Strong demand for new SaaS+ offering from TechnologyOne demonstrates value of customer-focused innovation

TechnologyOne’s bold initiative to make technology cost blow-outs a thing of the past has attracted strong customer support in its first six months. Fifteen organisations have signed on for SaaS+ since the offering’s launch, including the prestigious London Business School.

With SaaS+, TechnologyOne is the only vendor able to not only deliver and enable SaaS but also deliver the implementation for customers under a single yearly fee, reducing risk and time to value for customers.

“SaaS+ will change the ERP industry, delivering on the long-time promise of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology and making enterprise transformations truly a service for the first time,” said Ed Chung, TechnologyOne’s Chief Executive Officer. “It’s a truly transformative solution designed with customers, not consultants, in mind.”

SaaS+ is designed to help solve the three greatest impediments to investing in digital transformation: time-to-value, cost, and complexity. It provides customers with a one-stop-shop, reducing much of the complexity, duplication and risk traditionally involved in technology projects.

As part of the offering, TechnologyOne takes responsibility for delivering the complete experience. It provides organisations with an all-inclusive bundle with no upfront costs, one annual fee, faster implementation and – a world first – a guaranteed outcome.

“Even we have been surprised at the level of interest. We were hoping to sign 10 customers in the first year. We’re six months in and have already smashed this target, testament to the appetite in the market – whether the UK, Australia or New Zealand – for such an innovative solution,” Mr Chung said.

The UK’s largest council by land mass, Highland Council, chose TechnologyOne’s SaaS+ for its digital overhaul. Its Head of Corporate Finance, Edward Foster, said: “We’re delighted to partner with TechnologyOne on this large-scale digital transformation programme. The new solution meets changing requirements, offers better value, resilience and security and is flexible and adaptable for the future.”

George Whalley, Director of Finance at the Royal Northern College of Music said: “We are a reasonably small, specialist institution. Implementing a new finance system is a significant project for any organisation. No upfront implementation costs, a guaranteed outcome and a drastically reduced implementation timeline made TechnologyOne’s solution all-the-more attractive.”

In addition to London Business School, Highland Council and the Royal Northern College of Music, twelve more organisations have adopted SaaS+ including the University of Hertfordshire (UK), MTF Finance (NZ), Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union (QLD), Southern Downs Regional Council (QLD) Tweed Shire Council (NSW) and Town of Cambridge (WA).

Mr Chung said SaaS+ was developed in direct response to customer feedback.

“When SaaS was first introduced a decade ago it was transformative. It completely changed the way companies developed and thought about software and it started a race around the world in companies like ours to create incredible innovations for customers,” Mr Chung said.

“But when it comes to SaaS implementations, unfortunately, our industry continues to be burdened by a model in which organisations must often bring in implementation partners and other third-party consultants to deliver these innovations, an impost that can add up to seven times the cost of the software, not to mention project delays,” he said.

“We’re changing the game. No other tech company can deliver what we do, SaaS+ turns the entire solution into a service. It dramatically improves time to value for our customers. Thanks to automation and our decades’ worth of IP in each industry, 80 per cent of the solution is usable on day 1, so implementations that would have taken six to nine months are done in as low as 16 weeks, helping our customers not only get back to business-as-usual faster, but also get value from our solution faster.”

SaaS+ is also the natural evolution of TechnologyOne’s “Power of One” promise and something the company is in a unique position to lead the industry on, Mr Chung said.

“Our purpose is to transform business by simplifying technology for our customers. One of the core beliefs on which the company was founded 36 years ago is you can do that better when you have a direct relationship with the customer. SaaS+ is a natural extension of that proven idea,” Mr Chung said.

TechnologyOne is one of Australasia’s largest enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) company. With offices across six countries, we have been supporting customers in New Zealand since 2000. Through team members around the country, and offices in Auckland and Wellington, our enterprise SaaS solution transforms business and makes life simple for our customers by providing powerful, deeply integrated enterprise software that is incredibly easy to use. Over 1,200 leading corporations, government departments and statutory authorities are powered by our software.

Our global SaaS solution provides deep functionality for the markets we serve: local government, government, education, health and community services, asset intensive industries and financial services. For these markets we invest significant funds each year in R&D. We also take complete responsibility to market, sell, implement, support and run our solutions for our customers, which reduce time, cost and risk.