SLIEDRECHT, The Netherlands, January 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- UNIT4, the world's leading provider of business software for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC™), today announced plans to disrupt the performance management software market in 2012 with a completely new approach to delivering business analytics tools for the enterprise. UNIT4 Business Analytics Apps promise turnkey, rapidly deployed, business performance solutions available on a pay-as-you-use basis from a dedicated app store. UNIT4's new strategy addresses the three most challenging requirements of organizations attempting to improve their business performance via today's analytic solutions - cost, speed and measurement. While large enterprise software vendors SAP and Oracle have bolted heavy-weight business intelligence tools on top of their already complex enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, UNIT4 is reinventing the business analytics landscape.

UNIT4 Business Analytics Apps will be a performance-industry game changer. Their simplicity, speed of deployment and pricing model are unique to the market, enabling a business analytics platform and turnkey performance templates for every customer, deployed across any device, on a pay-as-you-use basis from a dedicated app store. They will provide rapidtargeted response to business change, emerging risks or new opportunities, and since they are integrated with UNIT4's Agresso Business World ERP and Coda Financials solutions, a change made in one application automatically flows to the other applications. Customers will also benefit from a built-in social communication tool that enables them to collaborate around reports.

"Today's enterprise performance management (EPM) or corporate performance management (CPM) solutions have been as costly and complex as legacy ERP," said Ton Dobbe, Vice president, Product Marketing for UNIT4. "Having spent millions on these systems over numerous years, companies are still struggling to get meaningful information out as their business requirements have changed since installing the ERP, but the task of making the changes to the system has proven too complex. As a result, their business analytics is too often out of date and lacking any meaningful insight. UNIT4 has led the way in low cost of change ERP and is bringing this much needed foresight to the performance management space."

Customers will be able to download a pre-built solution from the app store that is virtually ready to use, then choose if they want to add tailoring to the solution themselves-- or select a turnkey professional services bundle of five, 10 or 20 days, depending on their requirements, that guarantees completion. Per user/per month pricing ensures that UNIT4's approach is low-cost, no-risk, customizable and easy to change. This contrasts with the usual huge up-front investment and months it takes to deploy traditional performance management solutions, plus the financial and time investment required to make subsequent changes.

In March 2012, the first apps will be rolled-out via a selective customer review program. From June, these solutions will be made available globally via the UNIT4 App Store along with apps designed for various service intensive markets such as local government, education, not for profit and professional services. Cloud advancements will ultimately provide a standardized environment for cloud cube analytics.

Industry Analyst Sees 'Game Changing' Possibilities

"It has always been easier to get data into ERP than to get actionable information out," said Cindy Jutras, principal, Mint Jutras. "Much of the value is left on the table with information that is largely untapped. With broad, deep and multi-purpose applications, most decision-makers simply don't know where to start. By creating these bite-size apps that address a specific need, UNIT4 allows knowledge workers and executives to simply download an app, quickly tailor it and satisfy their specific business need. This promises no-risk, potential high-return and a rapid return on investment, and UNIT4 is extending performance management beyond senior management to middle managers and mobile workers, enabling a powerful and low-cost way to re-tool everyday routines to be more efficient."

Cindy Jutras has published a paper addressing the shortcomings of the performance solutions market and the advantages of UNIT4's approach titled "Are You Ready to Change the Game In Driving Corporate Performance?"

About UNIT4

UNIT4 is a global business software and services company aimed at helping dynamic public sector, and commercial services 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, 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).