strategy and Vision. The report covered all topics presented at the summit in great details, including our strategic focus, product roadmap and Mint Jutras own take on it.
- The tone of the report is extremely positive giving a clear overview of Unit4’s strategy and vision and highlights how Unit4’s ERPx and the newly released Industry Mesh can provide the level of adaptability needed to navigate the current rapidly changing landscape.
Last March it launched Unit4 ERPx, its next-generation cloud ERP solution for mid -market services organizations. [...] what makes this new and exciting is the new architecture, the underlying, modern and flexible cloud platform. These are not baby steps, but a huge transformative leap, accelerating Unit4’s journey to transform the “People Experience.”
Unit4 has always focused on people-centric businesses, but under the (still relatively new) leadership of Mike Ettling, it has sharpened this focus. [...] As we start to see the world emerge from a period of unprecedented change resulting from a global pandemic, we look forward to watching Unit4’s “great acceleration” continue with more technology, more functionality and more M&A.”
Cindy Jutras - Mint Jutras
A Very Human Perspective from Unit4
Unit4 has long talked about the ‘people experience’ and invested heavily in its ERPx platform to deliver it. The reality of what that means is really starting to emerge, and it comes off a very human perspective, a viewpoint that is coming to the forefront of individual and corporate consciences.”
With heavy duty capabilities like Industry Mesh emerging, 2022 will be an important year for ERPx adoption – and by providing Mesh as a cloud service will also provide an incentive for customers to move to the cloud. Unit4 still has its work cut out for it, but its human-centric stance is well aligned with broader industry trends – indeed the trends are moving in the direction Unit4 has been committed to for some time.”
Angela Eager - TechMarketView
Unit4 pioneers the “hybrid analyst summit”
Following Unit4 Analyst Summit in Boston, Vinnie Mirchandani, Deal Architect published a post covering all key insights shared at the event.
The tone of the post is very positive including Vinnie’s commentary on the whole event.
The variety in the sessions and the generosity in executive access truly stood out.”
The content in the in-person day was particularly striking. CEO Mike Ettling described how he had focused Unit4 in his 3-year tenure- as he described it, they had accumulated a variety of “hot dog stands” he had cleaned out. He presented on how they adapted to the pandemic. He discussed the ‘dikes’ they raised - operating principles to keep them protected. He had described some in this episode.”
Vinnie Mirchandani - Deal Architect
Unit4 Shows its X-Factor with ERPx
This report covers Unit4 ERPx. Nucleus Research expects that future ERPx users will likely achieve three major benefits:
- Increased User Productivity
- Reduced Operational Costs
- Improved Organizational Visibility
Nucleus expects Unit4 ERPx to increase user productivity, reduce costs, improve visibility.”
With Unit4 focusing its ERPx’s design and functionality for specific industries on meeting customer requirements, users within those verticals further save on upfront customization.”
With holistic and cross-departmental planning quickly becoming a necessity in today’s modern business environment, flexibility and customization are key differentiators. Therefore, ERPx aims to democratize sales and operational planning and workforce management by streamlining the user experience and deployment process while lowering the Total Cost of Ownership. If ERPx is successfully rolled out, Nucleus believes the trend of vendors shifting development to specialized ERP solutions or modules will only accelerate, lest they become a jack of all industries, master of none.”
Isaac Gould - Nucleus Research
Unit4 Unloads, Recharges, And Reboots Itself For Midmarket ERP Customers
Following Unit4 Analyst Summit, ARTW published a blogpost to cover the event. The article covered in great details Unit4's vision and strategy, also highlighting the acquisition of Compright.
"After slimming down by disposing nine businesses and repositioning itself under a new owner, Unit4 has come full circle to focus on its core ERP offerings for strategic verticals while rebooting its operations from the ground up to become the leading ERP vendor for midmarket organizations around the world.”
The results so far are encouraging:
ERPx, its Cloud-based ERP system running on top of Microsoft Azure, has secured 68 customers and it aims to have more than 100 by end of 2021.
About 80% of its 2,500 ERP customers are already on version 7 or above, providing them with an easy path to adopt ERPx and other interfaces and integrations to run hybrid Cloud or public cloud if they choose.
Its Customer Success program has grown to a team of 45 at Unit4 from 12 and it is embarking on a series of programs to track and measure customer lifecycle and engagement.”
Albert Pang, Apps Run The WorldExperience4U – Unit4 CEO Mike Ettling on cloud adoption, and the non-negotiable principles of vertical ERP
Jon Reed from Diginomica attended Unit4's Analyst Summit in Boston and also the virtual X4U conference in November. He wrote an article covering our strategy and vision as well as the Compright acquisition. He loved the events and how Unit4's story is unfolding.
I give Unit4 credit for going through all the nuances of the ERPx numbers with us, on the record. So many vendors are impossible to nail down on this topic. Unit4 seems to understand that if you benchmark where you are now, that will lead to an excellent story down the road as momentum grows – a story that's not possible when we're forced to take guesses at next-gen cloud adoption, obscured by cloud ERP hosting stats.”
[Headless ERP] it’s an area where Unit4 is starting to excel versus its peers. It was a notable point in the day's customer story, brought to us virtually by Jaime Everard, Business Systems Manager at the UK-based, international engineering and services firm Buro Happold. Early on in his talk, Everard said, and I’m paraphrasing liberally here: “My teams are using ERP less and less, and it might sound odd, but I’m happy about it.”
Jon Reed - Diginomica
Unit4 Doubles Down on Its People-Centric Industry Focus
PJ Jakovljevic, analyst at TEC, attended both Unit4's virtual user conference, X4U, and the in-person analyst summit in Boston in November 2021. HIs article highlights the shift from Unit4's old modus operandi to its new refocused approach, highlighting some of the key topics presented during the event including: Project-Centric Talent Management, Industry Mesh, and the CompRight Acquisition.
Unit4’s bold recent moves make sense, and Unit4 will be the vendor to beat in its mid-market, people-centric strongholds.”
Predrag Jakovljevic (PJ) - TECFor the foreseeable future, there’s no doubt that Unit4 will present a unified focus based around offering cloud ERP to the mid-market, people-centric organizations. Unit4 ERPx, delivers unified ERP, human capital management (HCM), and FP&A (financial planning & analysis, via the former Prevero) capabilities designed for service-centric industries and aimed at providing a compelling user experience (UX).”
Unit4 Expansion Targets Enhancements for People-Centric Organization
Rob Kugel, analyst at Ventana, attended both Unit4's virtual user conference, X4U, and the in-person analyst summit in Boston in November 2021. His report highlights key elements of Unit4's strategy, product updates and roadmap, including Industry Mesh, and the CompRight acquisition.
Technology is changing ERP systems, and with it, buyers’ expectations. Unit4 is in the process of taking advantage of this market shift to expand its portfolio of applications aimed at its core vertical markets, broaden the functionality and services it offers customers and increase its presence in the important North American market.
Rob Kugel - Ventana ResearchThe validation for Unit4 is also through its customers that gain value from their products, and that we identified in Migros Aare with Unit4 receiving the 14th Annual Overall Leadership Award in 2021. I recommend that organizations that are in the company’s core verticals – professional services, higher education, non-profits and government – and are looking for a new ERP system investigate Unit4 for this purpose.
Unit4 riding ERPx and Industry Mesh into their Digital Future
Analyst Kevin Permenter, IDC, attended the Unit4's analyst summit in Boston and published a short report on the event. He covers the event highlights and add IDC's point of view on the company's strategy and vision. The report is very positive and shows IDC's support on Unit4's direction.
The work that Unit4 has done to create a leading edge microservices-based product is significant. It makes them able to compete on level footing with younger vendors with cloud-native SaaS applications.”
There is a huge opportunity in front of Unit4. With their investment in technologies like industry mesh technology and ERPx and their investment to build the right team and company culture to leverage the technology properly, IDC anticipates rapid growth for Unit4 even amid an increasingly competitive mid-market professional services ERP market.”
Kevin Permenter - IDC
Now Tech: Digital Operations Platforms, Q2 2022
Unit4 featured in the Now Tech Report on Digital Operations Platforms. The report shows a market overview of key vendors in the space.
Forrester define Digital Operations Platforms as the core enterprise applications that are necessary for digital business, and which are the foundation for business operations and customer experiences —although often behind the scenes. Example categories in the DOP are operations, finance, product configuration, supply chain, product engineering, logistics, and billing. The DOP can comprise individual solutions but is often based on a suite of solutions built to work together.
Unit4 Analyst Summit 2022: Accelerating the SaaS ERP Journey
Analysts Bo Lykkegaard, Ivan Oz and Tom Seal attended the Unit4's analyst summit in London and published a short report on the event. They cover the event highlights and add IDC's point of view on the company's strategy and vision.
At a recent analyst summit held in London, Unit4 presented its current status and strategic priorities. After changing private equity owners from Advent Internationals to TA Associates in March 2021, the company has firmed up its strategies, executive team, and long-term goals."
Bo Lykkegaard, Ivan Oz and Tom Seal, Principal Analysts - IDC
Unit4 acquires again and updates on ERPx momentum
Following Unit4's analyst summit in London, analysts Nick Mayes, JC Bodhuin and Sidney Siegertsz at Teknowlogy published a short report on the event. They cover the main highlights and add Teknowlogy's point of view on the company's strategy and vision.
We think that Unit4 is perhaps the most re-energized player in the ERP space. We heard from several customers that Unit4 had got a lot better at managing the client relationship during the last few years, and there was positive feedback on how the vendor was involving shop-floor users in the product design process.
As a proposition for greenfield clients, ERPx ticks a lot of boxes in terms of user experience innovation and process automation, and it was good to see the efforts that it is making to position it at the heart of industry ecosystems, plugging into neighbouring third-party apps and tools.
Nick Mayes, JC Bodhuin and Sidney Siegertsz - Teknowlogy
The value of Unit4’s integrated suite
Nucleus found that organizations with joint ERP-HCM deployments realize higher ROI than those using separate solutions across departments. The unification of finance and HR enables organizations to manage the complexity of scaling operations and improves data visibility for decision-making purposes. Nucleus interviewed customers leveraging Unit4’s HCM and ERP solutions and found that while a typical customer can eliminate between 20 to 40 percent of FTE’S one organization was able to eliminate more than 50percentof FTEs associated with managing its multiple solutions.
Unit4 reduced FTEs managing solutions by at least 50%
Unit4 reduces reporting and processing time by up to 90%”
Unit4 provides a unique combination of HCM and ERP solutions that allow growing businesses to enter the modern business world at an attractive price and with the ability to adopt a full-suite comparable to enterprise-tailored solutions. Vendors looking to compete with Unit4will find it difficult to gain market share as Unit4 continues to entrench its midmarket position.
Isaac Gould - Nucleus Research
Unit4 Return $1.73 for Every Dollar Spent
Over the last three years, Nucleus conducted five case studies to determine the ROI of organizations deploying Unit4 (FP&A) and Unit4 (ERP). Nucleus analyzed the costs and benefits of the ROI case studies and found that Unit4’s solutionsgenerated$1.73 for every dollar invested in its technology. Unit4’s benefit-to-cost ratio is 30 percent higher than that of the total ERP market across both service and asset-centric industries, including on-premise, hybrid, and cloud deployments. Unit4’s FP&A module complements an organization’s existing ERP solutions by automating and centralizing financial closing, budgeting, planning, and forecasting activities. By using Unit4’s complementary solutions, customers reported increased user productivity, reduced operational costs, and improved organizational visibility.
Analyzing the five most recent Unit4 case studies, Nucleus determined both the standalone value of Unit4’s ERP and FP&A and the synergetic benefits of their combined use. We found that organizations experienced, in aggregate, a $1.78 return on every dollar spent on their Unit4 deployments. When compared to the aggregated benefits and costs of all Nucleus ERP case studies of the past four years, we found that Unit4’s benefit-to-cost ratio of 1.78 is 30 percent higher.
All companies in the analyzed Unit4 case studies achieved a positive ROI and a payback period that ranged from one year to under two and half years, with an average of two years.
Isaac Gould - Nucleus Research
The 2022 Top 12 Professional Services Software Systems Report
Unit4 features in Panorama Consulting Group's 2022 Top 12 Professional Services Software Systems Report. The report advises end-users on what functionality to look for and what functionality the top providers have to offer. The list presented in the report shows the top professional services software, detailing the key differentiators of their PSA point solutions and ERP systems.
The 2022 Top 10 Government ERP Systems Report
Unit4 features in Panorama Consulting Group's 2022 Top 10 Government ERP Systems Report.
The report features a list of the top government ERP systems to advice end-users on how to optimize their efforts around sustainability, economic growth, and more and offer a selection of the right ERP system for their state, city, municipality, or federal government entity.
Top 10 ERP Systems for Finance and Accounting
Unit4 was ranked #3 in Third Stage Consulting's Top 10 Finance and Accounting ERP Systems. In this video Eric Kimberling, CEO of Third Stage Consulting, discusses the top 10 finance and accounting ERP systems along with their pros and cons.
Unit4 sets out a strategy to be the last ERP midsize enterprises buy
Following the Unit4 analyst Summit in London in May 2022, HfS analysts Khalda de Souza, Tom Reuner, and David Cushman wrote this report to highlight key topics of the event. The overall tone of the report is positive and shows the analyst support on our strategy and vision.
Ettling has a clear strategy, vision, and roadmap for Unit4 that aligns with the HFS definition of business value. He wants to guarantee customers that “this is the last ERP you will have to buy.”
While Unit4 has customers across 15 industries, its primary targets are people-based sectors, namely professional services, higher education, non-profits, and the public sector. Customers in these sectors can benefit from tailored solutions meeting their specific business needs. […] This focus and understanding of people-centric industries in the mid-market is Unit4’s sweet spot and differentiator. Customers in these industries can achieve a digital transformation, manage integrated business applications, and access solutions that understand their business concerns.
Khalda de Souza, Tom Reuner, David Cushman - HfS
Fireside Chat: Phil Fersht Talks with Mike Ettling, Chief Executive Officer at Unit4
On this special Fireside Chat, HFS CEO Phil Fersht talks with Mike Ettling about his personal and digital business journey.
Mike talks about his career from his first leadership role in the Boy Scouts to executive positions in the tech industry, and how it has revolved around elevating, engaging, and enabling people.
Phil and Mike cover a range of topics, including:
Inspiration4U PSO Edition: Shawn Windle
In this new #Inspiration4U podcast (PSO edition), Bryce Wolf, Senior Manager, Industry Solutions at #Unit4, sits down with Shawn Windle, Founder of ERP Advisors Group, to talk about PSO and M&A, the challenges that might be faced, as well as the keys factors of M&A within the professional services space.
Shawn has many years of experience working in the ERP industry as a business consultant and analyst focusing on ERP implementations and business process management technologies. In 2010, he founded ERP Advisors Group to provide software advisory services and assist clients with ERP implementations.
Inspiration4U PSO Edition: Attrition in the Professional Services Industry with Mickey North Rizza
In this episode of the #ProfessionalServices (PSO) edition of the Inspiration4U podcast, Unit4 host, Mark Gibbison, and IDC Group VP of Enterprise Software, Mickey North Rizza talk about how the the professional services industry will evolve over the next 5-10 years, the effects that working from home and the hybrid workplace have had on this industry, the gig economy and how the younger generation will adapt to this new reality.
About Mickey North Rizza: Mickey North Rizza is Group Vice-President for IDC’s Enterprise Software. She leads the Enterprise Applications & Strategies research service, along with a team of analysts responsible for IDC’s coverage of next generation of enterprise applications such as digital commerce, employee experience, enterprise asset management and smart facilities, ERP, financial applications, HCM and payroll applications . In her role, Mickey and the team advise clients on these intelligent, modern, and modular enterprise applications for businesses of all sizes with an emphasis on the key trends, opportunities, innovation and the IT and Business Buyer concerns, requirements, and behaviors.
