There’s been more good news for both IT and business services provider Agilisys and Tier 2 ERP player Unit4 today. Wolverhampton City Council has selected Agilisys to transform its business support processes in Finance, HR, Payroll and Procurement, as well as replace “outdated ICT systems on the council’s mainframe”. The council’s five year FutureWorks programme is intended to simplify the way it does business supported by a modern ICT system and is expected to deliver annual on-going savings of £3.2m within two years of the go-live date in April 2014. It involves the implementation of Unit4’s Agresso Business World solution. The total cost of the programme, spread over five years, including partner costs and the council’s own resources is approximately £7.8million.
We have seen Agilisys and Unit4 work together on numerous local government contracts including at Tower Hamlets and Bristol City Councils. But it's not just Agilisys that has come round to the benefits of working with a Tier 2 ERP provider (rather than just Oracle or SAP), as highlighted by Unit4’s recent success with Arvato on the Department for Transport Shared Services deal and BT on the London Tri-Borough deal. Moreover, today we also learnt of a global partnership agreement between Fujitsu and Unit4 which will see the two companies marketing Unit4’s software in Continental Europe, Africa and the Middle East together. Unit4 is attracting serious attention from the large SIs and BPO providers. We fully expect to see more partnership arrangements emerge as they look to tackle a broader range of verticals and geographies.