Unit4, a leader in enterprise cloud software for services organizations, today announced Unit4 ERPx, its next-generation cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution for mid-market services organizations. ERPx delivers fully integrated ERP, HCM and FP&A, on a unified architecture, with rapid deployment and industry-specific innovations out-of-the-box.

Unit4, a company with a 40-year history in delivering software to organizations where people make the difference, understands the unique requirements in building next-generation enterprise software that delivers an exceptional "People Experience", from students and professionals to the public servants and non-profits doing good in the world. 

ERPx has been architected to be ‘right for your business' across three critical pillars:

Capabilities 

An industry-specific focus runs through all Unit4 products that make up the Unit4 People Experience Suite, from financial processes, and time and billing, to HR processes and analytics. ERPx codifies 40 years of industry knowledge into smart processes that flow across the organization. When implemented using Industry Models, Unit4's ‘out of the box' best practice configurations, the cost of going live is substantially reduced as one click can result in automatic business process model generation across hundreds of activities.

With FP&A, HCM and ERP integrated on a single platform, the value of the data organizations use for planning purposes significantly improves by giving the business a complete view across operations, HR and finance. AI-powered analytics and forecasting can answer complex questions involving vast amounts of data quickly and automatically. Unit4's unified architecture and processes deliver exactly what business, finance and HR leaders need to help them navigate through changing times.

User Experience and Automation 

Designed specifically for the way people work today, ERPx delivers a user experience that is powerful for professional users, efficient for everyone and automated, so organizations can plan intelligently and execute at the pace of business. Machine learning is used to provide people with recommendations for actions they should take, and to complete once manual tasks, like populating timesheets, via touchless experiences. Utilizing chatbot technology, and readily available collaboration tools such as Teams, Slack, email and calendar, actions are brought to users via 10-second experiences, where they simply answer a question and the task is completed. 

Instant apps, a new capability, are lightweight and address the unique needs of specific users. The technology uses Smart Automation Services that apply Machine Learning to create user experiences that evolve with customers and users automatically. One example is Smart Invoicing, a self-learning accounting prediction service, which makes use of automation and machine learning for faster processing of invoices, driving faster settlements.

Modern Cloud Platform

Unit4's native cloud micro-services platform provides all the benefits of the cloud - improved ROI, automatic upgrades, elastic scalability, high availability, performance at scale, security, and continuous monitoring - combined with a system that learns and evolves through continuous and fast innovation as the organization changes. This ensures the system remains nimble and aligned with the business and doesn't become outdated. Functionality can be replaced and updated quickly without impacting users.

Unit4's proprietary Integration and low code Extension Toolkits allow partners and users to create and fine-tune more specialized solutions, or to integrate with other solutions in place today or ones that are common in a customer's industry.

"Unit4 ERPx is laser-focused on people-centric organizations, specifically professional services, non-profits, education and public sector," said Mike Ettling, CEO of Unit4. "It is our fundamental belief that ERP of the future cannot be one-size-fits-all monolith, industry-agnostic and hard to change. To improve the productivity, velocity and resilience of modern-day organizations, ERP needs to be the operational heartbeat of your organization and "Right for Your Business" right out-of-the-box. And it must be one that is fine-tuned for our customers' industries; useable and used by all, not just power users; elastic and flexible, powered by modern technology that can be evolved easily, and that connects processes within ERP and across all applications." 

Supported by a global partner ecosystem

In June, Unit4 announced a new global partner program focused on enabling partners to accelerate the development and implementation of Unit4 solutions. Through its micro-services-based SaaS architecture, ERPx provides a foundation for partner innovation. The partner ecosystem will play a central role in supporting new and existing Unit4 customers to adopt and derive value from the new solution. Unit4 is focused on growing its global product and innovation partner ecosystem in particular, including independent software vendors and OEM partners, with the key skills to optimize and extend the functionality and performance of Unit4 solutions. Today, it announced three new global strategic partnerships with Avalara, Immedis and Pagero.

Analyst perspectives:

R "Ray" Wang, Principal Analyst, Constellation Research said: "Mid-sized enterprises will be key to our post-COVID recovery. To fulfil their growth potential, they must increase operational efficiency, take advantage of growth-enabling technologies and build focused, empowered teams, enabled to make decisions fast. By designing processes and technology around their people, they can power our economic recovery. Until now, ERP was often holding these organizations back, but we're seeing the emergence of business-critical systems delivered in a way that customers can simply benefit from the exact functionality their people need to be effective."

David Wilson, CEO, Fosway Group said: "People work differently today than they ever have before, with COVID-19 creating extraordinary pressure on HR to digitalize and put people first. Great technology to help get things done is more important than ever. Unit4 is focused on making ERP the enabler of employee experience, which means integrating people processes and HCM to create one seamless digital experience across the organization. HR buyers must approach HCM as part of the holistic people experience. ERP is becoming a critical element in how they can serve and empower people successfully."

Unit4 ERPx will be available to customers from March 2021.