Choosing the Right Open Source ERP/CRM Solutions

With lots of Open Source ERP and CRM solutions available today, deciding on the best one for you seems difficult. Here we discuss a few ERP and CRM solutions to help you choose the right one

Saturday, May 01, 2010

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People used to be apprehensive with open source solutions as they felt they were complex. However, this is not exactly true. Open source solutions are not just confined to Linux platforms, there are solutions available for Windows platform as well, which are very simple to install and get started with in a wizard based format. And when you contemplate about implementing ERP or CRM solutions for your organizations, you can very much consider open source solutions rather than going for expensive proprietary solutions. If you are clear about the organizational business processes and how you want to define or chart out those with ERP solutions, then you can give an open source solution a try. Today's open source ERP or CRM solutions offer almost all the functionalities for every organizational function that any proprietary solution would offer.

Even though the total cost of implementing open source solutions is comparatively lower than their commercial counterparts, this is not the primary reason for the growing popularity of open source solutions. Open Source brings in freely available code base as a starting point. And this is what enterprises are keen on because it offers them the opportunity to customize the solution as per their needs. A packaged solution, even if it follows the best practices, cannot facilitate every organization's needs and requirements. So, selecting the right ERP or CRM software for your organization will boost productivity, bring down costs, improve operational excellence and ensure customer satisfaction. But, always choose a solution that offers features which will address all your requirements rather than one which is perceived to be the best amongst the lots.

The home page of CRM module displays the day's agenda for the user and also lists pending activities for different projects and leads.

Opentaps ERP+CRM solution
Opentaps is an integrated ERP and CRM suite that offers modules to cover the majority of an organization's processes and functions. The Opentaps suite is based on Apache's OFBiz project and is designed to tap the full power of OFBiz framework for offering feature-rich, out of the box ERP and CRM solutions. The modules that are offered can handle everything from leads, order management, and customer service to purchasing, production planning, inventory management, and manufacturing, to shipping and accounting. Opentaps also integrates e-commerce and point of sale solutions. The solution has integrated support for logistics partners like DHL, UPS and even PayPal. And as more and more organizations are focusing to automate their field workforce, there is an integrated mobile application to support that. Through the mobile application the organization's field workforce can access and enter data while they are on their field rounds. All these features make Opentaps and ideal solution for retail businesses.

Opentaps is primarily developed in Java by a US based company called Open Source Strategies. The company provides the closed source customization and official support, which can be availed with the commercial license. The free version of the solution can be used by organizations to customize it themselves as per their needs. Unlike other Open Source solutions which offer documentation only to paid customers, or are hardly documented in some cases, this Opentaps Open Source solution is very well documented and has an active developer community behind it. The solution can be accessed through a browser, but the Opentaps server needs to be installed on a server, either Windows or Linux based, so that it can be used in a distributed environment on Internet or Intranet.

The analytics feature of Opentaps shows reports in graphical format in dashboard view, while 'Reports' option lists different reports that a user can choose from.

Features and installation
Opentaps has strong foundation based on Enterprise Java J2EE and is domain driven architecture that embraces object oriented development model with Hibernate persistence and Spring framework, which keeps all the modules within Service Oriented Architecture. This architecture allows the system to be easily integrated with other ERP or CRM solutions. Organizations can use any module of Opentaps ERP+CRM solution and integrate it with their existing ERP's solution and use it's GUI. This eliminates the employees to be retrained for newer interfaces. This solution offers a rich AJAX based user interface and is compatible with Open Source as well as commercial databases. It can be integrated with various databases ranging from MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. The solution incorporates Opentaps analytics, which is a set of tools that provide you with reports and dashboards to understand about your products, customers and employees and help taking in more informed business decisions. It incorporates JasperReports reporting tools, so that you can design and customize your reports with iReport report designer.

Coming to installation, as Opentaps is completely Java based, you need to have Sun Java SDK installed as a prerequisite. And also ensure that you have specified the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the directory where Java SDK is installed. Opentaps is available for download from sourceforge.net or from the official

website -www.opentaps.org. It is an archived directory containing all the modules, web server, databases and batch commands to initiate the server. In case you are deploying on Windows platform, then you should keep in mind not to use a directory name that has spaces in it, for instance “Documents and Settings” or “Program Files”. So, extract the contents of the archived file into a directory named something like c:\opentaps. For this demo we are using Opentaps on Windows platform.

Now, open command prompt and go to the directory where you have extracted Opentaps and the batch file “startofbiz.bat” to start the Opentaps ERP+CRM server. As the Opentaps server starts in the terminal, it will access various ports, therefore when prompted by Windows Firewall allow the server to access the ports. Now to access the server, open a browser window and direct it to address: http://localhost:8080/opentaps. You'll be greeted with Opentaps login screen. The default administrator username is “admin” and password is “ofbiz”.

Exploring Opentaps
On successful login, you get different buttons for different modules like financial, CRM, purchasing, warehouse, HR and even for online commerce. If you go into CRM module, you can see your day's agenda and then can create new leads, accounts, contacts, sales details etc. into the system. There are tabs available to see forecasts and reports as well. The interface allows you to export contacts or opportunity details as an Excel file. But to import your existing contacts into the system's database, you have to initiate a “dataimport” module that can be found in hot-deploy directory of Opentaps installation folder. This is an inconvenience since any organization would be having an existing customer data with them to be imported into the new system.

Business Intelligence and Analytics, as discussed earlier, is a major feature of Opentaps which provide detailed reports that can be customized, and also dashboards that can be modified by each user. Since, there is a mobile interface available for the system. Users can login to the mobile interface from the browsers of their smartphones. The interface is optimized for small screen and provides the functionality to add new contacts, opportunities and other sales related information for the sales personnel.

As, this solution is suitable for retail industry, there is warehouse module through which inventory, shipping and manufacturing activities can be streamlined and monitored effectively. Since, there is online commerce module also available, you can create catalogs of your products and services. The web interface of the online commerce site is intuitive and products are displayed in categorized manner and the shopping cart is also easy to navigate and understand. But the interface is best viewed in IE and Firefox browsers, and not in Chrome as the alignment tends to become disoriented.

In all, the solution has good features for a retail company to implement, though it can be implemented by any other industry vertical as well. The solution is Java based, so a little sluggish at times if compared to other PHP based solutions, but is more robust and secure which is Java's main strength.

vtiger CRM

This is an Open Source Web-based 'CRM' software. It is a complete package for your business needs and is developed over Sugar CRM. Targeting enterprises, this solution has a rich set of features and functions. With its user-friendly setup process and an intuitive user interface, the tool helps in enhancing productivity as everything can be simply done by just a few clicks. The focus is not only limited to sales, it includes features such as market automation, analysis and reporting, accounts & more. This Web-based CRM helps enterprises in understanding their customers and internal processes through a proper work flow. It helps in building rapport with customers by organizing data. It supports employees in sales, marketing, customer support & services, etc.

The latest version of vtiger includes features like sales force & marketing automation, inventory management & a lot more. The latest build also includes plugin for MS Outlook & Office and the integration of Thunderbird. Let's take a look at some of its features.

Sales force automation: SFA, being one of the key players of the CRM field, supports sales team & their processes. Some of the activities needed by the sales team include sales pipeline management, lead management, opportunity management, sales analytics & forecasting, etc.

The main homepage of vtiger CRM. You can simply edit/modify and do changes in settings just by clicking on tabs. You can also initiate chat simply through the main screen.

Lead & opportunity management: Lead management is a term used in business circles to describe ways, methods, systems that help in generating new leads. New leads define generating potential clientele that helps in increasing business opportunities. It also helps in building rapport with the business clientele. Talking about vtiger CRM lead management, this feature helps in managing leads, and creating and converting them. vtiger also allows you to capture leads from websites, based on the enterprise requirement customizing online lead forms, lead conversion mapping & more.

Talking about opportunity management, which is another function of sales, it includes features such as end-to-end tracking of sales opportunities, generating invoices and sales order, and opportunity reports, etc.

Integration of MS Outlook & Office with vtiger CRM:In some enterprises, use of email services play a vital role in building relations with the customers. But as the business continues to grow more, managing customer relationships sometimes becomes difficult. Hence enterprises look for more decent CRM solutions. In fact most of the CRM solutions that come with the integration of Outlook are not free. The cost goes up with more features and functions. The free and Open Source vtiger CRM allows synchronizing contacts, filtering emails, synchronizing customer calls and meetings, and adding incoming & outgoing email messages to vtiger CRM & more.

Not only this, the Thunderbird extension also allows you to import-export contacts from vtiger CRM to Thunderbird & vice-versa. With the addition of vtiger office plug-in for MS Word, You can create mail merge documents while on the move based on the vtiger database fields. The documents are based on customer data source and it allows creating documents such as mailing labels, form letters & much more.

You can activate or deactivate different modules according to your needs. It also allows you to add more users & you can easily find information about a module by just clicking on the module.

Dolibarr
Dolibarr is an Open Source project which is very simple to install and consists of different features for Enterprise Resource planning (ERP) & Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This simple web-based ERP/CRM software is built by the addition of some modules. Meant for SMBs, this tool has a lot of modules that help in managing stock, contracts, shipping, contacts management and much more. Some of the features of Dolibarr consist of stocks management, bank account management, invoices, contracts, payment management and many more. The advantage provided by this tool is that since it is a combination of both ERP/CRM and has a simple installer, there is no need to install any other packages. The installer also installs MySQL, PHP, Apache and other requirements and requires a few clicks to install. It works on the principle of S3S which states that the software must be simple to use, install and develop. For users, a lot of changes have been accompanied in the latest version of Dolibarr. Some of them are exporting commercial proposals, adding free text on bank cheque receipts, adding log tabs on emailing modules, enhancements in project modules and a lot more. Some other features include data export tools, donation management, bookmark management, synchronizing contacts with LDAP, etc.

Dolibarr also contains command line tools that in a single PDF show the concatenation of several bills. It also has support for SMTPS, functions for 'cloning' to copy invoices, commercial proposals, etc.

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