By Andy Scott • Managing Director
Ach – we’ll do it ourselves…
How often have you heard company leaders say that they have had a very cost-effective, timely, and successful implementation of an end-to-end business system? And then added that they did it all themselves….
Well, at Calibrate we see many companies decide to go-it alone, sometimes using in-house technical services and project management; sometimes adding an outsourced development individual from places like "Cheapdevski".
Odoo is an extraordinary solution for small to medium businesses (SMEs) – it automates pretty much every business process from a single database, and costs buttons. It has over eighty modules, providing way more than any single entity would need, you just pick what is important to you and take it from there.
This morning we had a call from a company that subscribed to the Odoo Enterprise ERP solution in December, with the intention of implementing it themselves.
Now the December subscribers picked their moment well – they are timber providers. The winter storms in Scotland tore down fences and timber demand rocketed. Approaching the end of March, and no progress on the Odoo project...hang on, why don't we phone Calibrate, that is what they specialise in.
On the other hand, we met with a sole-trader printer at a recent networking event, and when he saw us, he remembered everything Odoo does, cancelled all his subscriptions, and launched his Odoo journey. At this time, he could not afford Calibrate’s implementation and support services, so he built his website, set up his sales process for all his products and services, and automated his marketing and emailing process with Odoo. He hit one or two snags, but came to us for help. He subscribed through Calibrate, so we quickly sorted his issues, and now he is delivering his Odoo powered solution to potential clients.
Medium and larger-sized companies are increasingly realising the benefits of Odoo, and often, when they have their own systems resources, they either work with Odoo directly, or try and do it themselves. If you are addressing a single pain point process, then it is doable, it will take you ten times longer, but you will get there. If it is a wider implementation, then be warned – there are more ways of doing things in Odoo than there are things! A good partner will have experience of many projects, and many different ways of addressing the same processes. We have seen companies buy in external developers to develop what are standard features in Odoo, because they didn’t choose the correct standard route - working with a trusted Odoo partner.
They will look for help eventually, and these companies make up half of our customer base. We meet with them, and they share their successes and frustrations; the areas they need help with and the things they want to keep. We review their instance and sometimes find there are multiple customisations done at different times, by different people, and often they don’t know why they were done. If undoing what has been done incorrectly is going to take too long, then we create a new instance on the latest version, and configure to the requirements they have and simply load in the data.
Some clients come to us with specific requirements, like Accounting for example. We have experienced and qualified accountants in our team that know how Odoo meets their HMRC filing needs, management accounts, budgeting, analytics, forecasting and reporting. When we help them, they generally sign up for our Helpdesk service, and we engage on further rollout.
If you use Odoo or are thinking about it, contact us if you think we can be of assistance. If we can we are always happy to help!