"Trapped" ERP Users Spending Billions Annually to Accommodate Change; Financial Impact Curtails Business Strategies in "Never-Ending" Cycle.

New Technology Evaluation Survey Sponsored by Agresso Identifies Feeling of Impotence Once Systems are Implemented

VICTORIA, British Columbia -- A new Technology Evaluation Center (TEC) survey aimed at determining the impact of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions on an organization's perceived ability to make change, reports that 70 percent of ERP users feel notably disadvantaged by their existing systems. Agresso (www.agresso.com/usa), a new entrant into the North American ERP market, sponsored the survey of nearly 900 users. With $33 billion1 spent annually on ERP Solutions and replacement solutions benchmarked every 5-8 years2, ongoing change to rigid ERP solutions amounts to billions of dollars spent annually.

Seventy (70) percent of the respondents said their corporations and ERP providers "seem trapped in a never-ending cycle of need-spend-need-spend." When asked whether "the perceived impact of making changes to their SAP, Oracle or PeopleSoft enterprise solution has previously prevented or delayed" their company from "selecting business strategies that might otherwise have had a positive impact" on their businessesO58 percent of those respondents saw a significant level of caution and delay.

"The survey clearly shows that organizations seem to feel hopelessly trapped when it comes to their business technology solutions," said Shelley Zapp, president, Agresso - North America. "Agresso focuses on post-implementation agility - meaning that the solution we implement can support ongoing business change without the ongoing IT costs. That doesn't seem to be remarkable to us, but clearly non-Agresso customers are having a very different experience."

Nearly Half Wish for a Better Alternative and/or Ability to Respond to Change

When asked to rank changes they would most like to see from their ERP solutions, nearly half of the survey respondents said they wished either that there was a better alternative to their current solution, or that they felt "more confident about its ability to move/adjust to my business needs and changes." More than one-third of the users said they do not believe their current ERP provider provides them with "an effective way to do business."

Equally important, almost three-quarters of those polled indicated that the cost involved in deploying their ERP solution was only the beginning of spending, and their organization "continues to invest in enhancements, upgrades and auxiliary applications" to pull needed information, manage business processes, etc.

The survey revealed an irrefutable need for an ERP solution that can provide businesses marked by significant, ongoing change with post-implementation agility -- without expensive incremental upgrades or replacements. Predrag Jakovljevic, TEC's principal analyst for enterprise applications, acknowledged Agresso as a company that has been capitalizing on this demand.

"Agresso has seen an untapped opportunity in the vulnerability of most current peer enterprise resource planning solutions, which cannot really address rapid change within a company," he said. "The centerpiece of Agresso's formal launch into North America last summer was the company's change-oriented architecture, which is aimed at people-centric, mid-market businesses and is in use by nearly 3,000 organizations worldwide."

The TEC survey findings are available at www.Agresso.com/trends or by calling 888.AGRESSO (247-3776).

1 Source: IDC (2006)

2 Source: Brian Sommer, CEO, Techventive

About Agresso

Agresso (www.agresso.com/usa) is a $225 million enterprise resource planning (ERP) subsidiary of Netherlands-based Unit 4 Agresso (Dutch Stock Exchange EURONEXT-U4AGR) and one of the top five providers of ERP solutions for professional services and public sector organizations. Agresso offers a uniquely integrated data/process/delivery architecture designed specifically for Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC) [TM]. Agresso is known as "The ERP Market's Definition of Agility" as it allows an unlimited amount of ongoing, post-implementation changes without the typical external IT costs and intervention that nets billions of dollars in revenue to the market leaders. Over 2,600 companies and organizations in 100 countries deploy Agresso Business World for both operational support and strategic management. The company's role-based, Web Services and Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA) enabled solutions include: Financial Management, Human Resources and Payroll, Procurement Management, Project Costing and Billing, Reporting and Analytics and Business Process Automation.