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OpenERP
Foreword
Information Systems have played an increasingly visible role over the past several years in improving the compe
tools for handling repetitive tasks, they’re used to guide and advance all of a company’s‘ daily activities. Integrated
often a key source of significant competitive advantage.
The standard response to a need for responsiveness, reliability, and rapidly increasing expectations is to create a
with a clear linear structure, integrated around your operating processes. To increase efficiency amongst salespe
everyone else you should have a common understanding of your problems.
For this you need a common language for shared references, policies and communication. An ERP (Enterprise R
ideal platform for this common reference point.
Open Source software at the service of management
Risks and integration costs are important barriers to all the advantages you gain from such systems.
companies use ERP. In addition, the larger ERP vendors such as SAP, Microsoft and Oracle haven
comprehensive cover of an ERP system with the simplicity and flexibility wanted by the users. But this is exactly
are looking for.
The development processes of open source software, and the new business models adopted by their
problems of cost and quality for this kind of enterprise software.
To make an ERP system fully available to small and medium enterprises, cost reduction is the first priority.
greatly reduce development costs by aggressive reuse of open source software libraries; to eliminate intermedia
expensive sales overhead; to cut out selling costs by free publication of the software; and to considerably reduce t
Since there is open interaction among thousands of contributors and partners working on the same project,
greatly from the scrutiny. And you can’t be everything at once: accountant, software developer, salesperson,
agricultural products, expert in the customs and habits of pharmaceutical vendors, just as a start.
Faced with these wide-ranging requirements, what could be better than a world network of partners and con
contribution according to their professional competence. Throughout this book you’ll see that the results exceed
such work is well organized.
But the real challenge of development is to make this solution simple and flexible, as well as complete.
leader and co-ordinator who can organize all of these activities. So the development team of Tiny ERP, today calle
of the organization, synchronization and coherence of the software.
And Open ERP offers great performance in all these areas!
The Open ERP Solution
Because of its modularity, collaborative developments in Open ERP have been cleanly integrated, enabling any c
available functions. As with most open source software, accessibility, flexibility, and simplicity are important keywo
shown that there’s no need to train users for several months on the system, because they can just download it and
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So you’ll find the modules for all types of needs, allowing your company to build its customized system
suitable modules. Hundreds of modules are available.
They range from specific modules like the EDI interface for agricultural products, which has been used to interface
the generic demonstration automation module for ordering sandwiches, which can take care of the eating preferen
The results are rather impressive. Open ERP (once called Tiny ERP when it started out) is management
other in the world, with over 600 downloads per day. It’s available today in 18 languages and has a world netwo
than 800 developers participate in the projects on the collaborative development system of Tiny Forge.
To our knowledge, Open ERP is the only management system which is routinely used not only by big companies b
independent companies. This diversity is an illustration of the software’s flexibility: a rather elegant coord
expectations of the software and great simplicity in its use.
And this diversity is also found in the various sectors and trades which use the software, including agricultural p
and trade associations.
Lastly, such software has arisen from the blend of high code quality, well-judged architecture and
surprised (if you’re an IT person) to find that the download size of Open ERP is only around 6 MB. When that
mostly attributable to all the official translations that are packaged with it, not the operating code. We’ve moved a l
people who could be expected to benefit from ERP were the owners of a widget factory on some remote industrial
Why this book?
Many books set out to tell readers about the management of enterprise, and equally many aim to instruct the read
software. We’re not aiming to add to those lists because our approach is intended to be different.
Having restructured and reorganized many businesses, we wanted our management experience to generate
practical. It was important for us not to write a manual about Open ERP, but instead a work that deals with advan
through these IT tools. You’ll see what management practices might be useful, what’s possible, and then how you
It’s this that we’ll consider Open ERP for: not as an end in itself but just the tool you use to put an advanced mana
Who’s it for?
Written by two CEOs who have been successful with new technologies, this book is aimed at directors
the performance of their whole company’s management team. They’re likely already to have significant responsibi
things done in their company.
It’s likely that most readers will come from small- and medium-sized enterprises (up to a few hundred staff), and
the breadth of functions that need to be analyzed and involved in change. The same principles also apply to larger
Structure of this book
Part One, First steps with Open ERP, starts with the installation of Open ERP. If you have already installed Open
steps on a guided tour in the Guided Tour chapter. If you’re already familiar with Open ERP or Tiny ERP you
chapter to find out how to create a new workflow from scratch in an empty database with nothing to distract
Customer Relationship Management chapter in the Managing Customer Relationships part, to start with details of
Part Two, Managing Customer Relationships, deals with Supplier and Customer Relationship Management (SR
necessary for managing an efficient sales department there, and automating tasks to monitor performance.
Part Three, General Accounting, is devoted to general accounting and its key role in the management of the whole
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Part Four, Effective Management of Operations, handles all the operational functions of enterprise manageme
projects, through financial analyses supplied by analytic (or cost) accounts. You’ll see how using Open ERP
an enterprise.
Part Five, Stock and Manufacturing, describes the physical movement of Stocks and their Manufacture
into other products).
Part Six, Sales and Purchasing, deals with Purchasing and Selling goods and services.
Part Seven, Process and Document Management, is focused on the Process description and Documentation hand
Finally Part Eight, System Administration and Implementation, structured in two chapters, explains first how to
then provides a methodology for implementing Open ERP in the enterprise.
Note: About the authors
Fabien Pinckaers
Fabien Pinckaers was only eighteen years old when he started his first company. Today, over ten yea
managed several new technology companies, all based on Free / Open Source software.
He originated Tiny ERP, now Open ERP, and is the director of two companies including Tiny sprl,
years he has grown the Tiny group from one to sixty-five employees without loans or external fund
He has also developed several large scale projects, such as Auction-in-Europe.com, which become th
Belgium. Even today people sell more art works there than on ebay.be.
He is also the founder of the LUG (Linux User Group) of Louvain-la-Neuve, and of several free projects like
Tiny Report. Educated as a civil engineer (polytechnic), he has won several IT prizes in Europe such as W
A fierce defender of free software in the enterprise, he is in constant demand as a conference speaker and
articles dealing with free software in the management of the enterprise.
Geoff Gardiner
Geoff has held posts as director of services and of IT systems for international companies and in m
Industrial Research Fellow at Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing where he focused on inno
He founded Seath Solutions Ltd (http://www.seathsolutions.com/) to provide services in the use of Open
Open ERP, for business management.
Author of articles and books focusing on the processes and technology of innovation, Geoff is also
Open ERP project. He holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and an MA in Engineering
Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and of the Societ
Having observed, suffered, and led process implementation projects in various organizations,
successful adoption of an effective management automation tool.
Dedication
From Geoff Gardiner
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My gratitude goes to my co-author, Fabien Pinckaers, for his vision and tenacity in developing Tiny ERP and Op
excellent work on this.
Open ERP relies on a philosophy of Open Source and on the technologies that have been developed and tuned
people. Their efforts are greatly appreciated.
Thanks also to my family for their encouragement, their tolerance and their constant presence.
From Fabien Pinckaers
I address my thanks to all of the team at Tiny for their hard work in preparing, translating and re-reading the bo
thanks to Laurence Henrion and my family for supporting me throughout all this effort.
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