Survey Shows 76% of Senior Managers Dissatisfied With Enterprise Software Change Capabilities

News provided by

Oct 26, 2011, 08:00 ET

VICTORIA, British Columbia and IRVING, Texas, October 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

UNIT4 Business Software's parent company UNIT4, the world's leading provider of business software for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC™), today announced the first findings of a new international research project undertaken by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) which surveyed 307 business managers and professionals from a range of industries about their ERP and enterprise applications' ability to support business change.

Three quarters (76 percent) of senior managers said they were frequently unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the ability of their ERP systems or enterprise applications to easily support changes in the business, such as new regulations, new reporting structures and mergers and acquisitions. Among mid-market firms with between 100 and 1000 employees, 46 percent were frequently unsatisfied or very unsatisfied. The biggest frustrations cited were rigidity (21 percent), dependency on the systems supplier (12 percent), the cost of making changes (10 percent) and unreliability of the system (8 percent).

"The lack of flexibility in systems to support business change is paralyzing some companies and cannot be underestimated," said P.J. Jakovljevic, Principal Analyst at TEC. "The difficulty involved and the cost associated to changes required to respond to business change in many cases means they are not made and as a result companies are working with systems that are not supporting today's business. They are managing business data in silos, often manually, outside their enterprise systems, which opens them up to significant risk."

"With many big ERP systems, changes have to be made at a code level which is not only a difficult thing to do (users relying on costly resource from their software providers or external consultants to make those changes), but also a very disruptive exercise which impacts the entire business and incurs millions of dollars in hidden cost i.e. losses," said Ton Dobbe, VP Product Management at UNIT4. "Change is frenetic these days and without the ability to make changes easily as required as change affects the business, these organizations will find that they cannot compete effectively. Agresso Business World is built on the unique VITA architecture which keeps the system components for data, processes and information delivery in step with each other, ensuring that when a change is made in one area, it does not have to be redone and rechecked for accuracy in another. As a result, instead of being tied to a rigid information system that hinders growth, users are empowered and organizations are able to achieve their goals and ambitions, without being dependent on anyone else. That's a significant value to have."

An infographic illustrating these survey results is available to download.

About UNIT4

UNIT4 is a global business software and services company aimed at helping dynamic public sector, and commercial services organisations to embrace change simply, quickly and cost effectively in a market sector it calls 'Businesses Living IN Change' (BLINC)™. The Group incorporates a number of the world's leading change embracing software brands including Agresso Business World, our flagship ERP suite for mid-sized services intensive organizations and Coda, our best-of-class financial management software.

With operations in 17 European countries, as well as 7 countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Africa and sales activities in several other countries, its revenue was €421.7 million in 2010. UNIT4 is headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands and has over 4,000 employees. It is listed on Euronext Amsterdam and is included in the Amsterdam Midcap Index (AMX).

For more information on UNIT4 or any of its operating companies, please visit the website at http://www.unit4.com or follow us on Twitter @UNIT4_Group. Alternatively please contact:

Jo-Ann Marlow
Director of Sales and Marketing,
UNIT4 Business Software
+1-250-704-4489
[email protected]

SOURCE UNIT4