Dutch software firm UNIT4 has appointed Peter Simons to lead an “aggressive” expansion in the Australian market which includes the opening of a local head office in Sydney.
Simons, who was appointed UNIT4 director A/NZ and has 15 years experience in the Australian industry, will be responsible for the cloud-focused business software company’s new operations in the region.
He has been tasked with supporting the company’s aggressive growth plans for the A/NZ region, which aligns with the company’s global cloud strategy to grow the business significantly.
He will also drive uptake of the company’s solutions portfolio, including both the UNIT4 Agresso, ERP suite and the UNIT4 Coda financial management suite.
Simons said the new operation would continue to work extremely closely with its three existing distributors – Agresso, Connexxion and S1 - who have built up a customer base of more than 30 companies in the region including: the Queensland Government, Kinetic IT and Save the Children.
“Our relationships with Agresso Pty Ltd, Connexxion and S1 Consulting are key to our success in the region and we are committed to supporting our existing customer base with the quality of service and solutions they expect from us and our partners,” he said.
“Our intention in opening our own office is to take greater advantage of the enormous potential in the Australian market and to continue to expand our reach to dynamic companies that are serious about embracing change and transforming their organisation.
“As a direct team we will focus our efforts on driving increased uptake for our cloud solutions among organisations in the government, higher education, not-for-profit and commercial sectors.”
Further, Simons will look expand the company’s offering in the area of shared services. “Large, monolithic systems are time-consuming to implement, hard to change and difficult to integrate with other applications, meaning that ‘Big ERP’ is often not the right choice for organisations looking to obtain efficiency from a shared services environment,” he said.
“Setting up a shared services center can also be the ideal opportunity to move to a cloud environment, removing the IT headache and ensuring the solution and data are secure.
“As a nimble player in the ERP space, we believe we have an extremely strong proposition for Australian organisations that are serious about increasing efficiencies, reducing costs and standardising processes across their entire business.”
