Businesses have to manage a lot, including pricing, product planning, accounting and finance, managing payroll, dealing with purchasing, inventory, production, logistics and much more.
Stitching together disparate software tools to handle those jobs isn’t scalable and it’s difficult to efficiently move information and report on data between the various systems.
Growing businesses eventually implement an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that includes all these capabilities.
Open source ERP is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system whose source code is publicly available. Open source ERPs are attractive to small to mid-sized tech-savvy businesses that want to support or customize their ERP systems themselves, without paying large licensing and support fees to big vendors such as SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle whose offerings are incredibly comprehensive, but can also be expensive. The downside is, you usually don’t have the same depth of experts to rely on. There are a number of flexible, feature-rich, and cost-effective open source ERP systems.
If your business can’t afford a big implementation, or your needs are simple, then consider open source ERP alternatives. Here are 3 to consider:
Odoo is an integrated suite of applications that includes modules for project management, CRM, billing, accounting, inventory management, manufacturing, and purchasing. Those modules can communicate with each other to efficiently and seamlessly exchange information.
You can give Odoo a try before you decide to sign up. The Community version is free and The Enterprise version has proprietary extra features and services. Odoo is available for both on-premise and ready to use SaaS environment. Subscriptions to individual modules cost $20 (USD) a month for each. You can also download it or grab the source code from GitHub.
ApacheOFBiz has been a top-level Apache project for a decade. Modules are available for accounting, manufacturing, HR, inventory management, catalog management, CRM, and e-commerce.
You can test out its e-commerce web store and backend ERP applications on its demo page and learn more at their You Tube Channel.
Dolibarr ERP & CRM is an open source, free ERP software package that includes multi-language and multi-currency capability.
You can sign up for a free hosted, fully featured, 15-day trial with full admin capability.
Do the homework required to select the right ERP system that suits your needs. More features doesn’t always mean better, but needs will increase as your business grows, so you’ll want an ERP system that can expand with additional modules, plugins and add-ons.
Finally, you’ll want to make sure the application has good documentation and support in the form of paid support or an active user community.
Contact us if you need any help with ERP system selection.