Blog

Oct 26, 2020

Finding reliable, scalable integrations between an ERP system and other critical business applications hasn’t been easy — until now. With the launch of Unanet Connect, Unanet customers gain access to the new industry standard for integrating the tools they use with Unanet’s lineup of project-based ERPs. Unanet Connect introduces an open, modern platform for integrations and automations that goes beyond APIs and features a marketplace with more than 100 pre-built application connectors that can be implemented at scale with an accelerated time to value. Unanet Connect provides government contractors, architects & engineers, and professional services firms with important building blocks for their digital transformation efforts. Simply by shopping the marketplace, they can create a fully integrated digital ecosystem with the Unanet project-based SaaS ERP solution at its center — an ecosystem that delivers increased efficiencies across systems, processes and teams, from sales to projects, expenses to payments and hiring to payroll and operations. Unanet Connect brings the app marketplace experience to the world of ERP, providing Unanet customers with a one-stop shop for data orchestration, workflow automation and improved team collaboration tools. Unanet customers can integrate with leading solutions, including Paylocity, ADP, BambooHR, Oracle, MS Teams, Box, DocuSign and HubSpot, to name just a few. The marketplace covers the full spectrum of business needs, with ready-to-implement integrations for CRM, HRIS, financials, project, payroll, contract management, inventory, expense, time, payments, productivity and more. These are robust integrations with some of the most in-demand, best-in-class business applications, built by a development team at Unanet that has produced many such integrations over the years. They stand up quickly and elegantly, and sync effortlessly across platforms, with Unanet’s purpose-built ERP solution as the backbone. You’ll find applications your organization is already using today, along with others you’ve considered implementing to run your business more efficiently. “Our commitment to customers is giving them elegant, integrated technology so they can run their entire businesses, not just their ERP, and with Unanet Connect, we’re delivering on that promise. As companies continue their digital transformations, Unanet Connect is the only tool that will allow them to scale their entire enterprise environment in a way that meets all of their unique needs, improving their business processes easily and simply,” said Assad Jarrahian, chief product officer, Unanet. What are integrations? Integrations are critical to any digital transformation. Essentially, integrations are the connections that enable various digital systems to function as a single unit. They connect the disparate software your organization uses so they interact and share information with one another without sacrificing functionality or data quality, and without requiring extra steps by the user. Why is making so many useful integrations available in the Unanet Connect marketplace such a big deal for our GovCon and A/E customers? Automation is a big reason. Using the tools available in Unanet Connect in tandem with Unanet’s ERP software unlocks the power of automated processes across an entire organization. So for example, the hand-off of a new project from the sales team to the project management team would automatically trigger the launch of DocuSign for the signing of project kick-off documents, with data about the new project and new customer transferring automatically from HubSpot into Unanet’s project-based ERP. It also unlocks the power of collaboration, enabling your teams to work from a single source of truth and around a central set of KPIs — to play off a single sheet of music, if you will. And let’s not overlook productivity. The more integrated your systems, processes and software are, the less time your people will spend on redundant data entry, fixing data entry errors, etc., and the more time they’ll have to focus on activities that bring value to your organization: serving customers, moving projects forward, exploring and developing new revenue opportunities and the like. To further streamline and support the integration process, Unanet Connect leverages enterprise-grade APIs that allow you to securely connect applications with end-to-end encryption and data masking for privacy along with robust tools to tailor integrations at scale with your organization’s needs, and with its digital transformation aspirations. The future of your business will depend largely on digital integration, workflow automation and scalable collaboration. With the launch of Unanet Connect, the future has arrived.

Oct 14, 2020

Unanet is thrilled to share that it will acquire Cosential, the leader in customer relationship management (CRM) software and proposal solutions for the construction and A/E markets. The combination of our purpose-built ERP and Cosential’s CRM software will give customers new choices for best-in-class solutions that meet their enterprise business management needs, including business development, proposal management, project management, finance, operations and resource management. Together, we can bring a best-in-class alternative to the status quo, so customers gain the satisfaction and innovation they deserve. Last year we acquired Clearview Software, which demonstrates our commitment to investing in and enhancing existing platforms. Just like with Clearview, Unanet will continue to invest in Cosential’s technology for the construction and A/E industries while also maintaining its innovation momentum in GovCon and other professional services industries. Cosential brings deep-rooted expertise in the A/E and construction industries as the CRM market leader in the AEC space. Unanet and Cosential have many mutual customers, further demonstrating the synergy between the two companies and their technologies, and underscoring the opportunity for collaboration and innovation. Read more about the future of Unanet’s AEC solutions here.

Sep 17, 2020

Unanet users, say goodbye to the headaches and wasted hours that often accompany a lack of integration between your firm’s ERP and preferred payroll system. Unanet features payroll integration with Paylocity, Proliant, and TriNet, a trio of best-in-class cloud-based systems for managing payroll and other key HR functions. This seamless integration enables up-to-the-second payroll information, along with key employee demographic data and processed payroll/general ledger data, to flow in real time across your firm. The integrations with Paylocity, Proliant, and TriNet will move the needle for firms in several important ways: Streamlined payroll processing and employee management eliminates the time-consuming, inefficient, and error-prone process of maintaining employee information in multiple systems. Whoever wears the payroll hat in your firm, whether it’s HR or accounting, will appreciate having a simplified, integrated and ultimately less time-intensive process. Utilizing the power of automated payroll workflows increases efficiency and accuracy.Time savings free employees for the higher-value work that drives your business forward. Without the burden of redundant data entry and long hours spent reconciling disparate systems, your HR people can focus on more pressing priorities like attracting and retaining talent and improving the employee experience.Data sync. Full integration ensures data integrity at all times and enables data to flow seamlessly and bi-directionally — a 360º sync. It gives firms and their HR departments a single version of the truth on which to base decisions.Peace of mind. Full payroll integration enables you to securely and confidently run payroll and provide your staff with a best-in-class experience from a trusted payroll vendor. Here at Unanet, we’re constantly striving to provide our customers with seamless integrations that automate and streamline critical business processes. To that end, we expect our roster of integration partners to grow in the ongoing quest to make business functions like payroll less of a headache and provide our customers with new ways to capture efficiencies inside their business. To learn more about Unanet A/E’s payroll integration features and what they can do for your business, click here.

Sep 17, 2020

First in an ongoing blog series detailing the reasoning behind a firm’s selection of Unanet’s ERP solution over other options. The firm: OptoKnowledge Systems, Inc. (optoknowledge.com), a Torrance, CA, company that develops imaging systems (hyperspectral imaging, night vision, situational awareness, and spectroscopy) for defense, security and environmental/energy applications. The company is primarily an R&D contractor for the Department of Defense, NASA and the Department of Energy. As accustomed as OptoKnowledge is to operating at technology’s leading edge as a developer of advanced imaging systems and sensors for night vision, drones, and other visibility-related applications, it needed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could provide it with better visibility into its own business. Soon after purchasing the 30-year-old company in February 2020, OptoKnowledge’s new ownership realized the company could benefit from a new ERP system that could better support its strategic priorities — preferably one that’s fully integrated, proven in the government contractor space, and well-supported from a service standpoint. The effort to find a replacement for its inefficient and outmoded ERP system got off to a rocky start. The initial plan to transition from an obsolete version of that system to a newer version was abandoned, chiefly due to issues with data migration. Seeking another option, company officials reached out to their contacts in the GovCon space for recommendations. While the reports they got about one big-name ERP system were consistently less than glowing (mostly complaints about subpar support), the reviews their peers provided on another ERP software option were highly positive. Those positive reviews pertained to Unanet. Additional due diligence cemented Unanet as the right choice for OptoKnowledge, primarily for its strong data drill-down capabilities and its service and support, which got uniformly high marks from the current users with whom company officials spoke. A contract was signed soon thereafter, and OptoKnowledge is poised to implement Unanet’s purpose-built ERP software in November 2020. “We are so excited about the financial reporting,” says Ilana Gat, Chief Financial Officer at OptoKnowledge. “It’s impossible to ask staff to keep spreadsheets up to date, but with Unanet, our program managers will get real-time insights into their programs on a daily basis.” Using Unanet, she expects program managers will be able to see key information about their programs and projects in real time. She’s also looking forward to gaining a new level of granular insight into profit and loss by project/program, as well as the ability to drill into the data around individual transactions. The only drawback: waiting until these and other capabilities built into Unanet go live company-wide.

Sep 17, 2020

How’s your opportunity pipeline looking? What about the satisfaction levels of your current customers? Attracting new customers begins with understanding the needs of customers and improving their experience. The best way to do that is to establish a discipline for tracking and documenting customer touches and to have a method to analyze the data. This is where a project CRM comes in. What is CRM? Customer relationship management is a discipline for managing how you interact with both current and potential customers. These days, there are so many ways to get in front of or hear from customers: in-person meetings, blogs, social media, phone calls, webinars, emails, and so on. Project CRM software wrestles all of this information into one organized place and helps you better understand not only the roles and titles of who is buying your service or product, but the customer journey as well. Some of the benefits of a project CRM include: You gain instant access to prospects and customers in one central place.You can track the customer journey through the entire project lifecycle.You can gain insights into market trends and customer pain points and use this data to make better business decisions.You gain a better understanding of future revenue potential and resource forecasts.You can access a weighted forecast based on probability percentages. Our new ebook, The Business of Projects, is a guide to how ERP software can enable project success. Among the topics in this eBook is an introduction into CRM and the benefits of a project CRM solution. Download your copy of the ebook here and learn how ERP opens the door to capturing and winning more contracts.

Sep 17, 2020

When you do right by your customers, your employees, and the communities you serve; deliver quality products; support those products with strong service; and do all this on a consistent basis; you get noticed. That’s the case for Unanet, which in August was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 list for the third year in a row. This year, Unanet ranks no. 4,189 on the publication’s list of America’s fastest-growing private companies. Earlier this year, Inc. also placed Unanet in the top 10% of fastest-growing private companies in the D.C. metro region. Consistently landing among the nation’s strongest private companies is largely the result of recent customer growth in the government contractor (GovCon) space, as well as the architecture and engineering (A/E) industries. Unanet has been particularly successful at attracting customers that are seeking a more service-oriented ERP platform. “One-third of Unanet’s customers have switched to us from a competitive product, and this trend is increasing,” said Greg Guelcher, Chief Financial Officer, Unanet. “Our growth is a result of the steady investments we’ve made in our software and our team, all due to collaboration with and feedback from our customers. Our customer-first, people-oriented strategy is paying off.” “The companies on this year’s Inc. 5000 come from nearly every realm of business,” says Inc. editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk. “From health and software to media and hospitality, the 2020 list proves that no matter the sector, incredible growth is based on the foundations of tenacity and opportunism.” Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region and other criteria, can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000.