Agresso Wins Another $1 Million+ Deal in Health Care Sector

VICTORIA, British Columbia, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Agresso has followed up its $1 million+ Emeritus Corporation deal with another win in the health care sector. After a lengthy selection process, Bethany Care Society has selected Agresso's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution over a number of Tier 1 and Tier 2 software providers, including Navision, in a deal valued at more than $1M. Bethany has purchased a full range of Agresso applications including Financials, Planner, Procurement, Reporting and Analytics, and the Human Resources/Payroll modules.

Bethany Care Society is one of Western Canada's largest voluntary, not-for-profit providers of health care, housing and community services for seniors and persons with disabilities. In total, Bethany's 1,250 employees provide care and service to more than 4,500 Albertans in over 100 communities.

"We saw the potential for significant savings in both time and dollars," relates Alasdair Smith, Vice President and CFO for Bethany Care Society. "We provide at least 50 different financial reports per year to multiple agencies and each year these requirements could change. Agresso offered us a single integrated and flexible solution with which we can easily create custom reports while keeping all our historical reports intact. Currently we do numerous manual adjustments using various systems to meet these requirements. Also by replacing several systems with a single system from Agresso, we avoid multiple upgrades and maintenance fees."

"We saw tangible value in Agresso's implementation methodology, and their strategy of knowledge transfer," adds Julian Austin, Manager of Information Services, who will lead the implementation project for Bethany. "The ability for our business to reconfigure the application to respond to new requirements and initiatives was also very appealing."

"We are an ideal fit for organizations in the evolving health sector that need to respond to ongoing change," says Shelley Zapp, President of Agresso North America. "Our message of post-implementation agility is gaining traction with both for-and not-for-profit providers of health services. These businesses are facing an uncertain outlook brought on by a challenging economy; yet the need for their services is growing. We are encouraged to see forward-thinking organizations like Bethany and Emeritus choosing Agresso to stay agile and respond to changes in their industry."

"As a not-for-profit organization, we have a responsibility to both our clients and donors to make the very best use of our resources. We are excited about this investment and the opportunities it offers to better manage costs and ultimately improve our services," adds Smith.

Agresso provides a cost-effective solution for achieving post- implementation agility via the company's "VITA" architecture. The architecture allows organizations like Bethany to continuously change underlying data, operational processes and/or reporting requirements with a minimum level of cost and business disruption. Agresso targets its solutions to service and people-centric, change-oriented organizations which it calls Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC) (TM).

About Bethany Care Society

A faith-based organization founded in 1945, Bethany Care Society (http://www.bethanycare.com) is one of Western Canada's largest voluntary, not-for-profit providers of health, housing and community services for seniors and persons with disabilities. The range of Bethany's operations include six care centres offering long term care and supportive living; independent seniors' housing with affordable rental and life lease suites; and community services including Bethany Lifeline and Adult Day Support Programs. In total, Bethany's 1,250 employees provide care and service to more than 4,500 Albertans in over 100 communities.

About Agresso

Agresso (http://www.agresso.com/usa) is a $500 million enterprise resource planning (ERP) company, listed in the Netherlands as 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 2,750 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, Business Process Automation, Field Services and Asset Maintenance, and CRM.