Unit4 Launches Ava: the AI Agent for Self-Driving ERP

“It is clear AI is going to dramatically change how users interact with ERP systems, as it will enable people to focus on more meaningful and rewarding work,” said Claus Jepsen, Chief Technology Officer, Unit4. “Ava isn’t just smart – it’s pragmatic, purposeful and deeply attuned to the real challenges people face. That’s why we have built Ava as one interface and agent, as this will create an integrated platform making it easier to add functionality and avoid siloed AI Agents.”

As Unit4 revealed last year in research commissioned from IDC, AI adoption is rapidly moving through three phases. It is already being used as an agent and Ava fulfils a variety of functions including task management, contextual help and data searches. The second phase in the maturing of AI technology sees it acting as an advisor which Ava does in areas such as anomaly detection in payroll and providing suggestions for invoice approval as well as project creation. Ultimately, Ava will act autonomously as an agent to:

• Centralise orchestration by integrating and co-ordinating workflows within ERPx and Microsoft Teams
• Deliver intelligent automation where routine tasks are autonomously managed to reduce manual workloads
• Enhance augmentation with actionable insights and personalised recommendations to augment specialised tasks
• Offer pro-active and predictive capabilities to identify issues, predict needs and dynamically adapt workflows to achieve business objectives efficiently

Initially, Unit4 is integrating Ava with Microsoft Teams as it is so widely used by its customers, but the roadmap will see integrations with other collaboration tools added in the future. Ava understands natural language conversations in Microsoft Teams and translates them into specific tasks to be completed in ERP workflows. This is possible, because Ava is built on Unit4’s microservices, Cloud native architecture which provides the interoperability and extensibility necessary for Ava to act as an interface to Unit4 ERPx. As a result, Unit4 can build out AI capabilities and connect them into Ava via open APIs giving the agent the ability to adapt quickly as AI functionality evolves.

"The journey into the digital world is neither stale nor stagnant—AI has brought a greater urgency to modernise and transform quickly. IDC finds that 47% of organisations are creating an AI-ready workforce that uses AI assistants, advisors, and agents to boost business success. With AI coming to the forefront, organisations must understand where their journey is headed and the various pathways to success," said Mickey North Rizza, group vice president, Enterprise Software at IDC. " The journey is multidimensional, but the promise of a new digitally savvy enterprise is at the heart of modernisation and transformation."

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About Unit4

Unit4's next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions power many of the world's mid-market organisations, bringing together the capabilities of Financials, Procurement, Project Management, HR, and FP&A to share real-time information, and deliver greater insights to help organisations become more effective. By combining our mid-market expertise with a relentless focus on people, we've built flexible solutions to meet customers’ unique and changing needs. Unit4 serves more than 4,700 customers globally across a number of sectors including professional services, nonprofit and public sector, with customers including Southampton City Council, Metro Vancouver, Buro Happold, Devoteam, Save the Children International, Global Green Growth Institute and Oxfam America. For further information visit www.unit4.com.

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