Open ERP - anyone using it?

[vad.ch]

Hi guys, I recently discovered OpenERP and currently I am playing with it - so far I am very pleased. its quite difficult to install/configure, but by the looks of it, its a very powerful solution. I am yet to finish the setup of it for a company now, but it seems it does support multiple ledgers and I although I havent deployed SAP before, I have a feeling it fares quite well against it. and the best part of it for me is:
- Free
- Integrated CRM
- stock/purchasing control
- multi-currency
- installs on both - linux and windows

the software has hundreds of available free modules, such as manufacturing, project management, servicing etc, yet I dont need them in this setup.

Either way, would be great to hear if anyone is using this and how are you finding it?

 

[blloyd]

Hi Vadim,

We are a company specialising in OpenERP here in the UK. As you have correctly pointed out, the platform is excellent with some great add-ons but we too noticed that there were a number of tweaks required to make the system more user friendly.

We have therefore taken the OpenERP system and heavily customised it for use by UK businesses; the revised product is called junariCRM. Please feel free to drop me a line if you would like to see what we have achieved or post any questions you might have on the junariCRM Community Forum.

And also as pointed out, the junariCRM software licensing is free

Regards,

B Lloyd
IT Consultant
Junari Ltd

 

[vad.ch]

Hi blloyd, great to hear - I would definitely be interested in having a play around with what you have done. Have you disabled all other functions - stock, accounting etc?
Would be a good idea to collaborate on this as I worked out an efficient way of VAT reporting EC sales and purchases reporting.

 

[blloyd]

Hi Vadim,

I have sent you a PM.

 

[mishmosh]

Can you give us a rough idea of which ways you customised it? I recently installed openerp but I'm moving away from it as it seems it's going to take ages to implement. I can see it could become the wordpress of the ERP world though.

 

[mishmosh]

blloyd, could you run through how you've tweaked it? It does seem that the openerp system has a huge amount of potential although I have to admit to being slightly flummoxed by it after a day of messing about with it!

 

[blloyd]

Hi mishmosh,

The initial download of OpenERP is quite unfriendly with some of the labelling and terms used being unintuitive. The tweaks mentioned are not hugely complicated for programmers but may be beyond an end user.

If you want to know more about what we have done, drop me a message via our website so we can discuss further.

Speak Soon!

 

[garyk]

The issue with an open source ERP is support. All the big commercial offerings have a large reseller network so if something happens to one reseller another one can pick it up. I work with ERP systems and the companies are way too large to consider open source as support is crucial.

 

[blloyd]

Gary,

Although your concerns are fairly common, they are also fairly unfounded when dealing with a product as popular and prevalent as OpenERP. It is highly unlikely that companies such as French Poste or the Swiss government would use the product if they had concerns as to support and maintenance. OpenERP has a global network of "resellers" who can pick up from each other as and when required making it an ideal candidate for use in any organisation.

 

[Carsie]

I hadn't realised that Ben from Junari was on here. I specialise in business management and business process improvement, hence I often get involved in ERP Projects.

Last year one of my Clients needed MS SBS2008 support and an ERP software implimentation.Through a former contact I was introduced to Ben and can whole heartedly recommend him- he certainly know's his stuff

Needless to say I have no commercial connections or otherwise.

Hope you're keeping well Ben!

Mike

 

[blloyd]

Thanks for the endorsement Mike! I too did not realise you were a member here. Small world eh?

I trust you are also keeping well!

 

[vad.ch]

The issue with an open source ERP is support. All the big commercial offerings have a large reseller network so if something happens to one reseller another one can pick it up. I work with ERP systems and the companies are way too large to consider open source as support is crucial.

Since the initial post I actually attended a conference organised by OpenERP, so now I am in position to comment on the above -

OpenERP although opensource, does not have open free support. They offer maintenance and paid support to those who need it.
Same is for Pentaho BI - you can get an enterprise licence, so you get a SLA with all the support you need.
But you are right garyk - without the support no way a serious organisation would consider any business system.

For those that are interested in a UK customisation, I have an almost complete chart of accounts that uses same codes as sage as well as the UK VAT codes.

 

[garyk]

Gary,

Although your concerns are fairly common, they are also fairly unfounded when dealing with a product as popular and prevalent as OpenERP. It is highly unlikely that companies such as French Poste or the Swiss government would use the product if they had concerns as to support and maintenance. OpenERP has a global network of "resellers" who can pick up from each other as and when required making it an ideal candidate for use in any organisation.

Sorry they are not unfounded they are based on real life *experience* not theory. The last 18 month project I have just finished on the company turns over £325 million, the one before that was a private/public sector company turning over close to £2 billion, they would never ever ever consider using open source regardless of what our friends in europe may or may not be doing.

Gary

 

[blloyd]

Sorry they are not unfounded they are based on real life *experience* not theory. The last 18 month project I have just finished on the company turns over £325 million, the one before that was a private/public sector company turning over close to £2 billion, they would never ever ever consider using open source regardless of what our friends in europe may or may not be doing.

Gary

Yes I suppose you're right Gary. La Poste only had a turnover of €2.2 billion in 2009 and Atlas Copco return a meagre £1 billion (profit). Whirpool are also a laughably small bit-part player on the world stage I imagine....

Horses for courses, as they say.

 

[Tom McClelland]

Aare you claiming that those organisations use OpenERP as their principal system? I ask because I worked for a company that used to advertise Lloyd's Bank in its client list amongst other blue chip clients. But what it was actually supplying was a small system to an employee social club on one site. And it was the same kind of thing for the other blue chip clients.

 

[blloyd]

Have re-checked for you. Atlas Copco run their supplier portal on OpenERP with a 105,000 item inventory. La Poste on the other hand report a 300,000 user base of the CRM functions provided in the platform.

Hope this helps!

 

[vad.ch]

Speaking generally, not just about OpenERP but Open Source projects, I can say that in the past 5 years they have greatly evolved and even OpenOffice that in the past I never liked, now I am seeing it even very suitable for business use.

Businesses that say NO to opensource are missing a lot for sure. I am not saying that all businesses should adopt opensource, but at least have their options open.

Another very good example of that is Pentaho Business Intelligence that a lot of well known organisations have adopted it, and the list that also agreed to be 'named and shamed' can be found here - http://www.pentaho.com/about/customers/

I used Pentaho to design a few OLAP cubes and reports feeding from the OpenERP database and the platform feels very solid and mature. After discovering this, I would be very unlikely to consider paying what is being asked for Crystal Reports/Business Objects.

 

[blloyd]

I am not saying that all businesses should adopt opensource, but at least have their options open.

I think this is the key to the issue and probably the best piece of advice in this thread. Although Junari sell a product based on OpenERP we always strongly recommend that clients do their requirements and business process analysis before looking at platforms (like in this blog article). Similarly if we felt that junariCRM was not suitable for a clients' needs, we wouldn't recommend it.

 

[colinmacmillan]

I want to provide an update to this post since it is a bit out of date now.

OpenERP have released version 6 at the start of 2011 which included a big overhaul of the accounting module. This means it is really ready for UK companies using the Accounting module, in addition to the many other modules it has - CRM, HR, Projects, Sales Management, Purchase Management, Stock, Manufacturing.

It now has well put together modules for UK accounting including reporting and VAT 100 filings.

Functionality includes: debtors/creditors, VAT management, Invoicing/statements, emailing invoices, stock, purchase orders, multi-user, multi-company, multi-currency, statutory reporting, automatic reconciliation, bank statement reconciliation.

The above is a basic overview.

Kind regards,
Colin MacMillan
Director - Publicus Solutions Ltd.

 

[garyk]

What does it perform like on a locally installed instance?

I just ran the demo on the OpenERP site, too slow to be usable. And it doesn't render properly on IE (still the choice of browser for most corporates).

Gary

 

[colinmacmillan]

What does it perform like on a locally installed instance?

Hi Gary, There are two options to connect to an OpenERP system. You can use the desktop client (also called the GTK client), or the web interface. Any browser can access the web interface.

Over a network the GTK client is very fast.

What sort of OS do you use ... Windows or Linux? There is an 'all-in-one' installer for Windows that you can install on your desktop and test.

Give this a try.

 

[sasiku]

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