Unit4 has issued a business update from 2024 as it looks forward to 2025 with new leadership. Unlike historical releases, Unit4 has put few financial metrics in the release. Instead it has focused on what it has achieved with SaaS conversions, product innovations, new hires and CSR initiatives.
Focus on migrations
Unit4 has a long tail of legacy implementations, especially within the public sector. It is a sector that is often slow to change due to resource constraints on people and finance. 2024 saw several companies complete their migration to ERPx, the cloud-based Unit4 ERP solution. These were not just public sector organisations, demonstrating the Unit4 strength in people-based businesses.
The first half of 2024 saw six projects completed. Unit4 has now revealed another seven.
- Boo Energi (Sweden)
- The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment (Northern Ireland)
- The Carbon Trust (global climate consultancy, UK)
- The University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) (UK)
- Education Development Trust (international not-for-profit organization)
- SQA (Scotland)
- Best Western GB (part of the global Best Western International)
Not all customers are happy with the push
2025 is likely to be another good year for migrations. Gateshead Council approved the upgrade of their Agresso Financial Systems to Unit4 Cloud in October 2024. Last month, West Berkshire District Council awarded Unit4 the contract to migrate its Agresso finance solution to Unit4 Cloud. It is a four-year contract worth around £1 million.
However, Unit4 has also come under fire for its aggressive push to Unit4 Cloud. Slough Borough Council felt they were forced into the change. The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, while putting aside funds for 2025/26 to migrate to Unit4 Cloud, also felt that Unit4 was forcing them to move.
Most of these migrations are in the UK. Enterprise Times asked Unit4, which regions and industries are seeing the largest growth?
Unit4 replied, “Unit4 is seeing strong cloud migration momentum across all industries as well as in all regions, particularly in the UK, with Central Europe and the Nordic region not far behind. “
Enterprise Times also asked, what percentage of Unit4 customers remain to be migrated to the cloud and what is the target for 2025?
The response was, “Unit4’s migration strategy has not changed, and the company continues to work closely with its customers on their cloud migration journey. We are on target for all our on-premises customers to complete their cloud migrations.”
2025 brings in new leadership
The first big announcement of 2025 for Unit4 was that Mike Ettling was stepping down from his role as CEO. After a transition period, Simon Paris assumed the role of CEO on February 3rd. He is now looking forward to driving the evolution of Unit4.
Simon Paris, CEO of Unit4, commented, “I am joining Unit4 at an incredibly exciting time in the transition to Cloud-native applications. Especially in service-based industries, there has been significant pressure on growth.
“At the same time, nonprofits and public sector bodies continue to juggle the knotty challenge of balancing efficiency and investment in innovation. There is a real recognition among our customers that Cloud-based applications are the fundamental building blocks to provide them with the agility they need to modernize, thrive and drive innovation through AI.”
Other recent hires include Vera Batyalova, VP of Global Partner Sales, who joined in December 2024 from Blue Yonder. Batyalova is responsible for the strategic direction of commercial, implementation, product, and technology partnerships. She will also drive incremental revenue through those partnerships and is already expanding her team.
Magdalena Teschemacher, Sales Director for the APAC Region, joined in November from Microsoft. Based in Singapore, she will oversee both the APAC Prosoft business and global Unit4 products. She will focus on go-to-market plans, sales engagement, marketing, and competitive positioning to deliver top-tier cloud solutions and services.
Product and Service Innovation
Unit4 continues to evolve its technology stack, releasing four updates every year, with the next release due in preview on March 18th 2025. In 2024, Unit4 focused its announcements on its service delivery rather than any major product update. It will be interesting to see what it announces in 2025.
In June, it completed the launch of Success4U, an outcome-based customer success model. Since then, Unit4 has been building out the Success4U catalogues, and now has 12 different catalogues from which customers can select specific services.
Unit4 has added a new Success4U support tier, Success4U Advanced. It sits between Success4U Essentials and Success4U Professional. This enhances the Success4U support tier with an allocated CSM, education for administrators, enhanced community4U access, and access to success points.
It gives customers the option of an elevated support contract, but not one that guarantees rapid response for mission-critical systems.
It has also completed the commissioning of Success4U Professional at both Middlesbrough Council, the unitary authority covering the Borough of Middlesbrough, England and Aston University, a public University in Birmingham, England.
CSR initiatives
Unit4 has continued to invest in the community partnerships. Over the last year, it has worked with several educational and professional development organizations worldwide. Its focus has often been promoting professional development and making technology more accessible to minority groups.
Partnerships include:
- The Top Young 100 is a programme dedicated to developing the digital talent of the best supply chain students in Poland.
- Generation Girl is an Indonesian nonprofit that equips young women with hard and soft skills through STEM-based programs to become future tech leaders.
- Talenti is a digital platform based in Poland which provides a women’s talent bank that supports women at every stage of their professional development.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
2024 was about developing its services arm to better support customers through and after migrating to Unit4 Cloud. It will be interesting to see what Unit4 will deliver in 2025. Will there be a focus on Agentic AI? Unit4 recently set the scene for CFOs with an informative IDC Infobrief, “The Path to AI Everywhere: Exploring the Human Challenges.”
2025 will bring more migrations, some willing, some less so. But will Unit4 also see more net new customers? While it would have obtained permission from customers to talk about the successful migrations, it needs to go a step further and publish case studies about their success and deliverables.
Announcements on those were noticeably absent from this business update. It also seems likely that the trend of not reporting any financial results, growth or retention figures will continue. Will TA Associates, which acquired a majority stake in 2021, provide additional funding for Paris as he seeks to fulfil his “good to great” ambition?
As for the milestone, it is an important point on a journey. But like the image it has been so weathered that it is difficult to tell how far Unit4 has come or where the journey will end.
