> OpenERP is good for 10-200 people organizations with 50 being the sweet spot. > Do you care to explain why it would not be good in larger organizations?
Well this is a long story. And of course their are exceptions. I know Axelor or Smile put OpenERP in larger firms, but generally not the the primary ERP, but rather as a helpdesk, a stock management system... I'll try to give you some clues why it doesn't fit yet in larger firms as the main ERP: - you would expect specific features open source ERP's doesn't have yet, like better budget planning, better stock accounting, better sale prevision... Open source ERP's are something relatively new, they started with the basic and are getting more and more features, but exotic features are not yet very mature because open source stuggle for funding. But that's OK to smaller firms as they won't have those feature in mid size generic ERP's anyway. At least OpenERP let them developp at a reasonable cost what will miss for them. - as a large company, you probably have the cash to pay some of those very expensive ERP's that come feature complete, but that cost too much for being reasonable to mid size companies. - you might have tons of data/ERP users which might require an ERP that is proven to handle the performance. SAP and co would invest dozens of millions in doing preliminary studies and test; while open source are more trial and error even if some smart people are given the opportunity to advise the design. - Because you likely have a large SI, you might require to connect to a tons of legacy standards, ESB bus, EDI messages and proprieritary protocols of third party tools. Open source ERP's don't have them, and that will be often very unlikely they happen to support the deprecated legacy protocols, mainly because license incompatibilities prevent them from sharing the costs collectively here (GPL is viral). - you might want a large reliable integrator. Bare in mind that OpenERP is relatively new, so are integrators: small and relatively new, even with plenty of jokers that will say they will integrate your ERP's in less than 4 days, just because they've never done it yet... Your integration will depend very much of the skills of the integrator you found, good integrators can be counted on your fingers, you won't be able to switch people. On the integrator point of view it translates to the market is not mature enough to attract the right skills, and because of the immaturity of the product, you have to be very skilled both in ERP, but also very much in coding, open source processes, English... You actually need to have much more skills then the average SAP consultant, but the market won't reward it. So currently only people that see it as a valuable investment work with it... - Finally, in large firms, direction seat are usually more comfortable. Decision makers will fail their ERP projects. Oh yes they will fail, but they will just fail yet on more SAP or alike project. Meaning, 5 years layer when the SI will be evaluated as expensive an archaic dead end, they won't be hold responsible, they will so something else eventually. Too few people understand computer science and software engineering long term costs enough to hold them responsible... So no one will play dies with their seat to tryout an open source ERP. Because on the contrary, if they fail with an exotic product, they will be hold responsible. On the contrary, decision makers of smaller companies are often much more interested (often because they are associate), in the 5 years term of their company, so they might do anything it takes to avoid failing their ERP, even choosing open source. - Finally, that's a corollary, large proprietary ERP firms give you somebody to sue when you'll fail (but the hidden catch is they have good lawyers too). Nobody could ask any money to Tiny or an integrator if they fail their OpenERP project. At the some point, the open source ERP's are too new for the insurance system. Well, there are tons of others reasons, you might also like to read http://sevenlakessoftware.com/information/COERPCourse/ a satirical view why proprietary ERP's fit better. ------------------------ Raphaël Valyi CEO and OpenERP consultant at http://www.akretion.com -------------------- m2f -------------------- -- http://www.openobject.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=49226#49226 -------------------- m2f --------------------
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