What is OpenERP? Open Source ERP Software Explained

Let's look at the OpenERP open source license, implementation choices and the different business applications offered in the suite.

Belgium-based OpenERP provides an open source suite of ERP business applications. It follows a typical commercial open source business model where the fully-featured applications are available free through a community-supported version; however no warranties or support for the software is available from the company.

If you choose the Enterprise or Online versions your business can obtain support for the software in addition to migration and maintenance, on a per-user, per-month subscription basis.

While not necessarily encouraged, OpenERP does include a provision in the OpenERP Enterprise license that allows customers to make private OpenERP modules when they need to.

• Recommended reading: For a review of OpenERP's CRM module, see OpenERP Review: The Online CRM Module.

What can I do with OpenERP?

OpenERP is a full suite of business software, including the following modules:

Accounting: Record your operations in a few clicks and manage all your financial activities in one place.

Application Builder:  The OpenERP application builder lets you customize every module of OpenERP directly from the web interface without any development required.

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CRM: Track leads and opportunities customized your sales cycle, controls statistics and forecasts and marketing campaign automation to improve your sales performance.

Human Resources:  The module is for personnel information management, leave, time tracking, attendance‚ expenses, payroll, periodic evaluations and recruitment.

Invoicing: Create and supervise your entire supplier and customer invoices.

Manufacturing: Plan and control your supply chain through different applications in the Manufacturing module.

Marketing: Marketing campaigns can help you automate email and email sending, qualify leads and encourage customers to contact the right department.

Point of Sale: The OpenERP touchscreen point of sale allows you to manage your shop sales. It's fully web-based so you don't need to install or deploy any software.

Project Management: Keep track and manage your projects using tasks for short term project execution or plan phases for long term planning.

Purchase: Create and track your purchase orders, manage your suppliers' info, control your products reception process and check suppliers' invoices.

Warehouse Management: An inventory management system to easily manage complex needs: tracking stocks of suppliers/customers, full traceability, accounting links, and more. OpenERP supports multi-warehouse management based on hierarchical locational structure.

Because OpenERP is open source and backed by a large community, you can take advantage of more than 700 OpenERP modules on the OpenERP Apps website. These applications extend functionality of the ERP software and provide more business apps for things like manufacturing, localization, project management and more.

The other benefit to users is that you do not need to use all the business apps. You can choose only the modules that you need for your business from the suite (e.g. just CRM or CRM and invoicing). This keeps your OpenERP tidy and less overwhelming if you do not need all the business apps. You can add additional modules (at no cost) as you need them.

 

OpenERP Versions:  Free, Supported, Hosted or On-Premise Business Apps

 

OpenERP is made available through three different versions. The OpenERP software is free, but enterprise and hosted versions are fee-based.  OpenERP Enterprise and OpenERP Community are exactly the same product, only the user pays for the additional services being offered by the OpenERP Team, not for the software.

· OpenERP Community: (AGPL license) Open source OpenERP software (with all features) with no warranties. With this version you rely on community-based support only and migrations, bug fixes and private ERP modules are not allowed.  Price: Free

· OpenERP Enterprise: (AGPL or AGPL plus Private Use) Open source OpenERP as production-ready management software. The Enterprise version is fully supported by the OpenERP Team and includes unlimited migrations, bug fixes, private modules and security alerts. OpenERP Enterprise version is on-premises software that you host yourself (Linux or Windows operating systems). Price: €165 per month for 1 to 10 users, up to €15,500 for 70 to 150 users.

· OpenERP Online: Similar to the services offered in the enterprise version with the exception of no private modules or community modules, and it is hosted and maintained by OpenERP. Price: €39 per user per month. Free 30-day trial available.

Courtesy : EnterPriseAPPSToday
Author : Vangie Beal

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