ERP Area: ERP, Financials
Software: Unit4
Products Implemented: Unit4 ERP,Unit4 Student Management,We began looking at student management but were forced to abandon after Unit 4 was sold to TA Associates
Company Size: 500 – 999 Employees / Industry: Higher Education
Regions in Scope: North America
Reviewer Role: Project Leader
Consultant Recognized: Earnest Hayden, Sahar Bashiri, Curt Doucette
Systems Expertise 5 (out of 5)
Implementation Process 3 (out of 5)
Responsiveness 5 (out of 5)
Quality of Consultants 5 (out of 5)
Flexibility / Adaptability 5 (out of 5)
SPEED & COST
Speed vs. Expectations: 2x time expected
Cost vs. Expectations: 2x cost budgeted
SCOPING ACCURACY:
How well did your implementation partner scope the work and understand your needs during the pre-sales process?
Partner under-quoted the project and we had multiple change orders
Was the implementation team who actually performed the work the same team that was proposed?
Team changed a lot
What “Lessons Learned” would you provide to others implementing with this partner / software? What else would you tell us about your project experience?
With great sincerity and regret I must say Unit 4’s project methodology is terrible. My informed opinion is that the methodology only works if it is accompanied by execution and implementation consultants with the right level of care and concern. Unit 4 does not provide those two things together and the whole implementation and transition/change processes for our people and our business were not well supported. We were fortunate to have done two streams of work Financial and Payroll. Our consultant for payroll was the example of excellence, but he did not follow unit 4 prescribed method, he used his deep experience and we followed a tested and true practical method which he knew which delivered results – For all other implementation phases and stages hindsight shows it was poorly managed by Unit 4 – perhaps we were not a big enough customer. We also dealt with a lot of beaurocratic structure that Unit 4 has in its delivery functions – we spoke to many people who were managers or support staff or this or that all trying to run their processes of controlling the project and we gave them the benefit of the doubt and time. I believe Unit 4 continues to succeed because the technology is inherently good – a legacy of profoundly good decisions made by Agresso- but the delivery management around it is poor in our experience and the empathy and sincerity of some contacts is questionable – If the product looses technical appeal or faces other technical hurdles in future the weaknesses in U4s delivery operations will compound your problems and the whole mess will destroy a lot of value and overwhelm the company.
In the end it just boiled down to just getting the work done with supportive consultants. We abandoned all project control structure from Unit 4 and hired an external consulting company SystemsAssociates it was the was the turning point for our project and was how we were able to go live, because they delivered results and they stay close to the client.
