Akretion’s main activity is OpenERP implementation.

we think that OpenERP is, along with Tryton (a fork of it), one of the best open source ERP’s. While totally independent, we have been paid 6 months to compare the several open source ERP’s back in early 2008 and published the most complete comparative study at the time OpenERP was clearly showing a superior potential (we also experienced one year of Openbravo partnership nonetheless) and Tryton came a bit later.

Why an ERP?

Ambitious companies need to organize their processes, avoid manual operations, record exactly what happen and provide a macroscopic view of the company performance to allow driving it more efficiently. At some point this means companies need IT.

The temptation to use a galaxy of heterogeneous systems is important. Indeed: some software, like say sugarCRM for CRM perform better in their field, are relatively cheap and never embody a very strategical choice for the company.

However, anybody experienced with that heterogeneous approach or enterprise applications in general knows its pitfall: data synchronization amongst the several application is very complex (real time/batch? transport technology? fail-safe? etc…) and will be either very bad (eg inaccurate data) or very expensive, involving a wide range of technologies like ETL’s, service bus, client technologies etc…

At some point, it’s better to have a unique data referential and this is what a true ERP is meant to be. A modern ERP is a galaxy of functional modules that use the same data referential and hence don’t require you to spend your time and money in synchronizing heterogeneous applications. Of course sometimes, it’s still handful to connect the ERP somle some external systems like an ecommerce because it’s too sophisticated to be provided by a generic ERP. In that case, their is a true art in determining the least “adherence surface” betwee the several software to determine what is better internalized in the ERP and what is better externalized outside. This is part of the expert ERP consulting we provide at Akretion.

Why an open source ERP?

Well, anybody with a proprietary ERP experience will tell you that proprietary ERP’s are really sold this way: http://sevenlakessoftware.com/information/COERPCourse/

Well, obviously there are other reasons to avoid proprietary ERP’s:

  • openness allows greater flexibility
  • open source means standard enforcement and hence greater flexibility/reliability
  • open source means peer review and cost sharing among true experts and hence better quality
  • open source means you can adapt the ERP to your innovating processes rather than bend your company to a traditional ERP
  • legacy ERP’s are very often programed in archaic technologies, meaning that development costs are totally incompatibles with SMB’s
  • no hidden costs: no user or package restriction
  • legacy ERP’s will often turn incompatible with custom developments
  • with the open source, you don’t pay for something that has been paid by somebody else already: only the real innovation has a cost
  • your fate is not tied to the fate of a editor that may bankrupt or by bought
  • no distorted sale process trying to allocate benefits among regional/sectorial integrators which don’t really compete between them
  • your are free to upgrade when you want if you want

Why OpenERP?

In that study, we identified OpenERP as the best open source ERP. Admittedly we now track Tryton, the new born fork which also have a great potential (more quality but smaller scope, no web client and smaller eco-system). You can read the study for details, but basically we identified that OpenERP is one of the very few ERP’s with an “object oriented” technology. It’s also built upon a terse and efficient modeling language: Python which has been widely adopted and promoted by Google for instance. But the technical advantages of OpenERP aren’t limited to the object technology, we can also cite:

  • extremely modular system with modules able to extend existing business objects and screens almost anywhere
  • efficient MVC made to work upon n records in O(1) or O(log n), as an extension of SQL
  • standard SQL data storage upon a normalized Postgres database
  • SOA oriented: everything can be executed remotely with webservices: this makes OpenERP incredibly easy to interconnect with other softwares
  • HTTP/HTML client
  • integrated BPM engine

The consequence of this superior designed married with an exceptionally open attitude from the editor made OpenERP a very rich eco-systems where lots of professional integrators contribute outstanding features on a daily basis. Meaning OpenERP is also the most complete and most mature system, which is what matters for our customers.

What is an OpenERP implementation?

Akretion consultants are able to perform complete OpenERP deployments: from the functional analysis up to the technical development of new modules and user training. Akretion operates both locally and remotely: see our portfolio. We are able to operate locally in the region of Sao Paulo – Rio in Brazil or close to Lyon in France. We tend to favor local projects when asked to do full implementations. However, for expert consulting or expert module development, we are used to work remotely.