openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Marcelo Bello <marcelo.bello@xxxxxxxxx>]

Since this is being discussed in the community list I feel encouraged to
participate as an end-user.

    Some context about me: In February 2013 I entered into a contract with
an OpenERP partner in Brazil called Proge to implement OpenERP for my
company. Long story short, Proge took most of the money and never delivered
a working system, we are now going to court to try to get our money back.
Very very disturbing. I insisted on OpenERP and now have hired a different
company (non-partner) to setup OpenERP for me (Akretion was too busy to
help us). I have OpenERP in production for about 4 weeks now. I have chosen
not to get an enterprise contract for now.

     What I have learned about the OpenERP ecosystem:

1. Anyone can buy the Partner "status", a lot of those partners have no
real capability to deliver a good job, so it is in no way a "quality seal";
2. OpenERP SA is very slow to fix / merge bugs, there are thousands of open
bugs in the queue; (Isn't part of the Enterprise Contract the promise that
bugs will be fixed quickly? With such a huge list of open bugs how can I
believe in that claim?)
3. With so many bugs yet to be fixed, one is better of relying on the OCB
or RS-OCB repositories rather than the official one;
4. The Enterprise Contract is good for migration work from version to
version BUT it won't cover the localization code (which in Brazil is huge);
5. OpenERP takes a huge amount of effort to setup and actually make work,
the documentation is very high-level to be useful, it does require quite a
bit of customization so in the end the company I hired is the one I depend
on and the ones I must trust (not OpenERP SA);
6. The most important functionality (for me at least) landing on OpenERP
are now developed by partners and not OpenERP SA: new Magento connector and
the new WMS. OpenERP SA is engaged in the development of some features that
in my view are disconnected from the reality and they should really become
more pragmatic;

     I do think OpenERP SA should be getting some cash out of me, the ERP
is nice and I believe a good job must be compensated. This is my
recommendation on how to improve the situation for OpenERP SA, from the
point of view of an end-user:

1. Make public the information about how many active Enterprise Contracts
each partner has. This will make your partners want to sell those contracts
to look good in their markets. People like me that need a new ERP system
really need this type of information to make sound purchase decisions. Look
what happened to me when I chose a bad OpenERP partner. Hence, the
silver/gold/platinum etc... should depend ONLY on that number (anyone could
still become a partner by paying, but to be silver/gold/whatever one would
need to have experience and a nice number of active contracts);

2. Start closing those bugs PLEASE! What confidence do I have in OpenERP SA
if you let so many bugs stay open for so long despite all partners
complaining about it so much (to the point a OCB repository now exists);

3. Take better care of your reputation:
- The contact / partner_id thing was a screw up, why fight so hard with
your partners, apparently with no technical merit? (and why not say sorry,
when sorry is due?)
- Why aren't you including the partners in these decisions when they are so
important to you?
- Why are you okay with so many open bugs? Don't you understand that each
bug I find on my setup of OpenERP, my confidence in the system is
significantly diminished? And don't you understand that the #1 attribute of
an ERP is reliability?
- Why do you let the OCB repository be ahead of the official one? Shouldn't
you be the reference as far a OpenERP code repository goes?
- Why are you developing a CMS system instead of fixing those bugs? Don't
you understand that you look fool trying to sell features like that, at
least at this stage? Are you really going to recommend your clients to
expose their ERP to the web so they can use the CMS? Will that be a
responsible recommendation given the security implications and the huge
attack surface an ERP system has (and the nice data a hacker can get as a
compensation)?

4. Start making OpenERP feel like a mature piece of software:
- Take unit tests seriously;
- Take bug fixing seriously;
- Do stable releases only when the code is stable;
- Only change your APIs when absolutely necessary (so that modules can
become mature pieces of software);
- Don't let broken things stay broken (e.g. App/Module store, when a module
can interfere with each other because of on_change mess & other issues);

5. Stop making the Enterprise Contract about migrations. It gives you the
wrong incentives. As a client I do not want to have big migrations every
12-18 months. I want to do it every 36-48 months if at all.

6. Take full control of your software and its important pieces (selected
modules and the localizations). The official repository should be the
reference, not the OCB one. You should know what happens with each
localization, how can you develop the core if you have no clue about the
need of each localization? I like the idea of OpenERP certifying each
localization.

7. Find incentives for partners to share more with each other. At least in
Brazil all partners are hiding their specific changes to the localization
from each other, there is an official repository for the localization but a
lot is hidden away. There should exist some form of oversight from OpenERP
SA.

Sorry for the long email. My 2c as an end user.


On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Thorsten Vocks <
thorsten.vocks@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> i have some questions about the contract itself. I think some essential
> informations are unclear.
> A simplified but still transparent contract document would be a good move
> in the right direction, but still
> essential things are missing in the contract document, or confusing.
>
>
>    - Where to enter real start / end date of contract ?
>    - What is the intention of the field "date" on "Contract registration"
>    ?
>    - Is "date" field intended to be the same as "effective date" ?
>    - What to do, if customer wants to start / renew the OE contract on
>    "01.06.2014" if in my case the date of signature is "03.03.2014"
>    (=today)?
>    - Is it legal to enter in "date" field something different than the
>    date of signature (f.e. some date in the future) ?
>    - Which of both dates is relevant field for the time frame (90 days)
>    to terminate contract ?
>    - What is the expiry date as mentioned in "term of the contract"
>    paragraphe ?
>    - Who finally have to sign the contract (partner, customer, OpenERP
>    SA) ?
>    -   not enough space, help text which makes it unclear which
>       signatures we have to collect in this signature box.
>    - Where to get the date of  termination (or start / end date ) ?
>
>
> Questions about "2. pricing":
>
>
>    - Where to enter the amount of users covered in this contract ?
>    - Where to find the Annex A (actually not existing in contract
>    document) ?
>    - What is the difference between "annual price" and "total price" (may
>    you provide example) ?
>    - Why are the price fields included in contract ?
>    - Is the following assumption correct: annual price = price for 10
>    users, total price = price for packs of 10 users ? Ex. annual price: 4200
>    €, total price = 4.200 €.
>    - Why is the price included in contract (first time in this Contract
>    V2) ->
>       - Isn't it part of our quotation towards the customers (partner ->
>       customer) and our partner contract agreement (openerp -> partner)
>       - Why we need any price information in this contract ?
>
>
> Some other hints / questions:
>
>    - wouldn't it be good to have localised contract versions (german).
>    - in our case this should lower the entry barrier for new customers.
>    - exhibit a is not existing, but it is related in contracts text (to
>    correct).
>
> This review should help to improve the contract by some essential
> informations or to explain better
> by providing some examples.
>
> Best regards
>
> Thorsten Vocks
>
> openBIG.org
> Dipl. Kaufmann (FH)
> Porscheweg 4-6
> 49661 Cloppenburg
>
> Phone: +49 4471 8409000
> Fax: +49 4471 84090009
> Mail: thorsten.vocks@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Web: http://www.openbig.org
>
>
>
> 2014-03-01 17:23 GMT+01:00 Raphael Valyi <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
>> On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Yury Tello <ytello@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jeff, Usually in LATAM there are  between 2 and 3 trainees in the
>>> official trainings, and these 30% cover International traveling.
>>>
>>> Best Regards
>>>
>>
>> Hello Yury,
>>
>> we had kind of the same issues with the CTP training in Brazil
>> (relatively low attendance rates and travel expenses on both sides). So,
>> just like Vauxoo we took the decision to also do the training online to
>> avoid physical costs and be able to delay a training to an other date more
>> easily.
>>
>> Now, it's different in our case at Akretion because there isn't an
>> official online training overlapping ours.
>>
>> At some point this is normal that online trainings don't try to compete
>> one with another. Now, what is probably not correct is having let you make
>> the investments you described with a different training agenda in mind
>> without associating you to the plan.
>>
>> Also, now with the mandatory certification to become a partner (probably
>> better than partnering with anybody once the certification is properly
>> calibrated), trainees would complain if the CTP training wouldn't prepare
>> them efficiently to the certification. As some 30% of the attendees used to
>> be partners, we stopped including 12 hours of localization and we now do
>> the full training only with the official content as requested by OpenERP SA.
>>
>> Now again, I'm not sure that certification schedule was all as smart as
>> it was initially pimped out again. Because until last year we used to train
>> around 80 people a year. But since the certification nobody seems
>> interested in a 5 days training not including the localization (and no we
>> wouldn't lie to the trainees about the program)...
>>
>> You would say: add an other training with the localization. Indeed, we
>> will do that, but again this is an investment on our side and we will
>> probably wait for v8 to make it real because we cannot afford investing for
>> a low return of course.
>>
>> But mostly, given the "cheap catchy 360° marketing for dummies" I was
>> talking about in my other mail, a bad collateral effect is that while
>> people would invest may be a month of training to work with SAP or other
>> generic ERP's, they would generally not invest say even 8 days of training
>> to work with OpenERP. While honestly, be it 10 days of official training or
>> 6 months full time alone, this is a bit required if you claim to do
>> anything professional at all with OpenERP.
>>
>> From what I have discussed with the other CTP's they have a bit the same
>> issue.
>>
>> IMHO a much better agenda would have been to have the training in country
>> X prepare exclusively to the certification only once the certification
>> would have been valued by the market in country X (in one year at best,
>> probably even later in last OpenERP frontiers such as Brazil) Otherwise
>> people just don't see the value and would still prefer to quickly learn how
>> to use OpenERP for their use case in their country. Unless the real goal of
>> the certification was different may be.
>>
>>
>> And let's face it, like with any other ERP, the only way to have OpenERP
>> with real success stories all around the world is indeed certainly to have
>> quality extensive training and have expert local partners delivering it and
>> the pioneers who were agile enough to make their way in the hard early days
>> of OpenERP are probably more suited than anybody else for that.
>>
>> A month of official available program wouldn't be even be too few for
>> people ready to invest in training instead of spending time.
>> But that requires a consistent marketing that value ERP expertise so that
>> the big players start investing into OpenERP, unlike the cheap catchy
>> marketing that is being made lately.
>>
>> So I commented on that mail because I think what is happening with the
>> CTP program is a good illustration of the limits of the cheap catchy 360°
>> marketing we were just talking about in the other thread after Fabien asked
>> our feedback.
>>
>>
>> Regards and good luck for you Yury.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Raphaël Valyi
>> Founder and consultant
>> http://twitter.com/rvalyi <http://twitter.com/#!/rvalyi>
>> +55 21 2516 2954
>> www.akretion.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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