Dresner: “Unit4 is best in class for product customization and extensibility.”

from Unit4 Communications September 27, 2021 | 3 min read

Dresner’s 2021 EPM market study names Unit4 a leader in the Enterprise Performance Management software space - and Overall Leader in both Customer Experience and Vendor Credibility in our first year of coverage.

Dresner Advisory Services’ annual EMP Market Study tracks the capabilities and effectiveness of vendors by polling their customers.

It’s the 7th edition of the Dresner EPM Market Report, but it’s the first time Unit4’s ever been covered by the study. And we’re very pleased with the result – especially given the continued backdrop of COVID and its attendant disruption.

COVID means continued uncertainty for businesses

The report’s release comes under the on-going backdrop of the pandemic, which continues to impact businesses and how they leverage data and business intelligence.

Enterprise performance management in 2021

Dresner’s research, gathered during H1 of 2021, shows a moderate increase in adoption of EPM technology – with 51% of companies polled using EPM, and less than 1% planning to decrease their user base. This reflects the market maturity Dresner first highlighted last year. Adoption is growing more in larger organizations compared to 2020, and small organizations remain less likely to adopt EPM software. This presumably reflects the growing operational complexity facing larger organizations as they tackle the challenges presented by COVID and the shift to remote working.

EPM remains an important technology – but more organizations than ever before now rank it as “critically” important – with Finance the department that rates it as most important overall.

The trend towards sourcing EPM solutions from specialised vendors (regardless of their affiliation with any other ERP vendor) also continues (up to nearly 49), reflecting the increased perception of the technology’s importance.

Most interestingly for us, however, planning priorities remain unchanged – annual budgets, cash-flow forecasting, and headcount planning. But attitudes to AI are beginning to shift, with resistance to AI-based forecasting and planning decreasing significantly.

Unit4’s score in detail

In our first year of coverage, Unit4’s scores are comparable to the overall vendor sample in most areas. We’re particularly pleased that we’ve been named as Best in Class for product customization and extensibility – reflecting our solution’s low-code capabilities and easy third-party integrations via our Extension Kit.

We’re considered an Overall Leader in customer experience (reflecting the real-world experience of our customers and their users across the whole value chain) and vendor credibility (reflecting how our customers ‘feel’ about Unit4 in terms of perceived value and integrity, and whether they would recommend us to others).

We’re also very proud of the fact that we’ve received a perfect recommend score – which we believe showcases our commitment to keeping our customers satisfied by solving problems. (Often by doing things that other, larger vendors have outright stated aren’t possible).

Overall, we don’t think we could have asked for a better showing in our first year of coverage. It’s a great foundational result, and we believe our commitment both to innovation and to listening to the needs of our customers mean the only way from here is up.