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Business Overview |
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| AGRESSO Business World |
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| Comprehensive financial and business management solution |
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| Overview |
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| The common theme of business today is change. Technology and business markets evolve rapidly. The challenge for organizations is to keep up and to cope with these inevitable changes. |
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| Forrester Research says 91% of business users indicated they were forced to limit business process changes due to the inflexibility of the applications. When the business did change, it did so at a heavy cost to IT'. |
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| Thus, to be able to drive change in an organization, the most essential ingredient is a computer system that is flexible as well as adaptable to change. |
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| AGRESSO Business World is such a system. Its unique data structure that unifies transaction, reporting and workflow supports growth and change, rendering it upgradeable, scaleable, integrate able and customisable. AGRESSO is currently implemented at 2300 customers in more than 70 countries with an end-user base of more than 700000. |
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| The philosophy of AGRESSO is to empower the user, allowing them to take control and ownership of the system. This results in avoiding expensive consultancy fees and ensures a low total cost of ownership. Combined with an ROI of 3
- 5 years, Agresso Business World represents a safe investment, delivering a strategic long-term solution. |
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Apart from being the exclusive distributor of AGRESSO Business World in South Africa, Exponªnt also performs all the world-wide maintenance and enhancements of AGRESSO.
With this dedicated team, international expertise and more than 200 consultants at our disposal, Exponªnt provides a full service portfolio from project delivery and integration to on-going post-implementation support and training, optimization and the development of complementary functionality. |
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| The Preferred Solution for People/Service-Centric Organisations |
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| AGRESSO Business World is a fully integrated, single incidence, enterprise management and information system and consists of web-enabled Financials, Project
Management, Human Resources, Procurement, Document Management and Business Analysis & Reporting. |
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| AGRESSO was developed for people/service-centric organizations, specifically for the Public Sector, Professional and Business Sector operating in dynamic environments of rapid change and rigorous standards. |
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| AGRESSO's highly flexible approach to financial management makes it suitable for public sector accruals or cash method of accounting. Its ability to identify project management cost drivers, handle employee time tracking and billing and accounting for contractor and consultant expenses, makes it the preferred business accounting software solution for professional services or project driven organizations. |
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| Utilising the AGRESSO 'engine', allows an organization to model its own unique business processes resulting in a system that grows and works your way. When change does occur, all that needs to change is the 'engine' that can be implemented by the users themselves. By providing powerful data analysis, advanced e-financial processing and securely e-distributed information services, AGRESSO delivers enterprise management agility, effectiveness and unprecedented flexibility to users through an intuitive and familiar environment. Combine the above with workflow results in devolved responsibility where the user is empowered to acquire relevant information and make informed decisions, while maintaining control at the top. |
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| Technology |
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| Leveraging the latest Internet technologies, AGRESSO's e-capability allows users to publish or receive information and pass business transactions over the web vastly improving the speed and accuracy of interchange in addition to dramatically cutting costs. Because information is captured at source, AGRESSO significantly reduces the administrative burden of manually internalizing financial data, freeing staff to be deployed into strategy supporting roles in financial management and corporate governance. |
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| Using the latest concepts in multi-tier e-enabled technologies, secure and effective decentralization can also be achieved and because many processes can be automated, an exception-only based focus saves time and money through increased productivity, at an individual and collective level. |
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| As an early adopter of the Microsoft .NET framework, AGRESSO has been able to enrich its development process, speed up production and introduce new capabilities, which provide significant benefit to users of the system including a lower cost of ownership and greater ease of deployment. |
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| AGRESSO in the Public Sector |
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| The public sector has been faced with continuous change over the last decade and more change is certain to follow. Government organizations are tasked with meeting a demanding agenda in terms of improved service delivery, increased transparency and cost reduction. |
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| AGRESSO's ability to adapt to rapid change and incorporate future plans, is testimony to the fact that over half its worldwide users come from this sector, including local and central government, health and health organizations as well as education. |
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| AGRESSO's unique ability to analyse expenditure beyond the normal confines of a standard accounting package, providing excellent integrated analysis, enquiry and reporting facilities, enabling better debt management controls and improving cash flow planning to say the least, have made it very attractive to sophisticated organizations. |
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| Frequently public sector customers see AGRESSO as an integral link in bringing several processes on-line together to maximize the benefits of, for example, e-procurement for bulk and regular purchases, speed up processing and reduce paper flows in an e-government environment. The system is particularly suited to public sector organizations that need to implement accrual accounting and accommodate diverse needs from a range of different user types and decentralize responsibility and budgetary control. |
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| AGRESSO in Professional and Business Services |
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| Professional and Business Services organizations have widely adopted AGRESSO Business World software as their core people-centric business system. Such organizations, including consultancy, IT services, engineering, utilities, construction, research development, retail, media, medical, investment and financial organizations, are facing a constantly business changing environment. Accurate information on the financial management of projects, including project costing and billing and the ability of the business system to respond to changes as they happen is essential. |
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| Because all AGRESSO modules are integrated, any event in any department of an organization is immediately visible and available enterprise-wide. The left hand knows indeed what the right hand is doing. Business processes differ from organization to organization, even in vertical business sectors. The unsurpassed flexibility of AGRESSO allows for every organization to model AGRESSO according to their unique business processes. As better practices are developed, so can AGRESSO be adapted to these new practices, ensuring that the operation of the business and the business system stay in sync. |
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| Inventory and e-procurement with multi-currency capability, ensures that the purchasing and distribution of any product or service can be accounted for, resulting in speedy and accurate processing of orders. |
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| Resource Management and Human Resources modules ensure projects are staffed adequately and profitably. An integrated reporting and enquiry suite offers excellent on-line access to information across the entire business. |
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| Document Management completes the picture. By attaching and linking any kind of document, whether it may be an invoice, CAD drawing or CV to any record in the system, allows an organization the full picture of any situation. Utilising the Internet, ensures that all documents are available enterprise wide, what documents are available, what documents are allocated to which personnel, etc. |
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| AGRESSO Business World covers a wide spectrum of people/service-centric organizations. Modules are selected depending on the needs of a business. AGRESSO can also integrate with existing systems within a organization. |
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| Agresso e-Government Solution |
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Meeting the Government agenda
Government organisations are tasked with meeting a demanding agenda in terms of improved service delivery, increased transparency and cost reduction. Specific solutions, such as e-procurement, have been widely endorsed as part of the response to this need, but this is only part of the potential solution. Significant questions remain regarding the actual achievement of measurable benefits to public sector organizations and to the Community. Government should be looking at a wider range of challenges and opportunities to improve efficiency and produce cost savings with the ultimate goal of redirecting those savings to the goal of improving service delivery to the community. |
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End to End Approach
Whilst Agresso recognizes the importance of e-procurement, it is our belief that standalone e-procurement solutions and online marketplaces are only part of the solution. Improvement of service delivery goes far beyond procurement and should be approached as one of many elements, dealing with devolved responsibility and management empowerment. To gain maximum value from solutions, and to help improve service delivery at all levels, Agresso believes it is critical to encompass devolved processes such as e-procurement within an overall end-to-end back-office management solution. This provides total consolidation and transparency of all information across the entire organisation along with maximum empowerment and utilisation of government's most costly resources, its employees, across all devolved areas of responsibility. |
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Control vs. Creativity
Empowerment and information are two critical elements, which should not be assessed separately if governmental bodies intent to enhance service delivery at the lowest possible costs. An appropriately designed business information solution can provide an organisation-wide information infrastructure that works both at the operational and the strategic level. This enables organisations to streamline processes, maximise efficiency and make informed decisions without limiting that same organisation's creativity thus enabling effective change where required. |
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Feeling Independent
On top of that we firmly believe that in order for governmental bodies to deliver the highest quality services, it is of key importance that the uniqueness of the various departments are addressed with care. Each department should have a way to feel independent to bring out the best in them and their skills deployment. This doesn't mean standardisation across the organisation or cluster is at stake. To the contrary the integrated approach combined with the ability to deliver information in true context to those who should know are the enablers for success. It allows managers at any level to fully understand any issue because they get the holistic view presented in the business language meaningful to them. |
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| The key to making such informed decisions therefore requires an integrated approach using a business information architecture that facilitates unlimited data capture and built in capabilities for data presentation and analysis in a format (time, business language, place, physical format) relevant to the individual. |
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Transactions and People
Last but not least we want to stress that people make the difference. Succeeding in e-government therefore requires more than only a transactional approach to service delivery. A modern public sector organisation fully utilises the information about its employees such as skills, experience, educational background, ethnic origin, etc to address the needs of it's constituencies and to anticipate the changes in service requirements.
E-government will change the way government communicates with its citizens, but it won't replace all interactions with electronic processes. Governmental bodies should combine both the transactional and people centric approach in their e-government plans.
The overall solution should therefore enable organisation to make more effective use of resources in areas such as: |
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Deployment of the best resource to each job |
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Reduced administration through simplified processes |
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Meeting citizen requirements through resolving skills or capacity gaps proactively |
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Increased employee retention, through ensuring their time is better utilised, their objectives and interests met and their skills used effectively to deliver services that really have an impact |
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Public sector organisation can keep comprehensive records regarding employee qualifications, history, background and suitability, and use these to respond to tasks with the most effective resource, at the right place and the right time. Simultaneously, this information is also vital to supporting career development and meeting educational and career development requirements.
The delivery of the government agenda can be greatly enhanced through the provision of the capability to use resources more effectively, e-procurement enablement and deliver full transparency and accountability across all management areas. |
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Agresso and Government
Agresso delivers software solutions, skills and expertise to different layers of governments in the UK, Sweden, Norway, the USA, Canada, Netherlands and France. On a central government level Agresso is in operation in the UK's House of Commons as well as the Norwegian and Swedish parliaments. In total partnerships are managed with over 200 central government bodies in Europe. On a local level Agresso is acting as an enabler in responding to and delivering the e-government agenda with some 260 local authorities, more than 105 universities and more than 60 health organisations. Agresso is also involved in both large shared services implementations and cross boundary projects, including work with Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council and the Manchester Fire Service.
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| www.agresso.com |
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