openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Daniel Reis <dgreis@xxxxxxx>]

Let me start saying that I'm a huge OpenERP fan.
 I though twice before participating, but I feel some obligation in sharing
my findings on this issue.

 OpenERP is doing a great work on the product, and all product serious
users should giving their share for this.
 But, unfortunately, right now I can't advise anyone I know to buy
Enterprise contract.
 I honestly hope that this could change soon.

 I can explain why, and  I'll also add some comparisons with Microsoft's
NAV strategy (in fact, OpenERP is a closer competitor to NAV than it is to
AX or SAP).

1) THE OEE SAAS OPTION IS UNUSABLE:
 It does not support localizations, it doesn't allow for serious
customizations.
 So, it doesn't let me comply with my local legal requirements.

2) OEE SERVICE DOES NOT SUPPORT LOCALIZATIONS.
 This is a real show stopper.
 I don't mind localizations to be built by third-parties (as they are), but
I expect the product vendor to validate these and give some level of
support or guarantee. Every other ERP vendor I know does that.
 Localization features are mission critical, and OEE is void of value in
that space. It doesn't even cover version migrations.
 If I have to pay a partner for this support, I'd might be better off
getting all product support from him.
 Microsoft NAV and AX themselves often have localizations provided and
maintained by partners. But Microsoft certifies these localizations, and
includes them in the produc's maintenance fee. And Microsoft doesn't do
direct sales: it's always sold through an integrator. How the maintenance
fee gets divided between core and localizations evolution is abstracted for
the final customer.

3) OEE IS EXPENSIVE
 At least for the business case I studied, so I have numbers to back up
this claim.
 From the 6th year on, OEE total cost gets more expensive than buying
Microsoft NAV licenses.
 And Microsoft supports localization, which OpenERP doesn't.
 On a SaaS cloud hosted, the assessment conclusions could be different, but
as per #1, that is not an option.
 And note that NAV targets the middle market. For the SME market the
pricing issue gets even trickier.

 I mean to be constructive, so I do have some suggestions for improvement:

A) HAVE A COMMUNITY MODULES CERTIFICATION PROGRAMME
 Let partners build localizations, but have them reviewed and certified.
 This will make it viabale for OpenERP SA to also provide version
migrations as part of OEE.
 Also should provide some guarantee on basic maintenance (bugfixing) in
case the authors go out of business.
 This will boost it's value for Customers.
 I know that Microsoft does this and uses a third-party entity to do the
certification process, and it's similar to what App Stores do.

B) PRICE DIFFERENTIATION BY GEOGRAPHIC REGION.
 It doesn't make sense to have the same prices for South America and North
America.
 It also doesn't make sense to have the same prices for Portugal and for
Germany.
 I can tell you what Microsoft is doing: they also have a fixed list price
(at least for Europe).
 But they use different discount policies to adapt to each market's needs:
I have seen quotes starting with 30% discount on list price, but in
stronger economies such as Germany you're lucky if you can close the deal
with a 5% or 10% discount.

C) ACCOMODATE DIFFERENT CUSTOMERS TYPES IN THE PRICING POLICY
 The new "business apps" user category is different from the standard "ERP"
users.
 They have very different perceptions of the product's value, but can grow
in modules used and eventually become full "ERP" users.
 These users expect a more App-oriented pricing model, at least until they
reach a usage level that makes them prefer the "ERP" pricing.
 I believe that "business apps" and "quickstart" over SaaS" concepts are
powerful and can be strategic for OpenERP's growth.
 But OpenERP is missing a few things for that to take off: certified
modules and localizations usable on SaaS; support for dev / productions
environments on SaaS, with tooling for packaging changes and deploying
between them; improve the GUI customization tools (view editors are partly
broken; some field changes are impossible).

 The more I think on it, the more I believe that module certification can
have a multiplier effect on several revenue stream for OpenERP.

 I hope this gets to be helpful in some way.

 Best to all

/DR