In the fast-evolving world of enterprise technology, few companies are navigating the AI revolution with as much focus and momentum as Unit4. To understand the strategy behind their recent successes, we sat down with Anand Naidu, our resident development expert. With deep proficiency in both frontend and backend architecture, Anand provides a unique look under the hood at how the company is building the future of enterprise software. In our conversation, we explore the tangible impact of their 100th ERPx go-live, the roadmap for transforming the CFO’s office with Agentic AI, the cultural shift driven by massive internal training initiatives, and the critical role of security in building customer trust.
Congratulations on reaching the 100th ERPx go-live. Could you share a specific anecdote from one of these implementations that illustrates how your AI-powered technology is tangibly disrupting the status quo for service-oriented organizations and what the key focus will be for the next 100 customers?
It’s an incredible milestone, and it’s a moment of real pride for the entire development team. Seeing our code come to life and make a difference is what drives us. I think of an organization like the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. For them, every dollar and every minute saved translates directly into their mission. Before, their teams might spend days collating data for grant reporting. Now, our AI can analyze spending patterns against project outcomes in near real-time, freeing up their brilliant people to focus on program delivery, not spreadsheets. It’s this fundamental shift from administrative burden to strategic insight that is the real disruption. For the next 100 customers, our focus is on deepening that intelligence. We’re moving from descriptive AI that tells you what happened, to prescriptive AI that suggests the best next action, making the system a true partner in their work.
You’re focusing on transforming the Office of the CFO for the “era of Agentic AI.” Can you walk us through the step-by-step roadmap innovations for Unit4 Financials by Coda in AI and analytics, and how these changes will concretely improve a finance team’s real-time decision-making agility?
Absolutely. We see the Office of the CFO as the nerve center of an organization, and our Coda roadmap is about upgrading that nerve center for the speed of AI. We’re structuring our innovation around three core pillars. First is the AI engine itself, which will move beyond simple automation to become an agent that proactively identifies anomalies, flags risks, and models financial scenarios on the fly. Second is a complete reimagining of the user interface; we’re designing dashboards that don’t just present data but tell a story, making complex financial analysis intuitive for the entire leadership team. The third pillar is embedding real-time analytics into every single process. This means a finance leader no longer has to wait for a period-end report to see a cash flow issue. They’ll get an alert the moment our system projects a potential shortfall, with AI-suggested actions to mitigate it. It’s about compressing the entire decision-making cycle from weeks to minutes.
Your recent wins span diverse sectors, from government like De Provincie Zeeland to specialists like Lifeways. Beyond the “people-centric” mission, what specific pain points are these varied organizations trying to solve, and how do you tailor your solutions to deliver value so consistently across different industries?
It’s a great question because it gets to the heart of our platform’s architecture. While the “people-centric” mission is the common thread, the operational pain points are incredibly diverse. Take a government body like De Provincie Zeeland—their primary concerns are around public accountability, budget transparency, and complex regulatory compliance. In contrast, Lifeways, which employs over 9,000 people to support more than 4,000 individuals, is grappling with intricate workforce scheduling, ensuring quality of care, and managing resources across countless locations. The key is that our core ERPx platform is built on a flexible, component-based framework. We don’t offer a one-size-fits-all product. Instead, we configure a unique solution using modules specifically designed for challenges like project-based government accounting or complex people management in the social care sector. This allows us to deliver a tailored, industry-specific solution that feels custom-built, but on a robust, scalable, and unified platform.
Your AI Learning Festival generated over 20,000 training hours. What are some of the most innovative, tangible projects or process improvements that have emerged directly from this investment, and how has this initiative measurably impacted your product development culture?
The energy during the Learning Festival was just electric. With over 800 people together in our global hubs, it felt less like a training event and more like a company-wide innovation lab. One of the most tangible outcomes was the genesis of a new AI-powered forecasting tool for our Professional Services teams. A small, cross-functional group that met during the festival started brainstorming how to better predict project resource needs. They built a working prototype in a matter of weeks that uses historical project data to flag potential staffing bottlenecks before they happen. Culturally, the impact has been profound. It has measurably shifted our developers’ mindset from just executing on a feature list to constantly asking, “How can we infuse AI into this process to make it smarter?” It has democratized AI innovation and created a shared language and excitement around it that is directly accelerating our product roadmap.
Achieving Germany’s C5 Type 1 attestation is a major security milestone. Could you give a concrete example of how this specific compliance, beyond your existing certifications, directly enhances customer trust and removes adoption barriers for your enterprise clients, particularly within the European Union?
From a development standpoint, security is not an add-on; it’s part of the foundation. The C5 attestation is a perfect example of that principle in action. In the past, when we engaged with, say, a large public-sector organization in Germany, their procurement process would involve a lengthy, months-long security and data-sovereignty review. Their legal and IT teams would have to painstakingly vet our infrastructure against their stringent national standards. Now, with the C5 attestation from Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security, that entire conversation changes. It’s an immediate, undeniable proof point that we meet one of the highest cloud security standards in the EU. It removes a massive adoption barrier, shortens the sales cycle, and builds a deep level of trust from day one, because we’re not just saying we’re secure—we have the independent, publicly available audit report to prove it.
What is your forecast for the role of AI in enterprise resource planning over the next five years, and how is Unit4 positioning itself to lead that evolution?
My forecast is that we’ll stop talking about AI as a separate feature of an ERP. In five years, AI will be the fundamental fabric of the system itself. The ERP will transform from a passive system of record, where you input data and pull reports, into a proactive, agentic partner that anticipates needs, advises on strategy, and automates entire workflows. It will be an era of the “self-driving enterprise,” where the system manages mundane operations, allowing people to focus entirely on strategic growth and customer-facing activities. Unit4 is positioning itself to lead this evolution by focusing on our North Star: people-centricity. Our investment isn’t just in the AI technology itself, but in understanding how that technology can best serve people. By combining our deep industry knowledge with powerful platforms like ERPx and our commitment to upskilling our own teams, we’re not just building AI tools; we’re building a future where work feels more human, more strategic, and ultimately, more valuable.
