By: Dann Anthony Maurno
Unit4, provider of enterprise applications for professional service organizations (PSOs), has acquired Assistance Software. Assistance provides professional services automation (PSA) solutions. Its Assistance PSA Suite is now Unit4 PSA Suite. The new Unit4 PSA Suite is born in the cloud, with an option for native integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Both companies specialize in delivering industry-specific solutions, and together, will focus on extending functionality and pre-built content for key verticals within professional services; also to relevant project-based industries.
Assistance Software ranks as is the second most-used PSA solution in industry think-tank Service Performance Insight’s PS Maturity Benchmark, with a 10 percent market share. Assistance Software brings with it numerous vertical-specific PSA solutions, among them:
- PSA Suite for Architects
- PSA Suite for Consultancy
- PSA Suite for IT Services
–and so forth, for accountancy, engineers, legal, marketing and advertising, and nonprofit.
In turn, Unit4 describes its mission as offering “inherently flexible applications for people-centric organizations.” The company distances itself from legacy ERP systems, which it says “[have] traditionally been built with manufacturing and production in mind. For service organizations, that means legacy ERP systems are limited by design.” Interestingly, the company’s CTO is former Microsoft SMB ERP director Erik Tiden, who left Microsoft for Unit4 in 2015.
As Unit4 describes its acquired offering:
The new Unit4 PSA Suite adds an industry leading front end with the added advantage of seamless integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. Unit4’s extended portfolio means that PSOs of all sizes can benefit from a standalone cloud PSA solution. Unit4 PSA Suite can also be implemented on top of an organization’s ERP solution, including Unit4 Business World, creating a full end-to-end solution for PSOs as well as service divisions in non-PS organizations.
R. David Hofferberth, P.E., founder and managing director of Service Performance Insight, said of the combined value proposition:
“[Assistance Software’s] combined app approach and out of the box vertical solutions provide [PSOs] with an integrated cloud solution to optimize their business processes and achieve service delivery effectiveness. We know from benchmarking thousands of PSOs that combining PSA with insight from core business systems at the back end, delivers one source of the truth for all team members, expediting fact-based decisions and real-time response to opportunities and challenges.”
Both companies are headquartered in The Netherlands. Among Assistance Software’s customers in the EU and North America are Fugro, RSM, Grant Thornton, Eiffel and KPN.