Agresso seals $7m Qld government contract

Gordon Peters
Tuesday, 22 June 2010 00:15

IT Industry - Deals

ERP software vendor, AGRESSO, has sealed a deal with the Queensland Government's department of education and training which will use its finance technology solution in support of the state's transformational, 'smartclassroom' initiative.

loadposition peter}Under the estimated $7 million deal, as part of a program of change AGRESSO's OneSchool application is being built on the Queensland Department of Education and Training's enterprise platform and supports the Department's core business of learning and teaching.

Dr Richard Eden, deputy director-general corporate services in the department of education and training, said that OneSchool is a school-driven project focused on improving relationships among teachers, students and parents, with the key objective being to enhance the learning of all students.

'This objective is enabled through providing teachers with accurate, timely and complete information about their students, delivering a holistic picture of each student in the form of a OneSchool student record, deepening relationships and supporting improved learning outcomes.'

According to Dr Eden, the department chose the AGRESSO Business World solution because its architecture is 'data model driven, not 'fixed' process driven,' adding that 'this was a core differentiator - it will allow us to more easily continually refine and change what metrics we wish to analyse and view, track trends and measure our performance.'

The low total cost of ownership inherent in AGRESSO Business World, a direct result of the underpinning easy-change VITAâ„¢ architecture, enabled AGRESSO to prevail in a hotly contested environment.

Dr Eden said OneSchool functionality has been available to Queensland state schools since 2008, with functionality being progressively delivered to education stakeholders via staged releases. 'AGRESSO Business World web-based Finance and Asset Management modules will be seamlessly integrated to OneSchool's own Student Management functionality, for delivery in January 2011.

'In selecting AGRESSO, the Government will meet its objective to provide highly secure, reliable and low-maintenance information and technology platform that can be accessed anywhere, any time and that doesn't require the ongoing, expensive change costs typical of ERP market solutions.'

AGRESSO CEO, John Catarinich said the company's solution will be managing the financial transactions of more than 400,000 students across the Queensland school network, encompassing over 1,200 schools and accessible by all teachers and administrative staff.

Catarinich claimed the AGRESSO Business World VITA architecture has a 'fundamental advantage over prevailing ERP architectures,' adding that  'with VITA, the underlying data, business processes and delivery methodology (analytics and reporting) move in lockstep with a single change (usually user-driven versus re-coding), providing a single source of accurate information to all users.'

'Studies done by leading technology analyst firms and business publications on comparative cost factors of AGRESSO Business World versus the large ERP giants consistently show that VITA's capabilities save dynamic, fast-changing mid-sized and larger organisations millions of dollars a year over competitive solutions,' Catarinich also claimed.