Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation is been done from past two decades and ERP systems is considered as one of the most powerful Business Management software, as it covers every department with one single software. ERP implementation is one of the biggest question arise as sometime it involve a huge timelines towards the development. An ERP implementation can be perform in Phase manner as shown in the example below.

For a typical ERP project, various phases are as follow:

• Project initiation phase :
  

ERP project beginning is one of the most important phase as in this phase, You plan on certain initiation points such as Team formation, Project planning and fine tuning of every aspects of the business. In any successful implementation there are certain skills require checking the best expertises availability for the project. It also includes Key user team, IT personnel, Project implementation group etc.

It includes the vendor team onsite for the creation of functional requirement document and understanding the business aspects & Project administration plan. Some of the expected output from these phases is the project implementation committee formation, delivery and installation of default ERP application to judge the capability.

• Development & GAP Detection Phase:
  

The second phase in ERP implementation is the development and GAP detection phase. In this phase main users and other team map the existing processes with the default functions available in the vanilla or existing ERP software. This happens with the vendor team.  Other parts include in the development phase is the Customization points identification where a separate customization document can be prepared for details.

• Software Customization Phase:
  

This phase includes the development & customization of all the Modules which will apply in the ERP system. This phase also includes the testing of the modules, unit testing based on the plans developed by the vendor. This phase can be onsite or offsite depending on the company decision

• Acceptance Testing:

Acceptance testing phase is another important part towards the implementation of ERP software. It allows you to see that the system works properly. This phase also include the creation of manuals if required. This phase helps you in quality control of the code from user perspective and technical perspective.

• Training Phase:

After acceptance testing all the end users are trained for their specific functions. For example. There will be different set of training for sales management teams, similarly for purchase, Accounts, Manufacturing etc. This training is conducted by the vendor team and again this can be online or offsite.  Another alternative provided by the vendor on training part is the “training videos” where new users can see the videos and learn on the ERP process part.

• Data migration phase:

After the user training phase the data migration phase starts where all the existing data is transferred into ERP system. This phase also include the establishment of access rights and passwords, Data conversion etc.

• Go Live:

After the final data is loaded with the user roles and hierarchy creation, the ERP system is ready to have go live position. This is the final phase where a final training might be required. And this is the phase where the users work on real time data in the ERP software.

The above points may differ from vendor perspective or ERP product perspective. An organization may use various strategies or add other phases in the above to achieve success in ERP implementation.

SME

Enterprise Resource planning – ERP software used by big organization to manage their business process and to gain competitive edge in the business area. Any ERP software is selected to streamline their internal business processes. But now the focus of an ERP software implementation is changing from big organization to small and mid sized companies or SMB’s. Previously this was not the case with SME’s as any ERP implementation required heavy investment, time, effort money and due to high risks

Today SME’s are implementing ERP  and business software to gain the advantages of a Proper enterprise resource planning tool and this is because of Open source ERP  software available in the market easily with different modules to start with. Open source ERP software is attracting small and medium sized enterprises to implement ERP solution to manage their business. Another part is lots of ERP vendors started implementing ERP solutions for SME & SMB as the market is huge.

Let’s have a look on the most powerful points where SME are opting for Open source ERP solutions for their businesses.

Costing : One of the most important factors affecting SME to opt for Open source ERP software is the cost. As Open source allows you free code and installation and the company doesn’t have to pay heavy software licence fees every year, which was one of the case with the proprietary ERP software. Hence being costing is one of the factor and Open source ERP doesn’t involve any license fees and maintenance cost.

Easy and quick implementation : As being open to the community and lots of implementation material available online it get easy to implement open source ERP  with the help of technical team, SME’s can also opt for vendor implementation options if require.

Flexible: Another important point of selecting Open source ERP  software is the flexibility and customization ability in the tool, which is very difficult with the proprietary software and that too it involves high investment for certain customization.

Freedom: Open source provides you with the freedom, freedom from the vendor locking, freedom from licensing and so on. The source code of the Open source ERP software is with the client where he can modify in further future and can take support from the vendor whenever necessary.

Training and support: The support and bug fixing gets easy as communities are open to help for the bug fixing part; also the training after the implementation is minimal as compare to the Proprietary

We have covered some of the advantages on why SME’s are opting for open source ERP software but there are disadvantages too if not selected properly. It is necessary for an SME to do a proper study of their business processes before selecting Open source ERP package accordingly. There are lots of Open source ERP software available in the market some of them are OpenERP , OpenBravo, Compiere and so on. . Normally open source ERP software are targeted to those companies whose needs are not covered by the normal ERP  software available in the market and organization whose processes are not standard

This post is specifically posted for those who are looking out for implementing OpenERP for their organization.

Time is one of the most important factors in implementing any Business software. OpenERP being Open source and modular in nature takes various timeline towards the implementation. Let’s divide the implementation strategies in various group to understand the timeline for OpenERP

OpenERP implementations with default modules available can take somewhere 2 months time again as we said it depend on business to business and case to case basis.

Another part of OpenERP implementation is the customization part – this is one part where the estimation is solely depend on the modification you want to do in the tool to match your requirements. Sometime there might be all modules you implemented need customization and sometimes there are few.

There further more features of OpenERP implementation such as creating the workflows, hierarchy, users, training, bug fixing, testing, uploading on client server, and again testing etc. considering all these points a normal OpenERP implementation minimum take 2 months of time (again as i said depending on case to case basis)

If you need a proper timeline for OpenERP implementation for your organization you can contact us on sales@bistasolutions.com

OpenERP partners if you feel there is difference in your timeline towards implementation of OpenERP kindly comment

An ERP solution today is considered as one of the most powerful transformation in IT industry and it is used by many organizations. There are many exclusive advantages of using ERP solutions for an organization one of them are proper management of your business processes.

Today online & eCommerce are rising at a higher rate as customers consider shopping online rather visiting virtual shops. Online purchasing provide many advantages to people some of them are wide range of products online available, best prices from different stores and less travel time to virtual shop.

There is not only online shops based on Magento, Prestashop platform but they also take the advantage of other online platforms for selling their products and services such as eBay.com, Amazon.com, buy.com etc. eCommerce merchant sell similar products on these multiple platform in relation to that they also use shipping services such as FedEx, UPS, USPS to name few.

Integration of Online stores with different online platforms help eCommerce vendors to manage various stores with the help on one tool; An ERP integration with these online stores with the ERP system helps the enhancement of the performance of each platform. Another significance of and ERP for ecommerce merchants they can handle same inventory for their different stores.

Also ERP system helps the ecommerce merchants to see the sales order coming and other business process such as inventory management to handle them effectively and efficiently. Any Ecommerce merchant who doesn’t have virtual stores must implement ERP system integrated with their various e stores to ease their online operations.

So as discussed in my yesterday post, below is the demo link for the OpenERP software, This will help you to play with the actual tool in a demo mode in addition to that there are list of features and modules available such as OpenERP sales management, OpenERP purchase management, OpenERP Point of sales, OpenERP Human Resrouce, OpenERP Amazon – ebay integration and much more. Do check out and let us know your valuable comments.

If you are looking out for any specific module, let us know we will try to fulfill your request either through the demo version or through online.

Check out here  - http://erp.bistasolutions.com:8080/openerp

Kindly select the Database – demo

User – admin

Password – admin