ERP for Government & NGO: Major Products & Players

Government and NGO’s require ERP software which is effective and reliable. In the past there have been many a horror story of public sector ERP disasters. Perhaps the most publicised of the past year has been the U.S. Air Force and it’s $1 billion spend on the Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) which has now been scrapped due to spiralling costs. This ERP vendor guide to the major products and vendors for government and NGO organisations will help you prevent a planning process which accepts $1 billion waste - included are CGI, Microsoft, Unit4 and Jobscope.

CGI provide a number of ERP solutions for public sector organizations and having acquired the British IT services company Logica in August 2012, has become the sixth-largest IT services provider in the world. CGI - based in Montreal, Canada - integrate ERP systems including Oracle, SAP and Maximo. The company also offers their own public sector ERP solutions - CGI Advantage™ ERP for state and local government agencies and Momentum®ERP for federal government agencies. To date, CGI have implemented over 400 government ERP systems that manage more than $700 billion. CGI’s clients include the Canadian government and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Another well-known provider of ERP for government and NGO’s is Microsoft. You may or may not have heard of them, but Microsoft provide ERP for the public sector in the form of their Microsoft Dynamics ERP software. Microsoft Dynamics AX was built specifically for the government and NGO’s and targeted to reduce overheads, increase cost savings, control, and transparency. Examples of this include the potential to manage multiyear grant funding and projects through configurable budgetary controls. Clients include the home of Microsoft, the City of Redmond, which implemented the ERP system in July 2012.

Clearly CGI and Microsoft provide large-scale solutions to government and NGO organisations but there are other ERP vendors out there that offer ERP solutions to this industry. These include Unit4 which have provided ERP solutions for individual county health services in the UK and NGO Ipas in the form of the Agresso ERP services. This successful implementation of ERP software by Unit4 is in stark contrast to a non-Unit 4, failed implementation of 2011 in which the NHS attempted to implement an ERP solution which would provide electronic health records for all citizens. This failure ultimately cost the NHS a whopping $19 billion - yet another example of why it pays to do your research into government and NGO ERP solutions.

Jobscope offers a more targeted product in the government and NGO market with the company's ERP solution designed for the government contractor manufacturing industry. Jobscope helps government contractors meet AS9100, ISO9000, and DCAA compliance requirements making it an ideal solution for this industry.