The Adempiere Show - Meeting the ERPs and talking to them

In order to find solutions to my problems described in previous post, I have gone out to google to ask what to do.

I have googled, downloaded and evalualted a few ERP:

1-) Compiere:
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Very active community but two problems:

• Oracle database, which requires license.
• The belgian or Algerian chart of accounts, which are of particular interest to me are not on open source. Audaxis the distributor of Compiere in Belgium does not even offer the belgian chart of accounts in its translation version, but the french one. God knows why! As for Algerian chart of accounts, there is no trace of localization there.
• It's developed in JAVA, which I hardly know.
• It seems there is lot of effort to invest to make it work.

The good things are:

• Extensive knowledge base through sourceforge forum;
• Some documents in bits and pieces on red1.org and other blogs;
• Helpful and reactive community;
• Quite mature product. Just don't count on it's web interface, which hardly works.

I have also found some other interesting solutions:

2-) TinyERP

An interesting belgian team is pushing this impressive software developed by pure Open source (Python, PostgreSQL, GTK )

Advantages:

• Looks mature and a serious team eager to make it the best product in the world;
• Seems more adapted to small structures. Modular approach. Only activate modules you're interested in;
• Easy database structure;
• Supports belgian chart of accounts. YESSS !
• Team is available in belgium. Not expensive support;
• Team & project with no doubt lot of future;

Drawbacks:

• No web-based component;
• There is no advanced analytical components in accountancy (version 3.1.3, I heared 4.0.0 wil be better);
• There is no cash flow statement;
• Forum is not very active as in other large open source projects;
• Current forum posts don't answer to issues I have written yet. It seems it needs more time;
• I don't know much about Python;
• No concept of multi-companies (will be supported as of 4.0.0 I heard, check www.tinyerp.com);

So, I have decided to look at next one:

OpenBravo :

The speed of the demo version of the OpenBravo website is impressively fast. I have downloaded it after assesing it was worth downloading.

Advantages:

• Totally web-based;
• Based on Compiere, any effort in Compiere is probably a gain in OpenBravo;

Nice website ==> Company with some means. I had read they raised 6 million Euro for their project;

• Looks more open than Compiere ==> PostgreSQL supported. Migration scripts availabe on the web, ...etc;
• Active enough community: I have posted some messages and got a few answers after few days still not bad;

Drawbacks:

• I didn't really find a particular drawback. It is definitely a software worth investigating;
• I'd probably say, forum is not very wealthy to help me progress with my background. If I had some good JAVA, I'd definitely take it.

OfBiz:

A friend of mine mentioned OfBiz as it is a full web interface, translated into french. Fully customizable. He even says that we can build business modules in hours from it. I never had time to evaluate this, but I'd definitely write something about it on my blog as it comes along.

SQL-LEDGER:

SQL-Ledger is not bad at all. Fully web-based. Very advanced features of putting multiple entities. Pretty fast, easy to download and install.

Advantages:

• Fully web based;
• Quite stable/mature product;
• Has got interesting components around it (POS, palm software synch, ...etc);
• Multi entities;
• There is a distributor of this in Belgium www.think-wize;

Drawbacks:

• No workflow;
• Accountancy is not fully implemented for Belgian localization;
• Developed in Perl, which is not difficult but I don't know;

I'll stop the evaluation experience here. I have evaluated a lot more solutions, among which are commercial software such as www.bobsoftware.com, www.winbooks.be , www.phpcompta.be , www.ciel.be and so on.

CONCLUSION

All this evaluations one to the other is like being single searching for the perfect match. You keep meeting and dating women and you find good and bad things about each of them, which is subjective.

At one point, if you're lucky you will find the woman of your life. Alternately, you will guess this does not exist and you have to make it happen along with time (customization).

My conclusion after all this time learning about ERPs is:

• You don't know what you want yet. Please focus on your requirements and put them in paper;
• You have a heart feeling for Compiere. No objective reason, but feel I want to learn it better and meet its people;
• Compiere is definitely the model out there from which most other applications inspire, if you learn Compiere, you will understand all others;
• My business is definitely not big enough to justify such big time investment. But it's fun and passionate to learn it;

Note: You will note that judgements of these software only applies to my particular case. In specific business case, other solutions maybe alternately better.

Next step then is, DEFINE YOUR REQUIREMENTS. Steven Covey says :

Understand before being understood!