Review of Opentaps, an Open Source ERP + CRM Solution
Overview:
Opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM is an integrated Java enterprise application that offers accounting, ecommerce, Point Of Sales, warehouse, inventory, manufacturing, and supply chain management. It is ideal for retail, distribution, and manufacturing companies looking to streamline and bring together all aspects of their operations. It can be used “out of box” or modified to fit the exact needs of the company.
Opentaps is built on Java J2EE with a Service Oriented Architecture and Model-View-Controller framework and compatible with all major databases, including MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server and can be deployed on Windows, Linux, and Unix servers. Opentaps is free software and can be downloaded and modified without charge by users.
Installing Opentaps was relatively simple. Java runtime was the only major requirement to get it going on Windows. Users do have to figure out some paths on the command line because they are missing from the documentation, but the steps are simple.
It charges $150 per user per year with a minimum of 10 users for professional support. The support only covers standard tech support incidents. A commercial license starts at a minimum of $5,000 per year for five users.
General Features:
- Fully integrate sales and marketing with customer service, warehouse, supply chain, online and physical stores, and accounting
- Support unlimited stores, catalogs, categories, and products
- Cross-sells and upsells for products
- Support physical products, digital and downloadable products, variant products, configurable products, and customer gift cards
- Price rules for customer or group-specific pricing
- Online store promotion engine
- Integration with major payment gateway providers
- Fully integrated online and Point of Sales (POS) stores out-of-the-box
CRM Features
- Automate sales process from lead gathering to conversion
- Manage sales opportunities
- Create sales visibility with forecasts
- Share calendar and tasks with the entire team
- Share and manage documents
- Browser-based email with integration to email server
- Customer services and case management
- Quotes, order entry, and order prioritization
- Manage marketing campaigns, including outbound emails and call management
- Tracking code reporting and management
- Address lookup and correction via USPS
- Voice Over IP (VOIP) Integration
Warehouse and Manufacturing Features
- Track non-serialized, serialized, and lot-based inventory
- Host third-party or “virtual” inventory
- Manage entire manufacturing process with Bill of Materials (BOM), production tasks, and work orders
- Automate production and purchasing calendar with Material Resources Planning (MRP)
- Fulfill orders efficiently with picking lists, web-based packing station, and shipment scheduling
- Integration with UPS, FedEx, and DHL
Financial Management and Accounting Features
- Industry standard double entry general ledger
- Supports multiple organizations with unlimited hierarchy of accounts
- Manage accounts receivables (AR) and accounts payables (AP), including invoices, payments, statements, aging
- Produce financial and tax statements
- Fully integrated with orders, inventory, purchasing, manufacturing out-of-the-box
Disadvantages:
ChannelWeb reports the following disadvantages for opentaps:
Opentaps does provide a macro-based model to simplify the OFBiz Java code. The Opentaps API provides form widgets, tables and Ajax-based page refreshes. But technical documentation is poor at best. The reference material, code samples and module testing are better suited for quality assurance testers. Opentaps mixes OFBiz developer-centric documents with its application API. Reviewers analyzed some of the JavaDocs application APIs and found almost no information on class and method usage.
Conclusion:
By bringing together ERP and CRM with mobility integration and business intelligence, opentaps is now a unique and powerful platform for solving business problems
You can use opentaps as an alternative to expensive and inflexible commercial ERP solutions, as a replacement for in-house solutions that are difficult to maintain or extend, or as a starting point to build your unique business model and processes.
The release of opentaps 1.4 is a significant milestone to create free and openly available business applications, but it is also the beginning of a new journey to create a whole new kind of application.
Source: Wikipedia
Filed under Customer Relationship Management, ERP, Enterprise Software, Open Source Platform