ERP and CRM options

K.C.K

HI All

Immediate apologies if in the wrong thread

I am helping a friend out with sourcing some software for their small business and am somewhat bamboozled by the options available.

I gather I'm looking for a cross between a customer relationship management system and a enterprise resource planning system. As its a small business I would love to find an open source option. This is an upgrade from quotes on the back of hands job so nothing too fancy required!

Need a:
customer database
Quote generator
Account updating system
Automatic generation of invoices and update of accounts.

Am of course open to paying option either, would appreciate any help out there!
Thanks!

croo

Hi,
Do you really need ERP? I ask because it normally refers to the planning of resources needed, though I don't see that need in your functional requirements?

I work with an open source ERP project called Adempiere, but for real small companies I would normally suggested vTigerCRM [http://www.vtiger.com/]. It's a not so pretty version of sugarCRM, though unlike sugar, it allows you to define products and to move from quotes to orders & invoices without the need to move to a closed source "professional" version. It has not ERP & no accounting, but if like most small companies they simply had over a bunch of invoices & receipts to their accountant at year it does all that is needed.
It's an xAMP application so it will be easy & cheap to get it hosted; or also easy to installed on a local server.

If you do need a full blown ERP then take a look at Adempiere. But first a word of warning!
Adempiere is a true community based project, and as such it has no marketing department and spends no money of nice websites. Their main website [hhtp://www.adempiere.com] is mostly a wiki to enable the community of developers & implementors to share. And this is what sets it apart. Adempiere is used by many companies as a basis on which to create a solution for customers, then we share any additions created so the whole grows.

After saying that, it has a huge amount of functionality including the core;
Quotes-->Orders-->Customer Invoices,
Requisition-->Purchase Order-->Invoices
Inventory management; receipts, despatch & stock counting - in multiple warehouses & "locators"
Credit control & Book Keeping; Aging, Dunning & register of Receipts (i.e. money in), Payments (money out), as well as Bank Rec.
And there is lots of additional functionality including full blown ERP for manufacturing.
BUT, all this functionality comes at a cost and that is complexity.
Which is why for smaller companies I propose vTigerCRM!

Adempiere is a J2EE app with a modern ajax user interface OR a standard windows (swing) based UI. As a J2EE app it's not so easy to find a ready made & cheap host. Most install it on a local server, though with the newish webUI more and more are installing on clouds. If you want to take a quick look,
http://www.adempierecloud.com/webui/
User & P4ssw0rd are; GardenUser & GardenUser.
This is a demo implementation, used by developers, of a client called Garden World which is a kind of garden centre business. That should give you the feel for the application without needing to install it!

If neither of those option suit let me know and perhaps I can suggest some others.

K.C.K

Thanks so much for all that info Croo.

I had another look around and after furious googling came across something I felt was a decent bit relevant called open bravo. Do you know anything about this?

Having stumbled around the internet for a while I think I appreciate the question you posed about whether or not I needed an ERP or a CRM. I'm still a little unsure but think I'm leaning more ERP-ish.

Without getting too into it, my friend has an existing service business which he charges for per unit completed. However we are talking a massive amount of units over long amounts of times. The nature of his customer is quite low tech and is often cash when available. He needs to trace not only how much of their work is completed at any given time, but produce invoices on demand as well as automated monthly, and then some way of keeping accounts very live and having an active history. A good customer history (work completed, accounts paid etc) would be a massive bonus and all as low tech as possible.

vtiger looks great but a little too much on the customer data and a little lesson the financial end, and adempiere looks fab, but opposite in that its prob a little more than we need.

Really appreciate your time on this!
KC

croo

Yes I know it. OpenBravo & Adempiere both have the same source. A project called Compiere [lots of italian in there! Though OpenBravo is Spanish].

Compiere was a popular open source ERP project, but the company who controlled it refused to accept bug fixes - it is assumed because this would pollute their copyright control. Now most people would think, "I don't care about all that I just want to use the app!". But, it is important when selecting an open source application because it points to the potential longevity of the project and this type of application is normally an effort to implement so you don't want to be doing it too often. Compiere needed to retain control so that when needed it could dual license the application which made the company more valuable for sale which did eventually happen.

The downside of that strategy though was bug fixes didn't happen so quality suffered. Another was it didn't move forward enough and one aspect that suffered from the Compiere approach was the web based user interface; it existed but was not very usable in reality. OpenBravo saw the potential of Compiere so took its core and wrapped it in a new web UI. Under the skin though it is still Compiere - much like Adempiere.

Adempiere was simply the community that had developed around Compiere deciding that it was tired making the same bug fixes again and again with each release. So they forked. There are many small but useful enhancements in Adempiere plus some big ones like the usable web UI.

My issue with OpenBravo is that it is much like Compiere and will most probably suffer the same faith. Besides their nice UI I don't believe they made as much progress as Adempiere - they do have a nice POS but again they just "bought" another open source project called tinaPOS the design and style of the code is completely different still.

The common denominator in all these projects is something called the "Application Dictionary". It was the gem in the Compiere design and is in essence the application. A huge amount of the application can be customised simply by changing its definition in the Application Dictionary. This also means much of it can be removed or hidden to simplify the application.

All of the above can sell a "Service" product. They can all also sell a "Resource" product which is a Service with a limited availability (a person's time or room in a hotel say - at any given time they can only be used by 1 customer).

You'd create a Sales Order with the Service product (products can have different Units of measure) and then delivery & invoice that "service".

Later when you receive payment you can allocate it to specific delivery(-ies) and produce dunning and a statement of outstanding invoices.

You can make deliveries and then consolidate those into one invoice.... this can be scheduled on a say a monthly basis.

You can create different types of Sales Orders and one type is a POS Order which means from the Sales Order entry it will auto create the Delivery, Invoice & Payment ... when you print this it will print an Invoice.

So I think from what you've said any of the above can meet your needs.

croo

PS. I hadn't looked in a long time, but you are the second person in the last week to express a preference for the OpenBravo UI, so I had a quick look yesterday. I must say it is a nice new UI they have created. Once you get past that I see it is pretty much the same app underneath, but I agree the initial screen does give a very good impression... looks something like OpenERP!
OpenERP is another popular FOSS ERP, but again when I looked closer I always found it lacking in functionality. Like OpenBravo I have not looked close in a few years so perhaps it has changed too.

One project that I always had a lot of time for and whose functionality is excellent is Apache's "Open for Business" or OfBiz. Until recent years it was a great foundation for solutions developers to build upon but not much for a user to look at, but it do has had a UI revamp with the introduction of UI themes and this has made a big improvement. It is worth a look too... though I can't say I remember seeing specific functionality, such as customer statements of open invoices, that looks important for you.
They too have a demo @ https://demo-trunk.ofbiz.apache.org/catalog/control/setSessionLocale?newLocale=en_IE