Unit4 delivers self-driving ERP for project teams

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Unit4, the enterprise applications provider for service organisations, has announced an extension to its Business World Professional Services Automation (PSA) solution that enables project intensive organisations to boost their competitive advantage and optimise their average margin across their project portfolio.

This is another solution released to the market that turns Unit4's vision for self-driving enterprise software into reality, where advanced analytics are used to minimise the effort to complete complex tasks. The new Projects solution extends Unit4's Business World PSA offering by using machine learning to analyse current and historical project data. It is ideal for data-driven project and consulting firms that base new project bids on insights from existing projects, such as actual costs, revenue and profit data to accelerate the bidding process, minimise risk and ensure success and profitability.

Built on Unit4's People Platform, the new solution scans a company's entire project history to identify similar projects to a new opportunity. Users can analyse the suggested "reference" projects in detail across the project structure to see what worked well. The solution then goes one step further to provide predictions on the cost, time and effort required for a new project. A detailed project plan can be created with a single click, using learnings from the historic successful projects identified and associated transactions such as timesheets.

"Enterprise software is transitioning from merely processing transactions to performing self-driving business analyses that recognise patterns, find anomalies and suggest solutions. As we find better ways to utilise vast amounts of data, self-driving ERP has the ability to propel companies in ways never before possible," said Erik Tiden, Unit4 CTO. "Self-driving ERP has come of age. We are enabling project teams to exploit the value of historical project data to create competitive advantage and margin improvements by combining predictive analytics with an intelligent user experience and process automation elements."

Unit4 is also releasing a new-look Project Forecasting solution that allows Project Managers to predict the outcome of their projects in a fraction of the time. It provides professional services organisations with a clear picture of project performance and risk, while at the same time enabling them to manage cash flow more accurately.

"The need for professional services firms to plan and execute projects flawlessly has never been more critical," said R. David Hofferberth, P.E. Founder and Managing Director of Service Performance Insight. "Forecasting if a project will be successful at the bidding stage is key to success, but not something most firms do successfully. SPI Research is starting to see new enterprise solutions utilising new analytics capabilities that will help firms qualify opportunities better. It's an interesting time for the sector."

Customer response

"Being able to identify project references across the whole organisation is very powerful for gathering planning insights and benchmark information. The flexible search and project presentation makes it very intuitive." - Nicolas Frotiee, Groupe ALTEN

"The Unit4 Projects solution can improve the networking especially in large organisations like ours and increases efficiency in creating new projects. It can even help in identifying conflicts of interest with other parts of the organisation." - Nick Hubbard, Head of Business Excellence, WSP, Parsons Brinckerhoff