openerp-community team mailing list archive

[António Sequeira <anTonio.Sequeira@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

100% on target


Regards
Antonio Sequeira



<div>-------- Mensagem original --------</div><div>De : Daniel Reis <dgreis@xxxxxxx> </div><div>Data:01/03/2014  22:49  (GMT+00:00) </div><div>Para: "openerp-community@lists.launchpa" <openerp-community@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> </div><div>Assunto: Re: [Openerp-community] About OpenERP Enterprise contract value... </div><div>
</div>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