UNIT4 Signs Landmark Education Sector Technology Contract in Australia

Change-Embracing ERP Software Advantages Edge Out Competitors in $7M Deal; 1,250+ Schools, 40,000 Teachers and School-Based Administrative Users to Tap Agresso Business World for Queensland Government's Department of Education and Training, OneSchool Initiative

BOSTON, MA, June 18 /PRNewswire/ - UNIT4 (www.unit4.com), the world's leading provider of change-embracing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, announced today that it has signed a landmark education sector deal with the Queensland Government Department of Education and Training in Australia.

Under the terms of the software/services contracted estimated at $6.5 million USD, UNIT4's flagship ERP product, Agresso Business World will become the finance technology solution supporting Queensland's transformational "SmartClassroom" education initiative. The announcement was made today by UNIT4 at the Grape Escape analyst event attended by more than two dozen global technology analysts.

As part of an iconic program of change, the OneSchool application is being built on the Queensland Department of Education and Training's enterprise (technology) platform and supports the Department's core business of learning and teaching. OneSchool is a school-driven project focused on improving relationships among teachers, their students, and parents with the key objective being to enhance the learning of all students. This objective is enabled through providing teachers with accurate, timely and complete information about their students delivering a holistic picture of each student in the form of a OneSchool student record, deepening relationships and supporting improved learning outcomes.

The low total cost of ownership inherent in UNIT4's Agresso Business World solution, a direct result of the underpinning easy-change VITA architecture, once again allowed UNIT4 to prevail in a hotly contested environment. UNIT4, ranked consistently among the top 10 ERP providers for global mid-market companies, reported stronger sales than the competitors across the board in Q1 2010. The $546M company bucked industry software trends by growing its software license sales by almost 30% (versus services growth dominance only by competitors).

THE ONESCHOOL PROJECT

OneSchool functionality has been available to Queensland state schools since 2008. Functionality has been progressively delivered to Education Stakeholders via staged releases. Agresso Business World web-based Finance and Asset Management modules will be seamlessly integrated to OneSchool's own Student Management functionality, for delivery in January 2011. In selecting Agresso, the Government will meet their objective to provide a highly secure, reliable and low-maintenance information and technology platform that can be accessed anywhere, any time and that doesn't require the ongoing, expensive change costs typical of ERP market solutions.

AGRESSO BUSINESS WORLD SOLUTION IN ONESCHOOL

Managing financial transactions for more than 400,000 students, the Agresso Business World solution will be accessible by more than 40,000 teachers, school-based administrative staff members, and other education stakeholders.

"We chose UNIT4's Agresso Business World solution because of its architecture that is data model driven, not "fixed" process driven," explains Dr. Richard Eden, Deputy Director-General Corporate Services, Department of Education and Training. "This was a core differentiator for UNIT4's solution - it will allow us to more easily continually refine and change what metrics we wish to analyze and view, track trends and measure our performance."

The Agresso Business World VITA architecture has a fundamental advantage over prevailing ERP architectures. With VITA, the underlying data, business processes and delivery methodology (analytics and reporting) move in lockstep with a single (usually user-driven, versus re-coding) change, providing a single source of accurate information to all users. Studies done by leading technology analyst firms and business publications on comparative cost factors of Agresso Business World versus the large ERP giants consistently show that VITA's capabilities save dynamic, fast-changing mid-sized and larger organizations millions of dollars a year over competitive solutions. This advantage has supported UNIT4's ability to define and take a leadership position in technology solutions that support what UNIT4 defines as "BLINC" - Businesses Living IN Change.

ABOUT UNIT4

UNIT4 (www.unit4.com) is a global business software and services company aimed at helping dynamic organizations 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 and CODA financial management software.

For mid-sized services intensive organizations, UNIT4 markets the Agresso Business World (www.unit4.com/Products/agresso-business-world) ERP suite that is widely acknowledged as the business software solution that delivers the lowest Total Cost of Change. This is achieved thanks to its VITA(TM) architecture which allows for ongoing, post-implementation changes without the typical external IT costs and services that cost firms huge sums of money each year.

CODA Financials (www.unit4.com/Products/CODA) is our award-winning suite of best-of-class financial management software designed to integrate with your industry- and company-specific applications. CODA's LINK architecture sets it apart from ordinary accounting systems by providing a financial information backbone for companies with fast-changing and mixed application environments. It is a global accounting solution for mid-to large sized organizations, offering a "no compromise" approach to financial modelling, process control and application choice.

UNIT4 is a top six mid-market ERP software player globally and the 2nd largest European ERP supplier. With offices in 13 European countries, as well as 6 countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Africa and sales activities in several other countries, revenue of 379.4 million euros was realized in 2009. UNIT4 is headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands. The company has 3,456 employees (31 December 2009).

The names of actual companies or products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Agresso, Agresso Business World, BLINC, and VITA are registered trademarks of UNIT4 Business Software.

SOURCE UNIT4 Business Software