Unit4 sees growth in public sector SaaS adoption

Unit4, a software company that provides enterprise applications for finance, human resources, and other business functions, announced a growing number of public sector bodies in its key markets are looking to embrace its next-generation Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Against a backdrop of sustained pressure to transform service delivery and embrace artificial intelligence (AI) while reducing costs, public sector entities recognise that Unit4’s applications deliver cost-effective and sector-specific functionality. Unit4 is also strengthening its commitment to the public sector by appointing new senior leaders and building out its partner ecosystem.

Go-Lives and New Customer Wins

In the last six months, Unit4 has welcomed several new customers and existing ones who have committed to its next-generation SaaS solutions:

• Winnipeg School Division – Manitoba’s largest school division, serving over 33,000 students across 78 schools is a new customer adopting Unit4 ERPx 

• The Town of Stony Plain  a vibrant Alberta community focused on delivering exceptional municipal services, supporting business growth, fostering community engagement, and enhancing quality of life. 

• Local Government Association (LGA) – is the national membership body for local authorities and has moved ERPx single instance delivering a multi-entity model.

• East Riding of Yorkshire Council  is the largest employer in the area with over 10,000 staff delivering more than 600 will move to Unit4 ERPx, its next-generation, cloud-native Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) with Embridge Consulting helping the Council deliver change in manageable stages while redesigning its financial operating model.

Unit4 has also supported various customers as they have gone live this year on Unit4 ERPx, including:

Unit4 Strengthens Commitment to Public Sector 

As more public sector bodies around the world turn to Unit4 to address their transformation goals, the company has strengthened its leadership team with the arrival of Christoffer Crona, who will lead the global Public Sector sales team. Christoffer brings a wealth of experience delivering SaaS-based and helping customers to extract the most value from their Cloud-based applications. Ian Owen also joins as Global Industry Director, bringing a wealth of experience as a Fellow and Council Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). Ian’s role will be to help public sector bodies build robust transformation plans to enable them to maximise their investments in next generation SaaS applications.

Unit4 also continues to build out its public sector proposition, mostly recently announcing Unit4 Data Hub and Unit4 FIX, which will help public sector organisations to turn data into action. Data Hub is a managed, high-volume extraction layer built into Unit4 ERPx, which eliminates the complexity of extracting data and managing connections between analytics tools and core ERP systems. Unit4 FIX gives finance teams and budget holders a single, governed view of operational financial actuals which is consistent, traceable, and always current. This gives budget holders in the public sector the confidence they are accessing relevant, accurate real-time financial information to make effective decisions. 

Unit4 continues to build out its partner ecosystem around the world to ensure its customers have implementation partners with the right local and technology expertise. In the UK, the company has deepened its relationship with Embridge Consulting appointing it exclusive UK Public Sector reseller. In other markets, Unit4 has developed strong relationships with Agilyx in the United States and Canada.

“I am delighted to be joining the Unit4 team during what is an exciting period of change for the public sector organisations around the world,” said Christoffer Crona, SVP Global Sales Public Sector, Unit4. “We are seeing growing demand from customers for tools to help them transform how services are delivered, with the first step being standardising core processes on Unit4 ERPx. This gives our customers the essential foundations and agility to respond more dynamically and cost effectively to the needs of citizens.”

“Around the world there are major challenges facing the public sector, whether it is local government reorganisation in the UK or large-scale digital transformation programmes across Europe, North America and APAC,” added Ian Owen, Global Industry Director, Public Sector. “These are significant transformation challenges which require careful planning and phased implementations to minimise the disruption to services and employees, while delivering tangible results. We are already seeing with our customers who have gone live that they are reaping significant benefits from moving to Unit4’s next generation SaaS applications.”

“State and local governments and higher education institutions are under pressure to modernise ageing back-office systems while budgets stay tight, and they are increasingly turning to cloud-based, AI-ready platforms to close that gap,” said Ruthbea Yesner, Group Vice President, Public Sector, IDC. “Vendors that can demonstrate measurable outcomes, deep public sector expertise, and a manageable path to modernisation are best placed to earn the trust of public sector buyers.”