Is the amount of money you put in buying and maintaining your enterprise technology equal to the capability the system provides? If not, what is most competitive alternative that can exceed your enterprise expectations with surprising affordability? For most CIOs exposed to the two worlds of enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs), that is, the proprietary and Open Source worlds, the answer is everyone’s guess.
In the last ten years, the up take of open source ERP systems around the globe has grown significantly. Systems such as A1 ERP, the feature-rich complete web based ERP; OpenERP and Open Bravo, have continued to win accolades for usefulness, value for money and user friendliness.
In the East African market alone, the use of open source ERPs such as the A1 ERP and A1 eXpress for management and planning of procurement, finance, human resource, asset management, CRM, sales and other enterprise functions has grown an overwhelming 40%, according to independent vendors market statistics.
Analysts are still not agreed as to what key factors are contributing to the immense growth in use of the open source ERPs, but one group is a sure winner: CIOs are celebrating a “value for money technology” that is offering their enterprises a dose of flexibility, innovations and scalability.
The readiness to share codes in open source ERP is providing the real flexibility enterprises need. Most proprieatary systems won’t do that: they will ship in expatriates and charge hefty for any modifications beyond the usual vendor customizations.
Skill and code transfer to client organizations enable information officers and other IT professional adapt the ERP system further as they wish – develop new applications and enjoin them.
To effectively harness the power of open source, you need an engineering team and an experienced business advisory group that understands the nuts-and-bolts of your business to work together.
There are four critical stages within the open source ERP life cycle strategy roll out that one needs to pay key attention to:
- Strategic planning stage
- Solution adoption
- Maintenance and upgrade
- Integration and optimization
These stages are usually divided in two phases: Phase One involves the process of product selection, requirements planning and initial adoption, covered in milestones 1 and 2.
Phase Two deals with the process of maintaining and enhancing the solution as the company moves forward after its system roll out has taken place. You get the above two phases right and you will be in the right path to unleashing the power of an ERP
Security of open source solution has been a key concern to all those targeting its use. CIO’s need not worry as with a good proffessional implemetation team open source applications have all the security features that established propriatory ERP’s such as SAP and Oracle would offer. This was one key factor the US military considered in recommeding use of open source applications by its units.
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