LONDON, July 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Unit4, a cloud leader in enterprise software for people-centered organizations, announced the latest release of Unit4 ERP, its Cloud-based platform used by over 2,700 organizations worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on customer attitudes towards ERP as more employees move to remote or home-based working. Today's platforms need to offer flexibility, the ability to easily integrate with third-party systems and be able to deploy industry-specific functionality and easy-to-develop extensions. Time to value is a cornerstone for any new ERP system, so the ability to expedite deployments through proven methodologies while leveraging industry best practices is a critical success factor.

Global Project Resource Planning and Management
This latest release includes new capabilities that allow complex service-based organizations to more effectively plan and resource projects to improve outcomes. They can work together more seamlessly across multiple legal entities to improve collaboration, streamline work and provide improved service to their customers. In addition, it leverages social, mobile, predictive analytics and machine-learning technologies from the Unit4 People Platform to provide a self-driving solution that enables people to focus less on administrative tasks and more on what matters most to their organization's purpose.

Purpose-built Extensions Deliver New Capabilities and Value 
Through Unit4's low code Extension Kit, customers can benefit from the ability to connect different business systems and create new workflows without the need to develop code. The kit is available for customers and partners to seamlessly make use of all the capabilities offered by Unit4 ERP. Unit4 partners are adding value to the company's products through Extension Kit developments, rapid best practice implementations and customer training.

Faye O'Connell, Product Development Director at Embridge Consulting said: "Unit4's Extension Kit presents a fantastic opportunity to seamlessly integrate with external and legacy applications, while removing the need for out-of-date data exchange approaches like file transfers. Our plans at Embridge Consulting are to support customers in the configuration of flows that will leverage the capabilities of the Extension Kits and deliver optimized end-to-end business processes."

William Garcia, Head of Development at Arribatec said: "The Extension Kit democratizes integrations and empowers Unit4 users to create and maintain integrations with third party systems without development. It eliminates the black box approach of traditional custom or bespoke solutions. Customers will benefit from substantial time and cost savings."

Unit4 Partner-developed Extensions:

• Course Calendar Integration: confirms attendance using Unit4's digital assistant, Wanda, and automatically schedules the meeting in Outlook
• Signaling Completed Workflow: when a workflow has been completed, it will automatically update the requestor via Unit4's digital assistant, Wanda, upon completion
• ERP Timesheet Sync: any time logged in Jira is automatically added to timesheets in Unit4 ERP
• Automatic Credit Check Upon Entering Purchase Orders: when a purchase order is created, a credit check is performed and the result is published via Unit4's digital assistant, Wanda.

Industry Models deliver Out-of-the-box Best Practices

Unit4's Industry Model deployments ensure that every customer benefits from specialized industry knowledge, best practices and the latest technology like AI and machine learning so they can efficiently combat the complexity of their operating environment. Given today's environment, organizations are demanding ERP vendors deliver expedited deployments, simplified implementations and faster time to value. Unit4 delivers this through its proven methodology. Customers such as Warchild, Missouri Botanical Gardens, City of Alkmaar, Helmond Municipality, LaREM have experienced successful "go lives" leveraging Unit4's Industry Models.

To underscore the company's experience in successful "go lives" and ongoing support, Unit4 was recognized as one of the world's leading "services-centric" Cloud ERP vendors according to a recent report from Constellation Research. The report found that customers selected Unit4 solutions based on flexible configuration capabilities, deep vertical expertise, mid-market focus, and a people-centered design philosophy. The company was also named a gold medalist according to ERP software users in SoftwareReviews' latest ERP Data Quadrant and awarded top vendor in customer relationship management, vendor support, and ease of data integration.

Comments on the news:

Matthias Thurner, Chief Product Officer at Unit4 said:

"We believe the future of ERP should be more about 'expert' than general 'enterprise' functionality, which is why we believe our dynamic people-centric approach to ERP will be integral to our customers' sustained competitive advantage. This release underscores our long-term commitment to deliver a feature rich, people-focused ERP supported by a suite of People Experience solutions and a robust ecosystem. With Extension Kit our customers can rapidly improve engagement with their customers by building out functionality that will demonstrate they are more responsive to their needs. Ultimately, we believe customers will increasingly demand agile, microservices-led systems such as the Unit4 People Platform, built for specific industry needs rather than adopting a monolithic, generalist ERP suite."

Ray Wang, Principal Analyst, Constellation Research:
"Amidst the post-pandemic, we've learned the importance of remote work.  We've accelerated the need for the cloud and digital channels by five years in five weeks to enable collaboration and sustain engagement.  A services and project orientation must be built at design and those technology partners that can provide these requirements will deliver not only what customers want, but what they need to move forward with agility, resiliency, and success."

Related Resources:

• Unit4 recently announced customer wins with Qvantel, Aramark and Posten 
• Download the Constellation report "Innovations Abound in Global Cloud ERP Suites"
• More information on the SoftwareReviews ERP Data Quadrant
• Read about implementing an ERP system in global professional services organizations

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About Unit4
Unit4's next-generation enterprise software supports our customers in delivering an exceptional People Experience to their own customers – from students and professionals to the citizens and constituents they serve. Unit4 transforms work to be more meaningful and inspiring through software that's self-driving, adaptive and intuitive, intelligently automating administrative tasks while providing easy access to the answers people need. Unit4 works with people the way people work.

For more information please visit https://www.unit4.com/, follow us on Twitter @Unit4global, or visit our LinkedIn page

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SOURCE Unit4