Odoo: The new OpenERP

If you look around there is no &quot;beautiful ERP&quot; solution out there and the status quo is &quot;you can make a very capable ERP or a &quot;pretty&quot; ERP but not both&quot;. I understand the the difficulty of striking that balance but I think by applying the right kind of modularity to the app design (sort of like openERP but even more granular and forgiving) you can arrive at a solution which invites businesses of all-sizes but can grow with the company into very complex processes.<p>There is HUGE opportunity in this market and I believe one big reason is that a new generation of userbase will expect and demand a better UX than any current offering.<p>In fact, I suggest a great startup idea would be a to take the openerp codebase and wrap a new UI&#x2F;UX around it starting with one vertical (&quot;niche&quot;) market and working out from there. (i.e. &quot;A beautiful ERP for medium-sized businesses focusing on your growing warehouse, sales and purchasing needs built on the solid foundation of openERP.&quot;). Not saying it would be easy, but just worthwhile. I have a feeling the Odoo rebranding points to an effort for a UI overhaul which acknowledges the opportunity of a great UX.

By the way, the core and base modules (and in theory, all community modules, since they&#x27;re derived works) of Odoo are Free Software (APGL) and available on Github: <a href="https://github.com/odoo/odoo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;odoo&#x2F;odoo</a><p>Disclaimer: I work for a company that implements solutions based on Odoo for small and large companies. So yeah, it&#x27;s possible to make a living working on FOSS, if anyone still doubted it :)

OpenERP could&#x27;ve really benefited from some usability expertise, and if this site is any indication, Odoo may suffer the same fate. If you&#x27;re going to put this much time&#x2F;money into a new brand, how could you miss so badly?<p>In my experience with OpenERP, the end users always took a back seat to the developers. Granted, ERP software is inherently complicated, but with each new version you could tell they made an attempt at a simplified interface and never hit the mark.

Not sure the rebrand is what will attract new customers to OpenERP.<p>A couple months ago, I evaluated ERPs for our business. OpenERP was one of the main contenders but ultimately the manufacturing module failed to meet our requirements and custom development would have been too costly.<p>I was also shocked to get a glimpse at OpenERP&#x27;s internal corporate structure. Despite the open source nature of the project, their business model puts them on track to become yet another big, slow, expensive ERP company pushing massive service fees.<p>Unfortunately there&#x27;s just no great solution in the ERP world. Requirements for this category are so complex that by the time a system becomes adequately feature rich, improvements in software technology make it feel obsolete. I wonder if someone will crack that nut.

What are the alternatives to OpenERP today ? (I mean, free and open sources ones, with acceptable UI)

Icons!<p>As a designer, I&#x27;ve probably never seen so many icons on a page.

I&#x27;ve considered working with OpenERP and looking at becoming a consultant in it (ERP is $$$ and very useful), but last I checked the OpenERP site (2? years ago?), the demo site was half broken. Glad to see it&#x27;s gotten a refresh and a genuinely web 2.0 name. ;)<p>Apparently the devs have churned it into a SaaS offering, which is also very cool.

They also discovered how to succeed as a tech company: Better use at least three &#x27;O&#x27;s in your brand name.<p>&quot;Choosing the right name is hard. To find the perfect name, we analysed the names of top internet companies. We discovered a direct correlation between the company valuation and the number of &#x27;O&#x27; in its name. The graph below shows the average valuation of the top 10 internet companies according to the number of &#x27;O&#x27; in their names.<p>With three &#x27;O&#x27; in its name, &#x27;Odoo&#x27; is in phase with our ambitions.&quot;