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UNIT4 is giving us new options that work within the budget realities
of our customers, and more importantly the customers are asking
for UNIT4 services. Our clients now get a great
Agresso ERP user licence that not only steps
down but gives better service than they previously experienced.
So let me give you an example; if one customer
joins and takes the service they'll get one price.
If two they get the same service,
but at a lower price across the two customers. If they bring on three
more authority sister authorities all of them benefit by getting a lower price
they've still got the same service still got the same optionality. In a real life
example
a London borough used to pay $750,000
just for purely processing its HR, its payroll.
We estimate that ten
London boroughs come onto the shared service platform that will give a better
service than they were previously used to,
they will be paying something in the region of a $120,000 per annum
a massive saving - and I'll be going into that detail,
that example in a little bit more detail later.
The second reason is the speed of deployment
Anwen's [Anwen Robinson, MD, UNIT4 UK] talked about this briefly, but never
in any sector have I seen speed of deployment be more important
than it is in local government at the moment. They are desperate
for the savings they want day one savings and again previously
we could guarantee day one savings if we were tied into 10-year contract because
we knew get the profits in the back end.
They're not signing up to 10 year contracts, so we need a solution
that gives them day one savings and also protects our margin
as a supplier. You heard Anwen speak about
Agresso's [ERP] unique Vita Architecture and Judith tells me that she is
she's been relentless in talking about three-part architecture
data model, business model and analytics and reporting delivery model
that move in lockstep. I can tell you from a user data migration to a cloud
using this model, using this system, is much faster than
any of the other architects we looked at and even
faster still than the new ones that are being promoted by some of the big players.
The third reason - post implementation agility.
UNIT4's reputation for supporting ongoing business
an organisational change with a minimum of cost, time
and disruption was previously a nice to have.
Now it's an absolute must-have. the customers do not have
the budgets, the big budgets for recoding of the software every time they go through an
organisational change,
and by the way they're going through an organisational change every year virtually now -
so that post-implementation agility is a huge selling point.
So, having said all those things, it
doesn't mean is not good money in this for both BT and UNIT4,
and this is the basis of our partnership. An example I'm going to use now, is a deal
that we signed back in March,
and it was signed with the City of Westminster Council, which is one of the
more high-profile councils within London
and within the UK. It was basically a deal to supply
a powerful finance HR and Payroll
package supported by the Agresso ERP
solution in the cloud. And this little Westminster story really is a great
story and it summarises
all of what I've said before. Let me give you backdrop of how they were going
about this procurement
because it's becoming more and more common in my space
and throughout Europe. People are entering into framework deals,
and by that I mean in the UK and
Europe the procurement process is very very strictly governed and it usually takes
somewhere between
twelve and eighteen months to do a procurement, it's costly
it's a huge drain on management that they don't have anymore
and also if something goes wrong there's numerous ways that they can be challenged
you have to start the whole process all over again. So what customers are doing now
are entering into framework contracts, whereby a number of them will actually
be named beneficiaries
on a procurement. So one person will lead it - they'll go through the pain of setting it up
- and then any of the other beneficiary organisations can buy off
that framework without going through a procurement process.
So basically what they do, is they club together, get on the frameworks,
they'll sit back, see how the first implementation goes out, if they like
what they see,
***, they can buy straightaway on a low-cost low-risk basis.
The Westminster framework involved three people leading it,
you had Westminster, you had Hammersmith and Fulham, you had Kensington and Chelsea -
but, you had 17 other London boroughs tied to
that framework - and this is a massive market opportunity, and it's going to
happen more and more.
So, we set the contract up that, there are components that are
relatively standard but put together in a Chinese menu.
So, of those twenty beneficiary organisations, they can take and pick
the components they want to tailored solution to what their real needs are.
And the reason that it was successful, the reason we won it,
was for the reasons I just mentioned; the price point Agresso can give us
the post implementation agility and the speed of deployment,
because, the people leading the procurement knew that is exactly what
the other beneficiary organisations were going to be after,
and by the way the more beneficiary organisations join,
the lower price it gets for everyone. So there's a compelling event for everyone
to come forward.
So, and with 468 local authorities alone in the UK,
and that doesn't include some any other central government bodies, the health
organisations, the quangos
the opportunity is massive, and the market is crying out for the solution
that we can, that BT and UNIT4 can offer them.
So, that's coming to the end
if ever there was a point where you'd see an ERP reranking
reset button, I believe it's now.
I think what we are seeing is a
transition point in the market that will
take us to a place where we've never been before. I personally believe that
the large ERP players, the
historical SAPs and the SAPs, the Oracles and
the SAPs, do not have the versatility in their architecture to be able
to step up to what the market is demanding now
and certainly can't match what UNIT4 can provide, as of today.