Agresso Business World provides flexibility required for best practice information management in higher education

Sliedrecht, The Netherlands – UNIT4, the world’s leading provider of business software for fast changing organizations, today announced an agreement with Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) to implement Agresso Business World to provide an integrated solution for Finance, Research, Procurement, Fixed Assets, Human Resources, Payroll  and Management Information across the University.

UCP has chosen Agresso Business World to replace the current information systems in each of these areas to give users and decision makers easy access to more consistent and reliable information. It plans to make significant improvements to the service provided to its many clients, by making administrative processes more efficient for teaching staff, employees and students. The project will deliver an integrated view of all university activities providing efficiencies and better control of budgets and projects to meet the current and future challenges associated with providing education, research and associated services.

“We selected the Agresso Campus solution because it delivers the flexibility we need to manage a diverse program of projects and activities,” said Professor Helena Brissos de Almeida, Chief Executive at UCP. “It provided clear value for money compared to alternatives and the UNIT4 team showed they can help us respond to current and future challenges.”

“Agresso Business World was chosen due to its ability to meet our functional requirements and due to its abililty to adapt to future change”, stated Professor Dr. Helie de Chanterac, IT Department Director. “We are confident it will help us to optimize our operations and help us meet legal and operational change as we evolve. We will in turn reduce the number of systems currently in operation.”

UNIT4’s experience in the Higher Education sector was an important consideration in the software selection. The initial implementation is expected to take around nine months, involving consultants from Portugal, the United Kingdom and France as well as a team from UCP.

“UNIT4 showed they had superior knowledge of Higher Education processes and best practices from implementations throughout Europe,” said Miguel Campos, ERP Project Director at UCP. “We are confident in the UNIT4 team’s abilities and in the software providing a platform for future evolution and growth.”

About Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Universidade Católica Portuguesa is a university with its own identity, holding a Christian vision of the world, based on solid values that originate in this global experience. An old project of the Portuguese Archbishop Conference, initiated 1967, Universidade Católica Portuguesa formed its reputation on the quality of its teaching, on the highest standards of education, on the reputation of the teaching staff, and by providing education to alumni with outstanding achievements not only in the country, but also abroad.
It is a national university, spread throughout four regional centres in Portugal (Braga, Porto, Beiras and Lisbon) and a university in Macau.

Currently spread over 20 basic units, Universidade Católica Portuguesa offers 47 undergraduate degrees, over forty post-graduation courses, master’s degrees and PhDs as well as MBAs, with over 1,000 teaching staff. The university is also comprised of 22 research units (study centres, institutes, and offices).

About UNIT4

UNIT4 is a global business software and services company aimed at helping dynamic organisations 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 and Coda financial management software.

Agresso Business World is our flagship ERP suite for mid-sized services intensive organisations. It is widely acknowledged for delivering ongoing, post-implementation changes without the typical external IT costs and services that cost firms huge sums of money each year. This is achieved thanks to its powerful VITA™ architecture, which is unmatched in the ERP world.

Coda Financials is our award-winning suite of best-of-class financial management software designed to integrate with your industry- and company-specific applications. Coda’s LINK™ architecture sets it apart from ordinary accounting systems by providing a financial information backbone for companies with fast changing and mixed application environments. It is a global accounting solution for mid-to large sized organisations, offering a "no compromise" approach to financial modelling, process control and application choice.

UNIT4 is a top six mid-market ERP software player globally and the 2nd largest European ERP supplier. With offices in 17 European countries, as well as 7 countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Africa and sales activities in several other countries, revenue of €379.4 million was realised in 2009. UNIT4 is headquartered in Sliedrecht, the Netherlands. The company has around 4,160 employees.

UNIT4 is listed on Euronext Amsterdam by NYSE Euronext and is included in the Amsterdam Midcap Index (AMX). For more information on UNIT4 or any of its operating companies, please visit the website at www.unit4.com