Discover why School Boards and Higher Education trust Unit4 ERP
Unit4 has a proven track record of empowering school boards to focus on what truly matters: delivering value to their students. We recognize that school boards have distinctive financial reporting and integration needs, and for that, they need a solution that is easy to use and enables seamless connectivity to regulatory systems. That’s why our flexible ERP solution is selected by education institutions worldwide.
Discover insights from our customers and explore why Unit4 ERP is the trusted partner for school boards looking to deliver tangible operational efficiencies in this blog.
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How legacy systems affect institution's growth
Managing educational needs can require indispensable energy and time. As a result, school boards can settle for legacy systems that, while familiar, can struggle to keep up with the modern demands of the sector.
- Unnecessary time spent on admin – A PWC study recently found that academics spend 40% of their time on admin processes, leaving little time for processes that help teachers and pupils thrive.
- Data siloes affect decision-making – Legacy systems rely on siloed data and fragmented application. Integrated ERP data informs decision-makers with a single source of truth, as financial decisions can be misled by unrepresentative data.
- Poor scenario planning – If recent events have taught us anything, it’s that planning for the unpredictable is key. When time is wasted on manual tasks, it eats into the time spent on risk management and strategic forecasting.
- Vulnerable operations – School boards and their institutions are often subject to changing circumstances. When decline, or even growth, occurs outdated systems can struggle to adapt and keep up, or require serious investment to scale.
- Poor collaboration – Talent management is key in any organization and when staff lack ownership of their performance management, find HR processes arduous, and struggle to navigate outdated systems, they can feel disconnected from an organization’s wider mission.
Why school boards are digitally transforming
Many academic organizations are transitioning to the Cloud and embracing digital transformation to gain deeper insights into their business value. Siloed data often obscures the bigger picture, making it challenging to fully understand financial health and its impact on other areas of the organization.
An integrated financial view can help inform other business areas such as recruitment, payroll, procurement, grant management, reporting and more.
Effective budget allocation, scenario planning, and advanced reporting tools not only enhance financial compliance but also foster stronger relationships with both staff and stakeholders.
Today’s talent comes with modern expectations for school systems. Simplifying back-office tasks is essential, as it significantly impacts staff engagement and turnover. Streamlining HR processes—like requesting time off or submitting expenses—plays a crucial role in improving retention.
In the education sector, staff retention is a key factor. It’s understood that an increase in staff turnover can starkly affect a student’s chances of graduation. Modern talent brings modern expectations, and staff need back-office tasks to be simple and manageable.
With Cloud-based systems, both managers and employees can access HR documents seamlessly, enabling transparent dialogue not only about performance but also about total rewards, compensation, and benefits.
Click to read Helping Education Institutions be more resilient and responsive (Gated)
Why school boards chose Unit4
Unit4 has over 20 years implementing effective ERP solutions within the Education sector.
Logan University
Logan University, a growing institute for chiropractic and health sciences education, transitioned from a standalone legacy system to Unit4’s Cloud ERP to address inefficiencies and automate processes. By eliminating time-consuming work they achieved a 20% boost in productivity while cutting IT costs by 20%.
“We had outgrown the capabilities of the platform, and it wasn’t user friendly. Purchase order requisitions, invoices, and other processes remained paper-based, and that didn’t work for us. We wanted to drive an even more exceptional student experience – and that demanded a more agile, flexible, and automated system. We also wanted to be in the cloud.” - Rick DeCaro, Director of IT, Logan University
FH Campus Wien
Austria’s largest university of applied sciences, FH Campus Wien, replaced their outdated Excel-based system with Unit4 FP&A to overcome inflexible processes, data silos, and security issues.
The new solution offered a single source of truth, enabling precise and transparent planning with automated data importing. Its scalability has supported their growth since 2013, providing a future-proof system that delivers accurate, reliable information to meet their evolving needs.
Birmingham Metropolitan University
Birmingham Metropolitan University, serving nearly 18,000 students across ten campuses, implemented Unit4 ERP Financials to modernize their financial management.
By automating processes and centralizing data, the university improved reporting, decision-making, and agility. The finance team, now re-focused on strategy, has achieved better procurement transparency and maximized return on investment to create a stronger institution geared towards improving education outcomes.
VIVES University of Applied Sciences
VIVES University of Applied Sciences implements ERP software package from Unit4. VIVES, the largest university in West Flanders, has chosen ERPx, the Enterprise Resource Planning software from Unit4. It is perfectly suited to the rapidly evolving needs of the university, which needed a standard solution without much customization. VIVES
will use the new ERP software package for three key aspects of its daily operations: financial operations, purchasing, and HR. Find out more here.
Reykjavik University
Aligned with a strategic decision to grow internationally, this privately funded academic institution in Iceland picked Unit4 Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) to transform forecasting, revenue planning, and more. This platform will grow with the varying needs of many people – students, staff, department administrators, subsidiaries, grant providers, and shareholders – and is tightly integrated with the university’s highly successful Unit4 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform. Learn more here.
Why Unit4 is the vendor of choice for school boards
Unit4 ERP creates synergy between your HR processes, finances, and other areas like procurement and grant management.
While outdated legacy systems are costly and require lengthy maintenance, Unit4’s partnership with Microsoft Azure’s Cloud platform provides a scalable and highly secure platform that enable growth.
Join the many school boards already reaping the rewards of streamlined operations today. Learn more about our capabilities for Higher Education institutions on our website.
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