July 23rd, 2011
SAP ERP is by far the leading solution on the market. It’s not open source, of course, but I’ve found a very nice open source solution to a common problem in any ERP system: change notification. Data – both master data as well as transactional data – changes frequently in ERP systems by different users in the organizations. Keeping track of these changes is no simple task – it can get rather tedious to have to go through long reports , which are sometimes out-dated. And being aware of these changes is key to making smart business decisions.
NotisApp, a free, open source change notification platform (currently for SAP ERP only) aims to close the gap between master data changes and the business user. The platform connects, on one hand, to a SAP ERP server and pulls change information. It then publishes the changes to a web-based Change Portal. Once changes are published, users can subscribe to change categories (for example, by plant) and get email notification with change information. User can also search the change portal , find relevant changes by automatically-generated tags, register to RSS feed of change categories, and much more.
One of the nicest features of the NotisApp platform is that it requires minimal change to the backend SAP ERP server – only a few lines of code (in the form of a function module) are added, and that’s it! No complex development or customization is required.
Below are some screenshots of the platform. If you are using SAP ERP, I suggest you give it a shot.
Change subscription page
Change document published to change portal
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January 25th, 2011
OpenERP, the Belgium company behind one of the leading open source ERP offerings, just released it’s sixth version. According to the company’s website, it worked it worked for a year and a half on this new version, integrating several hundreds of new modules, which cover all of their different components, including a fully featured CRM, improved warehouse management and simplified accounting system. OpenERP also put a lot of emphasis on the user experience of version 6.
Having tried the free online openerp demo, you can really tell a lot of focus was put on the web UI. It is now standard across all components, runs well for me on both Chrome & Firefox without any issues, and generally, looks really professional and user friendly.
You can read OpenERP’s official announcement on the release of V6.
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December 7th, 2009
We continue our series of reviews of ERP manufacturing modules by the leading open source ERP vendors. Last time we covered Compiere’s manufacturing module, and this time we’ll review Opnebravo’s manufacturing, called Production Management.
Openbravo, similar to Compiere, provides a comprehensive manufacturing solution for discrete industries. All the usual suspects are supported – configuration of work centers, operations, machines, cost centers are all done in the manufacturing module.
In the product level, you will define your B.O.M and relevant costing. Openbravo provides a details costing mechanism, where you can load cost of just about every operation and resource used in your production run. It’s important to note that costing is a real challenge every manufacturer faces – not only in terms of functionality required from the software solution used, but also in terms of how to load different expanses to accurately reflect production costs and later calculate actual sales margins. Openbravo does a good job of providing a flexible costing framework.
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December 5th, 2009
One of the most frequently asked questions I get is “which open source ERP solution is the best”. There is no straight forward answer, but to solve this problem, I’ll try to use a very common technique – break a large problem to smaller ones. I’ll be reviewing the leading open source ERP software solutions by different modules – manufacturing, sales, accounting, e-commerce, warehouse management etc. That will make it easy for anyone looking to implement one of the review ERP systems .
We will start with reviews of the manufacturing module of Compiere, and in future posts we will cover support for manufacturing by other ERP vendors.
Compiere Manufactuting
Compiere provides a comprehensive manufacturing solutions. Basic manufacturing functionality is fully supported. Like any other ERP manufacturing solution, you first have to setup the manufacturing module, describing your shop-floor’s objects and processes. That means defining work centers, Bill Of Material, routing and costing information.
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November 19th, 2009
I’ve just finished reading the first part of Computerworld ‘The future of ERP‘ story. It’s a long article, well written, and puts several good questions on the table – is the vision of ERP, as a single, central application, managing all data as well as business transactions , dead? Did the latest economic crisis, along with the advent of disruptive technologies (cloud computing and open source ERP) made CIO re-think their entire ERP strategy?
Large enterprises, deeply invested in current SAP or Oracle implementations, despite being sunk deep to their throats in yearly maintenance fees,are not likely to abandon their multi-million dollars investment for a different solution (a SaaS ERP or an open source ERP offering), according to the story. What is happening is a change in the dynamics between the megavendors – SAP and Oracle – and their customers, as large customers are able to re-negotiate maintenance fees, which have become a sour point in the ERP vendor-customer relationship.
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November 16th, 2009
We wrote about hosted ERP systems a while back, and it’s getting more and more clear that the the ERP cloud is only getting denser. It’s evident in proprietery ERP solutions, where NetSuite, a cloud-only ERP offering is stealing customers away from traditional, on premise ERP vendors, and it’s evident in the open source ERP industry, as all major vendors are offering a hosted version of their ERP offering.
The latest addtition to the ever growing potroflio of on-demand ERP solutions is coming from Openbravo. OB now offers a cloud appliance, which is a pre-packed stack of everything you need to run Openbravo ERP, all easily deployed on pyshical hardware or virtual machines (did anyone say Amazon Web Services?).
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July 28th, 2009
Compiere, one of the leading open source ERP vendors, announced the release of a connector to the most popular on-demand CRM solution, Salesforce. The connector will provide bi-directional synchronization of data between Compiere ERP accounts, sales orders and invoices and Salesforce CRM lead tracking and other account information.
It’s always a dilemma for any ERP vendor as to how far he goes in developing his own CRM functionality. Modern CRM systems have evolved to cover almost all aspects of customer interaction (lead generation, contracts, quotations, service and support etc.), and ERP providers find it harder than ever to develop and sell their offering as “ERP & CRM” solution (Compiere’s website is titled: “Compiere Open Source ERP and CRM Business Solution”..)
The solution for most vendors is to provide a tight, out-of-the-box integration with a leading CRM provider. Compiere chose to integrate with Salesforce, but other options might have been the leading open source CRM solution, SugarCRM, or the most popular CRM application, Sieble (was acquired by Oracle a few years ago).
Compiere is not only offering its own customers a good CRM option in Salesforce, but also pitches its ERP solution as a backoffice solution to the huge Salesforce customer base.
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July 15th, 2009
ISO Implements Compiere ERP
ISO is the worlds largest standards organization, setting international standards for any imaginable industry – from high tech to oil drilling, from quality assurance to software development. Compiere, a leading open source ERP vendor, announced that ISO has selected its solution to run their daily operations.
ISO is not a manufacturer or a distributor, but rather a service company. It manages over 18,000 different standards and gets over 5,000 customer orders a month. Compiere ERP will handle mainly products and sales cycles. Great news from Compiere!
Openbravo new partner program
Openbravo announced a new partner program. If you are interested, you can become any of 4 types of partner: Registered, Certified, Gold, and Platinum. That replaced the old partner types of system integrator, ISV and VAR.
I’ve always claimed that one of the key factors to open source ERP solutions success is the partners ecosystem. Openbravo already has over 100 partners in over 40 countries, and the new program is aimed at growing the community further.
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May 21st, 2009
Open source ERP vendor Openbravo yesterday announced the release of Openbravo 2.50 – you can download it from here. From a product perspective, the most important feature of this release is Modules. Openbravo now provides the platform required to extend its ERP offering, but it’s up to the community and partners to take Openbravo to the next level of ERP by building industry solutions and other generic extensions on top of OB’s modular architecture. An extensive modules library should make OB a more attractive ERP offering and a better competition to proprietary ERP solution, by further cutting costs of implementation projects (modules cut the costs of customization).
From a service prospective, Openbravo redesigned their service offering and renamed it Openbravo Professional Subscription. OB services now target two markets – SMB and the enterprise. The main difference (other than the price , of course) is support for clustering, which is often a necessary (yet not sufficient) condition for critical information systems in the enterprise. The service repackaging lines up Openbravo with other enterprise software vendors, cutting prices and simplifying price structures in times of recession.
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May 17th, 2009
We started Open Source ERP Guru over a year ago recognizing two things: adoption of open source ERP solutions is going to grow exponentially, and a huge knowledge gap exists around these solutions. Since then, it’s been nothing but good news for the industry. Multiple vendors reported double and triple digit growth, venture money was injected and perhaps most importantly, global partners have lined up and joined forces with the different vendors to provide local implementation services to small-medium businesses.
Obviously, in parallel to the commercial success of the projects, product development have been key to the success of open source ERP offerings. Support for additional business scenarios have been developed, integration with 3rd party software and user experience have improved, and the move toward ease of customization and the development of vertical solutions put these solutions on par with their proprietary, licensed counterparts.
We often get emails from our blog visitors asking questions about a particular solution or needing advice on which open source ERP application should they use. I believe most, if not all of them are using a proprietary ERP solution and are looking to convert, from the obvious reasons.
We would like put our own knowledge around open source ERP solutions to good use, so we will be offering consulting services to companies who consider buying these solutions. Just like in proprietary ERP, it’s never question of which solutions is the best – the real question is which solutions best fits your requirements. With all the knowledge reflected in the pages of this blog, together with our experience in implementing ERP applications, we believe we could help you make a smarter decision in regards to which open source ERP solution is best for you. This is crucial not only for your success, but for the success of the entire open source ERP industry.
We will soon be adding a ’service’ section to this blog with additinal information regarding the consulting services we offer. If you are interested in more information, please contact us by email: consulting@opensourceerpguru.com.
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