openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Robin Bahadur <robin.bahadur@xxxxxxxxx>]

+1 Raphael.

I completely agreed. Pricing should very with respect to country. There is
huge difference between developed and developing countries.

Thanks & Regards
Robin Bahadur
 On May 18, 2014 10:58 PM, "Raphael Valyi" <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hello Fabien and Marcelo and the others,
>
> Some inline comments and I just want to clarify a point at the end;
>
>
> On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 11:47 AM, Fabien Pinckaers <fp@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> 2/ Why don't we charge according to real usage? (e.g.: 5 users on CRM, 3
>> on accounting, 7 on projects?)
>>
>> Because it's impossible to predict for yearly contracts!
>>
>
> Of course
>
>
>> 3/ Is it expensive?
>>
>> Absolutly not. It's 2x to 3x cheaper than the market average. Check this
>> comparison of software vendors:
>>   https://www.odoo.com/website/image/ir.attachment/537400/datas
>>
>> Moreover, partners get 50% to 60% discount on the public price. It means
>> gold partners pay only 4.8€ / $6 per user and per application. Whatever
>> the market, it's super cheap and super competitive.
>>
>
> In fact it depends very much on the country: for instance in France it's
> not very expensive indeed. It's probably not so expensive n the USA either.
> But in a country like Brazil (where is Marcelo or me) it's absolutely
> prohibitive (and no SMB's don't use the ERP listed in the comparison
> exactly because they are totally prohibitive here too, so where these
> products sum may be 60% of the marketshare in some norhern economies, they
> have less than 3% of the market in a country like Brazil ).
>
> 'course it's not OpenERP'SA fault if some countries are richer or poorer
> than some others, there is nothing OpenERP SA can do about this and I don't
> blame you for having a pricing adapted to where your R&D cost is. I'm also
> way more satisfied by the quality of the product now that the important R&D
> is done again in Belgium vs the very poor quality of what what landing on
> trunk say 2 years ago when it was more offshore (don't get me wrong it's
> not a problem of country but of organization).
>
> Now, yes I absolutely blame OpenERP SA for making life impossible to
> partners located in poorer countries as if it was their own fault the
> market will not afford their product. It's easy, the worst clashes between
> OpenERP and its partners systematically happen in these countries that are
> not so riches when OpenERP pressure the partners like if they could sell
> like in northern economies.
>
> IMHO that would be a lot more constructive to assume the situation and
> work together instead of loosing so much energy in absolutely sterile
> commercial negociations/fights where it seems market should auto-destruct
> totally like it happened in Spain or Argentina already until OpenERP SA
> start understanding a little part f what local partners where telling for
> years.
>
> [...]
>
>> 5/ localization & customization
>>
>> Odoo has a lot of huge advantages compared to traditional ERPs:
>>   - higher scope: website, ecommerce, cubes analysis, CRM, ...
>>   - better usability, faster implementation
>>   - better flexibility: allows custom development and high level config
>>
>> Odoo also has a few disadvantages compared to traditional ERPs, the main
>> one is the localization in some countries. (something we will fix for v9
>> as we will massively invest in accounting l18n)
>>
>
> Again, I would like acts instead of just words. We are waiting for your
> merge proposals you know...
> But you know, before promising and promising, please just start listening
> localization authors.
> Last patches we needed in the core to get Brazilian localization supported
> better took 3 months to be reviewed while it was absolutely trivial code,
> before that it took 5 months... Such trivial merge proposals like
>
> https://code.launchpad.net/~camptocamp/openobject-addons/trunk-refactor-po-merge-lep/+merge/216841
> would make again dramatic improvement for localizations overriders but
> again aren't properly prioritized.
>
> So instead of making promises while in fact you are dropping around 10
> official modules every year, I would love to see more concrete action that
> doesn't cost much to your R&D but would bring a lot to OpenERP users in
> countries with complex localizations.
>
>
>> Not only we are not more expensive, but we are at least 2x to 3x
>> cheaper. And, if you take the partner price 4.8€ per user and per app,
>> we are 6x cheaper than the competition!
>>
>
> Again depends totally on the country. Here in Brazil, if I take OpenERP
> out of the box say + localization the way it is currently it's not more
> useful than national ERP's costing half or less the price of OpenERP'SA
> Enterprise contract only (yes OpenERP is better on certain things, but it's
> still inferior regarding many legal requirements companies just need).
>
> The Brazilian localization weights like 1/2 of the server layer codebase
> (around 20 000 lines of code and we are proud it's so compact still
> https://github.com/openerpbrasil/l10n_br_core/tree/develop + OCA
> dependencies + pysped +..). So without any money to maintain and develop
> this code base, without 1st level support you are already 2 or 3 times more
> expensive than the real competition! Sorry, but I don't see where the
> business model of the partner fits here...
>
> Again I don't blame you for this, but I would prefer OpenERP SA
> acknowledge these facts instead of thinking guys like Akretion are bad
> partners and that others would probably do better. Because so far, the
> others you thought would do better promised you they would do better just
> because they were absolutely unaware of how hard was the challenge, that
> means you partnered with the most naive guys quite often (not always please
> don't make me tell what I'm not telling) and theses guys didn't lasted not
> even for a single year.
>
> You know, Marcelo Bello is a good example, as he told in another post, he
> first selected one of these partners promoted by OpenERP SA, the one
> OpenERP SA was even believing would do a better "Certified Training
> Partner" than us when they made OpenERP Account Manager believe they were
> important fr the localization after they showed Igor a forked repo of our
> work where they had quickly removed all our copyrights to make Igor believe
> they authored the stuff.
>
> https://github.com/proge/openerp-pt_br/commit/23fe26726836e58251f82cc17d011cb06135f7a6
> But you see, no magic happened, they failed to deliver Marcelo's project
> just as he came here to complain. So again, that would be cool your account
> managers and commercial staff would be less naive and focus on developing
> what works instead. I would certainly have to complain less about OpenERP
> SA commercial policy if you did so. So we could be in quite a different
> virtuous circle.
>
> And this is not just about us Akretion no.
> A similar situation happened in Argentina or Spain a few years ago.
> Extremely skilled people such as NaNtic where commercially insulted by
> OpenERP SA.
> Instead my ex-employer was promoted Gold in Spain with no real skill in
> this country at that time (sorry to have to say it).
>
> Today Akretion is making OpenERP work in Brazil with a Catalan (that is in
> Spain for people who don't know, although it's not the way they like to be
> assimilated) company that 3 years ago, believed that OpenERP SA partner
> recommendation.
> Then what?
> Of course they got their project initially failed by this partner in
> Spain...
> And then rescued by Minorissa and others.
>
> Today their extension project in Brazil is being a success with us (in
> Vitoria) but it's almost impossible to get them buy an Enterprise contract
> because they have such a bad image of OpenERP SA because of what happened
> in Spain with OpenERP SA partner recommendation that made them loose so
> much much money...
>
> So I mean, all that shit because OpenERP SA didn't want to negociate
> properly with NaNtic or other initial pioneers of the Spanish localization
> just like this is happening with us?
>
> I mean enough is enough my friend. If you do or let do too much commercial
> shit, things will certainly end up surfacing again and this is not a good
> company strategy I believe.
>
> I'm sure there should be many such story as Marcelo or that last company
> in many countries.
>
> When I see you'll now account only for partners new contract to rank them,
> I cannot stop thinking this is an absolute time bomb for the sustainability
> of the projects (it's impossible to acquire real ERP projects forever at
> the same rate when you take the cost of maintaining them into account). I
> mean real ERP projects, not just a rotation of SaaS users satisfied by a
> CRM.
>
>
> [...]
>>
>> The sustainability of every product is directly linked to it's ability
>> to create a sustainable model where partners and publishers get enough
>> revenues to grow their activities on the product.
>>
>
> Yes.
> But sustainability is a matter of cost / benefit. In fact lot's of open
> source product are better organized how they delegate things to their
> community so that it cost them much less.
> Tryton may not be better than OpenERP no. But still it's shows a product
> can evolve a good deal of what OpenERP did with just a fraction of the
> money by being better organized with its community (again not telling it's
> better, overall just telling they are a lot more efficient at evolving the
> product). Like may be Tryton is developing 4x slower than OpenERP. But for
> how much less money? 100x less money spent? Talking about efficiency.
>
> And again Fabien,
> there are many open source products that are funded in Northern economies
> but sell absolutely nothing in developing countries. If I take Compiere for
> instance, they were selling a few contracts in the USA and Europe. But in
> Brazil, as far as I know they were selling absolutely nothing and BTW this
> is exactly because they didn't had a practical mode in Latin America that
> Adempiere developed here (and in South East Asia). I doubt MySQL or MongoDB
> are selling a lot in Brazil either for instance.
>
> And even, you should consider that even in less rich economies, there is
> corruption or even without corruption, there are still a few bigger
> companies or national departments that may invest money on open source. But
> let's say it's not the focus of OpenERP the last 2 years (nor was the focus
> of small Akretion these days). I'm happy with the last WMS and framework
> evolutions thoughs because that could also make OpenERP more viable for
> bigger deployments though.
>
>
>>
>> This requires a lot of things like: having a great product allowing good
>> service margins, a good price for the publisher, happy customers, etc.
>>
>> >      What kind of business puts potential clients in front of active
>> > paying clients? The model is wrong wrong wrong.
>>
>> What's wrong is to have a pricing so cheap that it does not allow to
>> sustain the development of the product, or too few customers because the
>> product is not competitive. That's what killed some products.
>>
>
> Indeed. But again, you should consider you could cut R&D costs by 2 or 4
> just by using better community work instead of ignoring it.
> Yes, that means you couldn't promise to investors you own such a large
> part of the Intellectual Property either. So that would mean less
> investment capacity.
> Yes that's a different model. But eventually it's more sustainable.
>
> And there is not only the cost of R&D you know. So what will you do for
> the guys that won't pay your Enterprise services or your SaaS offer?
> You will spend on lawyers to fight around the Odoo trademark usage, you
> will spend on Account Managers and their managers to try to spin the
> markets to get partners bringing you money (or just making you believe they
> will) take over the ones not using your services.
>
> I mean, just like maintaining an Empire, like the roman one or the USA
> one, all that infrastructure does have a certain cost...
>
> If your take the extreme case of proprietary products like Microsoft,
> Oracle or Apple, what % of their spending these guys do on marketing to
> spin the market?
> How much do they spend on lawyers and lobbying to try to break the
> alternative?
>
> I mean you have to be very careful not jumping in an auto destruction
> spiral where every week the managers you named would make you believe that
> the best solution is to increase these kind of spending to maintain your
> editor power. Because eventually the spiral will keep accelerating and at
> the end of the story, because the product is protected by the GNU AGPL
> which is the social contract by which the community accepted contributing
> to the project, the empire would collapse.
>
>
>
>> >       If Odoo was a ready-to-use software then the model would make a
>> > lot of sense. But they are ignoring the importance of localization &
>> > customization. If I wanted off the shelf software I wouldn't bother
>> > going open source.
>>
>> Our customers don't choose Odoo beause it's open source. They choose
>> Odoo because it's better (products and/or servives of partners)
>>
>
> Depends. I believe OpenERP made most of its revenues through the partner
> network and these partners certainly choose OpenERP because it is open
> source.
>
>
>
>> We should stop being frustrated of being open source. It's not because
>> we are open source that we should be cheaper. The only thing that
>> matters for a customer is to have a great product at an affordable price.
>>
>
> Agree.
>
> This however depends again very much on the maturity of market where you
> are working.
> Akretion is active both in France and Brazil. I would say in France we
> have no problem being payed a good hourly price (relatively to the economy)
> because customers understand we are worth the money we charge. But instead
> in Brazil, in the SMB market, this is almost impossible. When we announce
> some hourly price, most companies believe their internal programmer would
> do the same for cheaper. They don't envision that somebody with 10 years of
> experience and 5 with OpenERP will probably require 20x less time to do the
> project and do it right so it justify having a 3x higher hourly cost than
> using the trainee they hired last month.
> And IMHO, OpenERP marketing has not really been helping that you know. In
> fact we are successful in France exactly because people don't believe
> OpenERP SA marketing. That is sad but this is true.
> You can read this again if you don't believe me
> http://people.via.ecp.fr/~alexis/openerp/#conseils-fin
>
>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> The part of the commission on Odoo Enterprise is usually lower than 4%
>> of the revenue a partner take on a project. So, their motivation is not
>> on the commission.
>>
>
> Again this depends totally on the project. Here i Brazil, the Enterprise
> would often represent around 30% or 40% of what a partner would take on a
> project. This is absolutely impossible.
>
> Yes Akretion sold a few Enterprises in the past here. But the price was
> the old price and negociated. AND Akretion was totally under selling its
> own consulting hours to get the Enterprise sales happen.
> This is also because by 2011 or 2012, we absolutely needed a better
> OpenEEP so selling these Enterprises was a way to be compatible with the
> business model we where envisioning with OpenERP SA.
>
> So you see Marcelo, in a country like Brazil, the whole commission debate
> is absolutely sterile because instead of taking a commission partners are
> investing on their on to develop the OpenERP market! As for Akretion we did
> 95% of that localization codebase, that is an absolutely huge investment if
> you convert this into money. So we certainly wouldn't let somebody tell
> partner X is worth better than Akretion when he just paid may be 10k USD to
> OpenERP SA when our investment in the OpenERP localization represents may
> be 300k USD instead. So we also certainly sold some Enterprise contracts
> not because it was profitable but just to protect these investments we made
> at some points... It's quite a different thing you see and it's sad I'm now
> forced to explain these sort of things.
>
> But of course, Akretion selling Enterprise contract funded by their own
> work in part don't scale at all, this is why we cannot hire very fast or
> make new other projects very fast. Still the exact same thing happen for
> the other companies of course.
>
> I'm very disappointed OpenERP SA couldn't lead that kind of basic market
> analysis.
>
>
>
>>
>> I may be wrong. I am open to discuss this during the community days.
>>
>
> Yeah sure. In any case I think the points I'm making here aren't really
> new, so I'm not very optimistic things evolve here. I had told this to Marc
> Laporte and you in person 2 years ago. Today things seem just worst as
> Marcelo mentioned.
>
>
> That being said, this is not such a big deal. As I said, it's absolutely
> common to have open source companies sell in Northern economies and sell
> nothing in emerging markets.
>
> The only thing I would appreciate is commercial respect of such basic
> economic realities so we still work together despite may be little economic
> collaboration (at least that's probably better than nothing) instead of
> forcing us to have to denounce OpenERP SA commercial policy loudly to
> protect our business which I believe is not profitable to anybody.
>
>
> Regards.
>
> --
> Raphaël Valyi
> Founder and consultant
> http://twitter.com/rvalyi <http://twitter.com/#!/rvalyi>
> +55 21 3942-2434
> www.akretion.com
>
>
>
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