Short story, I need to replace a rather large MS Access development with a Web based solution. When I open up most of the open source “ERP’s”, I just can not believe what hoops people jump thru in these developments. The traditional ways of quote>order>invoice>payment> is not how everyone functions anymore.
Starting at step 3, is where I find most “ERP’s” to fail to do well or quickly at all:
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Locate the customer records for a customer placing an order.
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Create an order for that customer.
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Allow one to lookup items and SEE exactly what you have available. Upfront… Clearly… not buried in some “report”.
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Allow one to jump quickly in and out of Inventory records regards the item being looked at, in order to provide in-depth information about the item (and I have lots of in-depth information required to provide).
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As customer commits to item(s), allow agent to view into each “sell-able” warehouse that the item may reside in, along with how many there are >>> in order to select and immediately secure the exact items offered to the customer. (this includes the selection of exact batch, lot or serial number).
( I.E. I simply can not have 3 items promised to 4 customers, and on some items, I must immediately provide the exact Serial number of the item the customer will receive) -
Allow one to select and confirm the shipping method and price that will be charged for shipping.
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Allow one to immediately process the customers total payment.
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Finally, alert the pickers via dashboard that this order needs to be picked and shipped.
I currently do the above now from ONE form !!! But, then again, I built most it.
Yes, at the end of day, I deal with the evil annoyance of invoicing which populates the ledger, but at least that is a hands off batch operation ( No reason that Sales Order couldn’t be made to post to GL). I could care less about Invoicing in it’s traditional sense, yet so many programs force it on you. Just another wasted step, especially for ecommerce sales that are already paid for at the cart…
Don’t take this wrong… ERPn has some really nice things ! The many visual charts and references are to die for ! But it confuses me when programs touts the deeper things of ERP… But only has one method to walk thru a sale and that tends to require numerous forms and steps (hoops) from a bygone era whether you need them or not.
Maybe hard to explain, but out of the box, every open source ERP seems to follow the same old outdated routine that just adds unnecessary steps and risk to what should be a simple process. (when you have mulitple sales agents on the phone with customers and can not fully secure items at the sales order in my biz, that is a RISK)
If you only sold Butterfly Nets, and not only did you maintain an endless supply of stock, but you also could get whatever you needed from a supplier overnight, well, perhaps this is what these programs can handle ? Heck, some of my procurement take six months to get.
Not giving up yet…