ERP Software

SME Open Source ERP

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software has traditionally been used by large corporations to integrate and automate diverse departments across the enterprise.

For a long time, smaller companies purchased individual accounting and payroll packages and then migrated to expensive ERP solutions as they grew. They did not have many options as ERP solutions were costlier and required magnitude and many employees to justify their use.

Now, with many Open Source software coming out, it is possible for SMEs to go in for ERPs at an earlier stage. There are several in the market including Compiere, ERP5 and Fisterra. Companies have to carefully study individual requirements and test out these softwares to determine suitability.

In this article, I would like to review CK-ERP, an Open Source ERP/CRM system, ideally suited for use by SMEs. It has a total of 19 modules including accounting ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivables, Purchase Order, Sales Order, Quotation, Point of Sale, Human Resource, Payroll and contact management. It operates as modules running atop phpGroupWare. This makes it possible for the software to be easily installed on Internet if employees are in various locations or on the Intranet for more secure transactions.

Here is a overview of its excellent features.

Customer Billing process

Any company with more than 10 recurring customers should seriously consider using an ERP (such as ck-ERP) to keep track of payments, work orders and related accounting. ck-erp has ck-Quote (a Quotation module), ck-so (Sales order module) and ck-ar (Accounts Receivable module) to keep

* Sales reps can key in Work Quotations for customers. The CK-Quote module allows for easily configurable Quotation templates which can be printed or emailed to customers.

* Sales reps can easily convert the Quotations to Sales Orders when work commences. A Sales order serves as a formal record of a work order and the terms and condition under which the work is executed sent to a customer. This direct conversion from Quotation to Sales Order eliminates a lot of extra work typing out docs. However, it is possible also to manually enter Sales Orders.

* At the time of billing, Sales Orders can again be converted to Invoices. It is possible to create Invoices with or without Tax. Here again, print and email friendly Official invoices can be generated. It is also possible to Bulk-Dispatch several invoices at the same time.

* Want to check out how promptly a customer pays? Simply check the Billing history which says when a customer was invoiced and how quickly he has paid you. You can also check Billing histories of each Sales order.

* Once a customer has been invoiced, it is a easy matter to record payment receipts. A single invoice can have several payments. For instance if a customer is invoiced for $1000, he can pay in parts. It is an easy matter to enter part payments against any invoice. You can also check out the pending payments - invoice wise, customer wise and even company wise. An aging report shows you how much dues you have to get.

* All invoice and payments get automatically integrated with the General Ledger, making accounting very easy. It is possible to view related Journal/Ledger entries for each invoice

You can easily enter customer records and configure various types of tax. The accounts receivables include Accounts Receivable Aging reports, Customer Invoice Aging reports and Detailed list of Tax collected.

If you are a Manufacturing company with thousands of customers, you can consider middle agents like Distributors or C&F agencies as customers and keep track of their payments using the same software.

The system is multi-currency and multi-user, allowing each module multiple access levels.

Inventory and Purchase process

Many companies, especially trading and manufacturing companies are generally swamped with purchase inventory and vendor information. Keeping track of vendor payments and paying bills in time before credit collection agencies call is a major source of tension. Here is what you can do with ck-erp's purchase modules - ck-po(Purchase Order module), ck-ap(Accounts Payable module) and ck-inv(Inventory module) . Lets see how a purchase process works.

* Enter purchase orders to keep track of the service contracts and products you have purchased.

* The moment you receive the purchased products or service, you can add it to your inventory using ck-inventory module. Marking goods receipt, automatically updates the inventory. You can view your Inventory Balance and In/Out History for each product that you have in the Inventory. This feature is very useful for Traders and manufacturers. The inventory is integrated with the General Ledger, so that increases in the inventory also updates the Asset value of your company.

* When you receive an invoice from the vendor, you can convert the Purchase Order into a Vendor Invoice. Maintaining vendor invoices on the system, reduces your dependency on the email or paper invoices your vendors keep sending you. You can easily manage vendor payments and due dates with this system.

* When you make payments, Record full or part payments made against Vendor invoices.

* You can view at any time, reports on unpaid invoices and aging reports on the total amounts due per vendor or per purchase order. The ERP gives you an amazing degree of clarity on outgoing dues.

* You can maintain Vendor database and configure various kinds of taxes.

* The Inventory lets you maintain product names and numbers, Bin/Location information, photos, reorder levels, unit and weight information, and 3 different price informations.

* Inventory adjustments, Assembly information and Alternate Part/Service information are some other features of ck-inventory.

Accounts

The accounts section has practically everything one would want.

The core General Ledger module has the basic Double Entry accounting system with Ledger and Journal. The interesting aspect of the General Ledger is that it is the base for the Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Inventory, Bank and the Payroll modules. The entries from all these modules ultimately reflect in the General Ledger.

The accounting system has multi-currency support. The admin can set Standard Remarks for the invoice, purchase orders, Quotations and so on. The admin can even setup Multiple Ledgers for various divisions.

A Bank Reconciliation module allows you to reconcile bank statements with ledger entries.

On the flip side of the Accounts module is the fact that it does not have the yearly Opening and Closing balances. This makes it difficult to reconcile yearly accounts. A major flaw, which one can hope will be corrected in the near future.

Point of Sale(POS)

If you are a supermarket with multiple cashier desks and high cash transactions, you could use this module. Again the Point of Sale module is integrated with the General Ledger.

The ck-pos module lets cashiers enter Cash Sales, with or without tax. A good feature of the POS system is that it allows Credit Sales as well. Useful when customers insist on Purchase on Credit, for example in high value goods. Any Credit Sales entered by the cashiers have to be approved by Manager.

The Manager interface to the POS, ck-pos-m allows a manager to remotely control all the cashier operations from his office.

* Cashboxes can be setup for each POS counter and each shift. The manager can setup staff to work at each counter.

* The Manager can for instance view Shift End cash balance per Counter per shift. . The Manager can for instance view the Shift End cash balance at Counter 2 at the end of yesterday's morning shift.

* Managers can setup special price plans

* Managers can add Reduction Charges such as special student discounts, senior citizen discount or Add-On Charge such as Sunday Surcharges or service charges.

* Managers can configure various payment options for non-cash options such as Cash Coupons, Exchange Coupon, Cheques and Credit cards.

* Taxes such as VAT, GST, PST can be setup.

* Sales reports

Human Resource Management

HR management software of some sort is required if you have more than 10 employees, and better still if payroll is integrated with the General Ledger. CK-ERP has excellent HR management features.

* Manage employee database including name, staff grades and roles, photo, address, email, phone and emergency contacts. A good feature in the HR software is that you are not limited by the number of phone fields. You can enter unlimited records per employee.

* Employees have their own Staff Self Service , something like a ``My Account'', which lets them Apply for Leave, enter Time sheet and attendance details and even request for Expense reimbursement. As soon as someone applies for leave or for expense reimbursement, their supervisor gets an email notification for approval.

* Timesheet and attendance management. Timesheet can be linked to achievements. For example if you are a PC assembling unit, employees can record the number of PCs they have assembled per day or per hour. Sales staff can enter the sales targets they have achieved.

* Multiple department support

* Record Performance Evaluations per employee

* Expense reimbursement management

* Leave application and leave management.

* Payroll management. Automatic/manual payslips via email. Bank statement for payroll.

CRM and Contact Management

CK-ERP's latest addition is the CRM package.

* CK-CRM offers Helpdesk management and Sales contact management(for pre-sales) in a neat package all integrated with the central Customer database. Sales reps can track the sales calls and the sales contacts made. Customer relation executives can check the help calls and the helpdesk contacts made with each customer.

* The HelpDesk system is especially beautiful. Customer relation executives can view the entire Call case History Log per HelpDesk call, record the customer's state of mind(furious, angry, pleased, excited), media(email, phone call, meeting) and the status of contact(research, resolution, followup, closed) Monitoring officers can be set for each ticket. Priorities(high, neutral low) and case categories(complaint, suggestion, bug report) can be setup for each call .

* The CRM is integrated with Quotation, Sales Order and the Invoice modules as well. This makes it very powerful. Customer Relation executives and Sales reps can check for instance the credit rating of the customer, the number of times he has been Quoted, billing histories and payment made.

* Customer Contracts can be recorded

* Credit Limits can be set per customer

CK-CRM also includes a Contact module for organisational contacts and individual contacts.

ERP SME Open Source info from webpronews

Open source coming out of the shadows?

The odds are good that the LAMP stack is running somewhere inside your company. The acronym refers to the foundational foursome of the open-source movement: the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, MySQL database and, collectively, the Perl, PHP and Python programming languages. Development tools such as Eclipse and application servers such as JBoss have also gained popularity—and trust—especially now that major vendors such as IBM, BEA Systems and Borland have adopted or supported them commercially. But what about the next step up the software ladder? Is open source ready for ERP, business intelligence or CRM?

Ready or not, it’s happening; the first industrial-grade applications in these areas are now emerging. And CIOs will soon need to decide how to approach these fresh options in their enterprise software catalog. As with the adoption of the LAMP players, these new open-source enterprise applications likely will find their way into the enterprise at a departmental or small-project level. As a result, “we don’t see [these applications] on CIOs’ agenda at all,” notes Michael Goulde, an open-source senior analyst with Forrester Research. But, he warns, “CIOs should sync up with their development teams to see [where such applications] might have payback to the organisation.”

However, CIOs should tread carefully on such open-source applications, advises Mark Lobel, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers who focuses on information security, including security for financial applications. One key concern is that applications tend to reflect and embed business processes and logic, which often are key strategic assets you don’t want to share with others—and open-source licenses can require such sharing if companies aren’t careful. Another issue is the long-term viability of open-source applications for specific functions. Open source depends upon volunteer developers for success, but the more niche a product, the smaller the potential pool of interested contributors. As such, grassroots support for specific apps such as ERP or CRM tools may look more like brigades than the armies now supporting broad open-source infrastructure such as Linux, Apache and MySQL.

Still, properly managed open-source applications can save enterprises money and time—as well as reduce dependency on specific vendors.

Finding a Fit
Financial-services giant Fidelity Investments has used open-source technology for about four years to reduce costs and dependence on vendors. “We started with Linux like everyone else did, but our intent all along was to see how far up the stack we could go,” says Charlie Brenner, senior vice president of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, Fidelity’s technology incubation group. After Linux, Fidelity adopted Apache and Perl, and then the Struts Web application framework and the Eclipse Foundation’s development environment. Fidelity is now looking at open-source database management systems and assessing what applications might make sense. The advantages of open source include widespread component reuse, better access to underlying code to customise interfaces across applications, and less complex systems to manage. “We’re heavy users of proprietary [software], and that won’t change, but there are times you need a motor scooter, not a truck,” Brenner says.

Others are less interested in picking the proper vehicle than they are in creating a uniform, inexpensive core on which to hang their IT business. At Midland Memorial Hospital in Texas, “we’re trying to get a complete open-source or public-domain stack rather than be proprietary,” says IS Director David Whiles. His organisation already uses the LAMP stack and is now deploying a public-domain electronic records system, the Veteran Administration’s Vista, for less than half of what a proprietary system would cost (even with the cost of hiring a consultancy to add features such as billing). Medical industry service provider Athenahealth, meanwhile, is using SugarCRM—an open-source CRM package. CTO Bob Gatewood says he had several reasons to switch from his current CRM provider, Salesforce.com. But he notes that making the change will save about $1 million over three years in per-user licensing fees, even after the cost of development and integration is subtracted. He expects to complete the migration in early 2006.

Easy Mixing
Beyond spending less, Gatewood plans to more closely integrate the SugarCRM code—which he can access directly—into his call-centre and other support applications, something not possible with proprietary software where code is tightly held by the vendors. Other IT execs seek the same benefit. “We can take the pieces we need [with open source],” says Bob Hecht, vice president of content strategy at specialised data provider Informa, which is investigating the Alfresco open-source knowledge-management application as an alternative to commercial enterprise content-management tools.

Informa is exploring Alfresco because a license for a commercial enterprise content management application for a company of its size would cost millions of dollars and would impose a single content-management model on the company’s array of publishing, training and events businesses. “We just won’t do that,” Hecht says. (It also helps that Alfresco was developed in part by former Documentum technologists, giving Hecht more confidence that the application will be enterprise-class.)

Starting Small
Open-source applications can make especially good sense for nonstrategic, fairly generic applications like reporting or sales-force automation. Departments that have unique technology needs and smaller companies with limited budgets are also more likely to consider open-source applications, says Forrester’s Goulde. “Larger companies are not about to rip out SAP. Plus the functionality and the integration are both more complex” for a large company than open-source apps currently can handle, he adds.

For example, open-source tools “are not going to take the business-intelligence market because they are not yet competitive with commercial software,” says Eric Rogge, research director for BI and performance management at Ventana. For example, open-source BI applications don’t yet offer a comprehensive platform with reporting, ad-hoc analysis, online analytical processing (OLAP) connectivity, alerting, dashboards and workflow. Nor do they offer aids for developing user-interface controls, ad-hoc analysis against relational data sources or scorecard functionality with strategy maps, metrics management and collaboration features, he says. But Rogge does expect open-source applications to eventually make inroads in the BI reporting tool segment, since there are a variety of uses for basic reporting tools in an organisation where a costly, complex BI tool isn’t needed.

Furthermore, increased adoption of open-source databases should encourage the development of open-source reporting tools that take advantage of them, says Don DePalma, an analyst at the consultancy Common Sense Advisory. “Most database activity is about reporting, analysing and crunching the data, so [open-source reporting tools] would seem a natural development. Companies, universities or governments using open-source operating systems and databases would be a great audience for such software,” he says. DePalma doesn’t expect a popular reporting tool like BusinessObjects’ Crystal Reports, for example, to support open-source databases because of the vendor’s relationships with proprietary database developers such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. That provides an opportunity for the open-source community to create a Crystal Reports–like reporting tool, he says.

Open-source applications also make sense when there are regulations or other requirements common to an industry, where having a mutually supported tool would benefit everyone and not put anyone in the position of losing a competitive advantage, Goulde says. Analysts most often cite the health-care and financial-services industries as candidates for these kinds of tools, though liability concerns surrounding legal requirements make it critical that potential users understand the possible risks, notes Fidelity’s Brenner. It is also possible to imagine a large player in a specific industry making an open-source application viable, perhaps for some supply-chain management functions, much as Wal-Mart has done for RFID, notes Forrester Research ERP Analyst Ray Wang.

Gauging Open Source’s Risks
But using open-source applications does carry risks. One is that staff developers unfamiliar with the competitive value of various components might accidentally embed strategic business logic or processes into code that is then provided back to the open-source community, neutralising a competitive advantage.

But CIOs should be able to manage their strategic assets while still choosing open-source applications, says Eric Link, Diabetech’s CTO. Business logic, for example, should not reside in modified open-source code but in your internal rules base or in-house applications that call the open-source tools, as is common in commercial ERP systems, he says. “It does require careful thought to know what is strategic,” but any IT development effort should make such an assessment, whether it involves commercial, homegrown or open-source code, Link says.

CIOs should also be able to distinguish between applications and platforms and the issues that surround each, Brenner adds. Reporting tools and CRM are two examples of platforms that are often marketed as applications, he notes. The difference is that platforms typically don’t encapsulate specific business processes or logic, making them well-suited for open-source efforts—and less risky for the companies that use them, as companies using such tools will be less tempted to insert their own business logic into the products and unwittingly release it to the world. A reporting tool, for instance, might act on a company’s data, but it would never incorporate that data into its own code—and thus a company would never be required by the license to release the data as open source. (Another alternative is to go pseudo open source as in the Avalanche Corporate Technology Cooperative, which openly shares code on a variety of projects, but only among subscribed members.)

Beyond intellectual property concerns, another significant risk is an application’s long-term viability. Open source has worked well for widely distributed tools such as those in the LAMP stack that are typically run as-is and don’t need to be customised at each location. But for niche applications, the community of developers is necessarily smaller than for a piece of infrastructure, reducing the resources that contribute to the application’s development, maintenance and support. This could make it difficult for many projects to muster sufficient developer support to stay viable. The diversity of applications will be a difficult issue for the open-source community, says PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Lobel.

This limitation is exacerbated if companies don’t share their developments with the community for fear of releasing competitive business logic. “I can’t see it going very long if companies aren’t contributing back. An open system works only when it’s open,” Lobel says. Diabetech’s Link, however, believes that argument is overstated, since companies are typically happy to share infrastructure code with others, thus moving the application forward even while keeping their business-specific code to themselves.

Despite these issues, even cautious observers concede that open-source applications can make sense beyond the LAMP stack: And sensible CIOs should start paying attention

Info from CIO-ASIA

Gartner claims Open Source ERP five years away

Open source ERP software is still up to five years away from mainstream use in enterprise IT infrastructures, despite the progress made in the commercialisation of the platform, according to analyst Gartner.

Gartner's latest Linux 'hype cycle' report shows that open source is halfway to maturity but warns the biggest test will be whether it can demonstrate the necessary performance and security to function as a data centre server for mission-critical applications.

Leading-edge businesses are generally still in the early stages of Linux deployments but Gartner expects increased commercialisation and improved storage and systems management for the operating system by the end of 2005, with Linux being used primarily for WebSphere and infrastructure applications on mainframes and web services on blades and racks.

On the desktop, Linux is having a tougher time. Gartner claims the operating system is reaching the point where the costs of migration may exceed the cost benefits in a phase characterised by over-enthusiasm and unrealistic projections which lead to more failures than successes.

The Gartner report highlights the diversity across the open source movement with some markets, such as blade and clustered servers, predicted to be quite advanced while others will fall behind because of the lack of richness in manageability and availability.

The report chimes with the results of silicon.com's own CIO Jury verdict on open source by some of the UK's leading heads of IT. Our survey found that many have now re-evaluated their position on open source after initial enthusiasm two years ago because of concerns over the total cost of ownership and migration.

ERP software info from Silcon

ERP software homepage

Open Source ERP

A four-year-old company is using open source software as the basis for an ERP software package targeted at small and miduim manufacturers.
OpenMFG  plans to release Version 1.2 of its software, which goes by the same name as the company and includes some 200 changes from the earlier erp version. While most of the changes are small, about 25% of them came from the company's network of value-added resellers (VAR) and 20 core customers.

Those changes reflect the fact that users get the complete source code for the various OpenMFG modules and can make changes that get incorporated into the suite.

The suite was designed for manufacturers and can be readily adapted for discrete and process manufacturing,  Modules include the standard ERP functions, such as part definition for bills of materials, capacity planning, inventory management, purchase orders and a complete set of financial programs.

The software uses or exploits several key open-source components. It runs on several operating systems, but the preferred platform is Linux . The heart of the application is the PostgreSQL object-relational database . The application is written in C++ using Qt, an open-source tool kit from Norway's Trolltech.

This open-source software stack eliminates two issues that make it hard for smaller firms to adopt modern ERP products, according to Lilly. One is the cost of licensing proprietary ERP solutions from vendors such as Microsoft , Oracle  and SAP . "By using open-source components for the stack, we've changed the dynamics of who can afford it," he says.

The company offers a subscription service starting at $15,000 yearly or a traditional software licensing scheme at $2,500 per concurrent user. A typical OpenMFG deployment would cost $30,000 to $40,000 per year for about 15 users, depending on the number of modules selected and the number of users.

Lilly says OpenMFG is typically one-third to one-half less expensive than software from its chief rivals in this market, Microsoft and sage.

Second, with open-source software, customers and their VARs can readily adapt OpenMFG to meet specific requirements. One example of custom code is a feature that integrates OpenMFG with the package tracking systems from UPS and FedEx.

Rival products include Microsoft Business Solutions, which combines products originally acquired from Great Plains Software and more recently from Navision. ERP companies such as Oracle and SAP have been struggling to tailor enterprise products for small to midsize businesses.they have tried such as SAP business one which has not been a sucess from the feedback that I have recieved.

ERP Software homepage

Open Source ERP

The goal of ERP isn't simply to provide a unified application interface for every aspect of a company's business process -- it also tries to include the inherent data-mining capabilities that go along with it. But while JD Edwards, Oracle, SAP, and others have invested significant resources in building ERP software that's customizable enough for any business, these companies have also forced the price of the software to heights many businesses just can't afford.

Enter open source.

A large part of ERP's high price tag goes toward the army of business process and programming consultants needed to customize commercial software for individual business operations. Access to open source ERP application code, on the other hand, means you can accomplish this customization in-house, while avoiding hefty software licensing fees to boot.

One of the best-known open source ERP apps comes from Compiere. With an eye toward business analysis, the software incorporates CRM, POS (point of sale), and inventory management modules that offer excellent flexibility for multiple business scenarios. The product integrates with most relational databases using JDBC, and it offers specific support for Oracle and Sybase. Server and client platforms include Linux, Solaris, and Windows, among others. The software is published under the Mozilla public license.

Available under the GNU license, webERP -- another production-grade project -- contains full accounting features, including general ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable books, as well as role-based security and a highly customizable Web-based front end. Oriented toward manufacturing-style business processes, it includes support for order entry and inventory management. As opposed to Compiere, it has no modules for customer management, HR, or similar resources. Gold, silver, bronze, and translation support are available from a number of companies around the globe.

Other projects are available, but one characteristic of open source is that different projects define their category's feature sets in different ways. This is especially true of ERP packages. Linux-Kontor, for example, defines ERP without accounting, focusing instead on customer management, order entry, invoicing, and inventory. TUTOS, on the other hand, calls itself ERP but more closely resembles a groupware suite. Clearly, some research is needed to make sure you're really getting what you expect in this category.

Information from Linuxworld