SAP Mental Notes » Uncategorized

Openbravo ERP : Moving into Open Source ERP

Kowboy — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:30:59 +0000

Openbravo ERP instead of SAP? The past six years I worked with much pleasure in the SAP arena. I had the opportunity to work together with some of the larger corporations to help them achieve their ambitions. Part of my experiences is written down in this blog. Many people visit this blog on a daily basis and some of them leave me some wonderful messages. My contributions in last few months diminished, and will come to a total stop as of today.

The last two years my interest in the open source movement increased when I learned of the existing ERP alternatives at that time. As an ERP professional I was interested in to what extent these “free” software alternatives could actually fulfill commercial cutomers’ needs. Out of the ERP alternatives available I quickly focused on Openbravo ERP. Barcelona based Openbravo is the commercial organisation behind Openbravo ERP and Openbravo POS. In comparison with their open source ERP competitors Openbravo’s partner driven business model, heavy financing and marketing efforts instinctively won me over as the most professional alternative available. But what about the functionality of the software? According to some sites open source ERP is weak and I was admittedly a bit sceptical. As the English say: “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. Hence I needed to give it a try.

Through documentation and experimenting I learned that installation of the Openbravo ERP stack is child’s play (i.e. if you take at least some pleasure from tweaking and fiddling your system). The application supports all fundamental processes in a business: Procurement, Sales, Production, Warehouse, Project/Service Management and off course Finance is integrated into the main processes. I was impressed by the basic functionality. Coming from SAP you do have to adjust expectations. In my opinion SAP is the Porsche when it comes to all integrated functionality and its price. Openbravo ERP is more like a Honda: tuned into a specific market need and way more affordable. That is why Openbravo aims at Small and Midsize Enterprises.

Openbravo ERP Sales Order entry

I was considering making a change and move into this new business opportunity. At that time I just moved my career to being a free-lance SAP Logistics consultant. Moving towards open source ERP, I had to have a good feel about the people behind the organisation. Early 2008 I visited an Openbravo partner event in Barcelona. There I learned a lot about Openbravo’s capabilities as a professional organisation and its management. These people definitely take the opportunity serious, and at the same time they are very approachable. I left Barcelona with an excited feeling of “opportunity”. I couldn’t do this by myself: I needed to find a suitable business partner.

Openbravo Team

While exploring Dutch networks for potential partners, in the meantime I kept on doing my SAP tricks with great pleasure: ERP and process improvement, the combination of social interaction and technical configuration, is just what I do best. Only this summer I ran into the suitable partner I felt I needed to start this business. GlobalOrange in Amsterdam is offering application development and outsourcing service to SME. An extension of these services to ERP business is a perfect match. So did my partners think. Hence from now on I will be focused on making Openbravo ERP a success in the Netherlands and Belgium.

My break-up with SAP is not a dirty one. We had a great time together and who knows where we meet again. But as it is the times they are a-changing.

…this blog will be up for as long people will end up here and find the content useful…

iGoogle gadget

Kowboy — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:57:57 +0000

iGoogle is my portal to the web. I got it fully personalized to information that I frequently refer to: current events, sports, poker, weather, dictionary, etc. As a SAP consultant Google is one of my best friends and certainly my main referral. I now found an iGoogle gadget that is a Google Search variant. This search engine only looks for SAP results. No need to repeatedly enter keywords like “SAP” and “transaction” to find what you are looking for. You don’t have to place the gadget on your iGoogle page. You can also go to the web page: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=011731639548191095650%3Afzpxsuyhk_y

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Screen Capture

Kowboy — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:49:05 +0000

Everyone involved in creating work instruction or tutorials know the importance of having a good screen capture tool available. Quickly grab a piece of your screen and drop it in your document. There are some proper tools vailable for FREE : you can choose for a real light program called ScreenHunter that does everything you need at Wisdom Soft. Alternatively you can choose for a program that does a bit more, like directly publish the captured screen on Flickr or your Blog, at Jing Project. It is also able to record video (offered by Wisdom soft through a seperate free utility). Jing is more heavy weight and sluggish though and requires dotNet installed on your machine. Jing is from the creators of Snag-it, so expect some for-pay versions in the future. For simple and fast use ScreenHunter.

Price differences info record

Form design: standard texts

Kowboy — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:35:52 +0000

Transporting SapScript Texts created in SO10 can be a mystery. Transport of these texts to other clients is done using program RSTXTRAN (SE38). Here you can attach the text objects to a previously created transport.

Program RSTXTRAN

If you are wondering what you can use these texts for: you can create dynamic text fields that are used by custom made forms. You can create one standard SmartForm that refers to a text item you created in SE10. When the text in the future requires a change you don’t need a programmer to modify hardcoded text in the order form. You can just modify the text in SE10.

Hello world!

Kowboy — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:25:58 +0000

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

So this is a Kowboy entering the world of WordPress. Since this all new to me I will first need to figure out how to manage this tool. I feel rather OK that I managed to install WordPress in the first place. First question: can I introduce my Kowboyz housestyle to the blog?; 2nd: can I migrate my kowboyz.blogspot.com content to WordPress in an easy way.

To be continued…

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