Unit 4 Agresso has experienced a 40% increase of its high-end deals in 2007 and exceeds last years’ number of + €1 million deals already in the first 5 months of this year. Unit 4 Agresso’s ability to increase its success is tightly linked to Agresso Business World 5.5’s differentiating ‘Post Implementation Agility’ capabilities.  The launch of the 5.5 release at the end of 2005 has not only resulted into higher win-rates across the business, but in particular in winning more complex and larger orders. This has also led to a growing interest from international system integrators to work in partnership.
IDC predicted steady growth for the ERP market in Europe after a successful 2006 in a recent report*, and Unit 4 Agresso sees the proof of this in practice. “To ensure we can grow faster than the market we’re sharply positioning our offering towards a unique niche in the market we define as “BLINC: Businesses Living IN Change”, said Edwin van Leeuwen, CFO Unit 4 Agresso. “This segment of the market is requiring post implementation agility capabilities from their systems to achieve their ambitions, something that cannot be accommodated by any of the traditional vendors in the market. The growth of the ERP market is fuelled by this flaw as many, many organisations are replacing their current ERP systems due to the simple fact that after 5-8 years it doesn’t meet their requirements anymore – they have outgrown it, or better, the solution has expired on them,” he added.
The recent wave of +€1 million deals are a direct proof of this, all text-book examples of BLINC companies from all around the globe:

-          Australia & New Zealand: The largest and fastest growing staffing agent in the Australasian region

-          Canada: One of the top 5 cities in British Columbia

-          Netherlands: One of the worlds’ leading dredging companies

-          Sweden: The fastest growing and one of the largest real estate agents in Sweden

-          UK: one of the largest universities in Scotland

-          US: leading global supplier of products and analytical services to determine occupational and environmental radiation exposure
The common denominator for all these organisations: Change. Reorganisation, restructuring, acquisitions, mergers, divesture, adoption and/or initiation of new business models and governance/compliance are day-to-day instruments to achieve these company’s business ambitions. This requires an ability to make on-the-fly changes to their business system in post implementation situations. This has been the differentiating factor in beating (and in some cases even replacing) ‘the ERP big three’- SAP, Oracle and Microsoft in all of the recent deals.