Unit4 Financials by Coda Cloud: Your Future State Architecture
As on-premise users of Unit4 Financials prepare to migrate to the SaaS version, this is the ideal opportunity to optimise your architecture. From integrations through to access controls, here are some essential technical aspects that should be considered.
Make the most of change opportunity
Long before Unit4 announced that it was going completely cloud-based, a large segment of Millennium Consulting’s work already consisted of helping move customers over to the SaaS version. For us, this is very much home territory; if an issue arises linked to a migration project, it’s pretty much guaranteed that we’ve encountered it before and worked out a solution.
Ensuring data integrity, dealing with third-party integrations, formulating a backup strategy, managing the people involved against a backdrop of existing commitments, encouraging user buy-in: your Unit4 Financials by Coda cloud migration project should give you experience in these and many other areas, and these lessons can be applied to whatever further SaaS implementations your business has in store for the future.
And while theoretically doable, struggling through the process alone rarely makes good business sense. Not least, because you can end up expending considerable resources and painstakingly addressing issues that others have fixed countless times, the ROI on expert input can be highly attractive, even more so when the lessons learned can be applied to future projects.
Webservices APIs
Never underestimate the value of a fresh perspective. There are more modern ways to connect to Unit4 Financials by Coda; in some cases, the legacy connections you have won’t work. For some applications, the idea of integration with Unit4 Financials might have previously been deemed too difficult to contemplate, leaving teams to grapple with manual data lifting and shifting as a workaround. Middleware and custom scripts are in place in other cases, but these legacy fixes have become less effective as data volumes have increased over time.
There are multiple ways to connect to Unit4 Financials by Coda (Millennium Consulting’s dataBridge is one example). Migration offers the ideal opportunity to review your integrations thoroughly, identify better ways to streamline data movement between different sources, and drive operational efficiency.
Connect to the replicated database service as needed
Unit4 Financials by Coda offers a powerful Azure-based replicated database service as part of its cloud solution. This service creates a copy of your production data and places it in an optimized environment, providing you with faster, easier, and more efficient data access. While direct access to the database is not typical in SaaS products, this service ensures you can retrieve your data whenever needed, enhancing your data management capabilities without compromising security.
Adopt ‘Single Sign On’
Security is paramount and implementing single sign-on (SSO) is crucial to safeguard your organisation. With the tools and functionality at your disposal, you’re fully equipped to integrate SSO seamlessly. Our team provides the expertise needed during migration to ensure a smooth implementation. Adopting SSO not only strengthens your cyber resilience but also fosters best practices in cybersecurity across your organisation.
Use it as a catalyst for modernising the rest of your estate
Use your transition to the cloud with Coda as a catalyst to modernise your entire business. This journey provides the perfect momentum to begin migrating the rest of your infrastructure, driving efficiency and innovation across your organisation.
What next?
As an Elite Unit4 Partner with over three decades of experience in financial transformation, Millennium Consulting is uniquely placed to help you not only simplify your Unit4 Migration but also to use it as a catalyst for optimising your wider business
To see what’s possible, contact us today.
(Article written and published September 2024)