Business-It on Janik von Rotz

Develop business applications with Odoo

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 15:59:44 +0100

In Odoo, various applications are packaged, which work together, but also standalone. For example, the Contact app stores all address data of the company. The Human Resources application for managing employees or the CRM access this address data.

Technical features such as access management, report generation, data management or analyses are also packaged under a uniform Odoo interface. These features can be used by software developers without development effort. New applications or extensions to existing apps can be developed in a flash.

So Odoo not only is an ERP system, but also a development framework. With Odoo, customized applications can be developed based on a robust framework.

Example

My company Mint System accompanied a customer who has been using a Microsoft Access application for several years. The application has become outdated and is no longer supported by the latest Microsoft Office version.

Within the frame of an development project the existing application has been replaced by a new one. This procedure has been applied:

Analysis of the existing data structure
Document existing work processes
Design of a new data model based on Odoo
Development of data migration scripts
Requirements engineering for the new app
Iterative development of the new Odoo app
Replacement of the existing application and project completion

In just a few steps, we can migrate a legacy application to a state-of-the-art browser app.

Advantages

Development frameworks are a dime a dozen. What are the advantages of developing with the Odoo framework?

User and access management through Odoo

Solutions for user and group management are already provided by Odoo. Integrating the application into the ActiveDirectory or an authentication solution with OAuth is possible without any challenges.

Association with existing Odoo entities

Odoo manages several hundreds of business objects like project, tasks, working hours, employees, invoices, cost centers or messages. Each of these objects can be linked to the cusotm development.

Predefined elements for the user interface

Odoo offers different views for the data to be displayed: Lists, Graphs, Kanban, Pivot, Grid, Gantt or Map. These views can be adopted for your own data.

Mobile Support

All Odoo apps work on mobile devices. The developer does not have to develop a responsive design.

Security and robustness

Odoo is used by thousands of companies. From SMEs to large companies. Correspondingly many security bugs have been closed, experiences in productive environment gathered and internal company data collected. Odoo is a secure and proven framework for business applications.

Challenge ERP system

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 09:08:38 +0100

Four factors are responsible why the implementation of an ERP system project fails.

Lack of support from management
Too much customization
Missing requirement analysis
Poor data quality

Management support

An ERP system is primarily a management software. It has to satisfy many stakeholders. From the decision maker, who needs to get to the essential information by means of reports, to the accountant, who wants to automatically trigger the payment of salaries. An ERP system spawns across the entire organization. The requirements of the stakeholders can be contradictory and complex, making a targeted implementation all the more important. This is only possible with the support of management. During the course of implementation, there may be resistance and challenges in both technical and organizational terms. If the project is not guided by the management, a holistic implementation in the company is not possible.

Customization

Do you adapt the software to the processes or the processes to the software? Business processes are often the differentiating factor for many companies. The processes are strongly intertwined with the employees and corporate culture and therefore difficult to change. There are clear limitations if you want to change existing business processes. The same applies to the ERP system. There are technical limitations. ERP systems allow the software to be adapted to specific needs. However, above a certain limit, the costs for adaptations increase exponentially. It is important to know these limits and take them into account when defining customizations.

Requirements analysis

If you ask users of an ERP system about their needs and expectations, you will get a different version for each person. Stakeholder requirements must be systematically recorded and weighted. Requirements engineering exists for this purpose. With this methodology, the requirements of the software system are determined and structured in advance of the ERP project. A clean requirements analysis is a prerequisite for a successful ERP project.

Data quality

Very few companies start from scratch when introducing a new ERP system. ERP data is already available in different systems. From customer contacts to shipping addresses and product definitions, data must be merged and imported. Data quality plays a decisive role here. For example, if there are duplicates in the source data or missing attributes in data records, this has a direct effect on the functionality of the system. Poor data can lead to functional limitations. The improvement of data quality cannot be achieved by simple measures, it is an ongoing process which, like all processes, requires a lot of time for implementation.

Use software effectively

Fri, 01 May 2020 13:19:51 +0200

Increasing productivity is the main goal when introducing new business software. There is always a process or workflow at an organization that can be improved with the help of a software. When it comes to making decisions on how to introduce an existing software you can go in two directions. Adapt the software to suit your existing process or educate employees in adapting processes to the idea of the software.

In this short post, we will explore the two ways and see which questions must be answered.

Use case

To depict the topic more clearly, I will explain everything based on fictional use case.

Lets say that employees in Company ACME track their time in a Excel sheet. Every month the superior collects the time sheets, reviews and enters them in a summarized Excel sheet in a very time consuming fashion. As he is not able to aggregate information properly from all the time sheets, he is unaware of how much time is spent on each project over the last year. He is well aware of the insufficency, but claims that he has not found a software that suits his needs yet.

There are tons of time tracking tools on the market. The workflow of these tools follows a common pattern. If you do not want to adopt this pattern, it will be difficult to integrate any time tracking software at all. Each software has a different level of customizability.

How should we approach the superior when trying to explain that a software will make his process more efficient?

Introducing new software

As already mentioned the main goal is to increase productivity. We want to merge the software and business workflows, only then there will be an improvement of the process.

Once this idea is understood, we can move on consulting the ACME company.

New software always needs customization. Technical and business requirements must be fulfilled. Applying customization comes at a cost that must be exceeded the productivity gain, otherwise there is not point in introducing a new software.

Adapt software

Adapting the software to business needs is one possibility to merge the two fields.

The limitations are the technical capabilities of the software. If the software does not support critical workflows it should not be evaluated at all. Take it for granted that there are technical limits where the cost of adapting the software grows exponentially.

Educate employees

Educating employees in using the software is essentials to increase acceptance. Whenever employees are introduced to changes there is wide spectrum of how they handle the situation. There is everything from the welcome, frustrated to the quitter or rebel. Having a well structured roadmap and training for introducing the software is key.

Aside from costs a limiting factor might be the motivation of the employees to relearn. The are used to make their job in specific manner and expect to move in the same way. Are they willing to learn how to use the new software? This is the limitation of moving users towards the software workflow.

The ACME superior must understand that he can move his thinking and employees towards a software workflow. This software workflow if applied correctly can increase his business process dramatically.

Summary

In order to introduce a new software successfully and thus increasing productivity, these requirements must be met:

Adpoting a common pattern

Should you processes be unique to the company or follow an industry pattern? Launching a new software means to adopting a common workflow.

Software needs customization

Software always requires customization. The question is how much is company willing and able to pay? Do they adhere to the idea that a software must be runnable out of the box or do they see the point of customization?

Willing to relearn

Launching a new software means change and change means relearn for most poeple. How much are the employees to willing to relearn?

It is not up to the consultant to answer this questions. The must be answered by the company.