How to customize OpenERP for out of-the-box approaches-frederic. Frederic Gilson, OpenERP

Quickstart

How to customize OpenERP

for out-of-the-box approaches

Frédé r i c G ILSONFunc t i ona l Consu l ta n t

OpenDays – Ju ly 5th 2013

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Quickstart

It's all about mindset!

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Quickstart

What do I want to reach?

● Reduce the time spent behind the screenGain of productivity: able to do other activities within the company

● Less clicks to find the info → Faster response time

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Case 1: Water machines

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Case 1: Water machines

A company of +- 5 people, selling water machines for restaurants. They sell around 100 machines a year.

Initial Customer demand:

Follow the prospection and gather all the information about customers;

Selling water machines and maintenance contracts being invoiced monthly;

Some machine are in stock, some are rent by customers, others are being tested by customers or under repair at the workplace;

Manage the stock of machines with full traceability on serial numbers and maintenance operations (with complex sheet to fill in) on each machine.

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Case 1: CRM

● How to manage the prospection and the contacts management?

● OpenERP CRM:

● Leads created at the external call center (log calls)

● Custom Opportunities' stages:

New → Test machined installed → Negotiation → Won or Lost

● Create offers from opportunities

● Agenda (meetings)

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Case 1: Invoicing

● How to manage the selling/invoicing process?

● Contracts Management:

● Automated recurring invoicing once a month

● Renewal date

● Full invoicing history

● Could be used later to compare costs & revenues

● First step:invoice amounts manually added at the contracts creation (no services encoded so far)

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Case 1: Traceability

● How to manage the machines moves & traceability?

● What about the Task Kanban view?

● Edit the stages (In stock, at customer, at workplace, etc)

● Each machine is a task● Can be associated to a customer and to a contract

● The serial number is the task name

● Simple process: no value added in using Stock, Serial Numbers, Repair, etc

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Case 1: Maintenance

● How to keep track of maintenance operations?

● Complex view customization?

NO!

● Google Docs integration!

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Case 1: Do Not

Do Not:● Do not offer custom developments → It's a max 5 users company, their “initial”

budget is max 10k€. Furthermore, there won't be any value added in that case!● Do not deploy a server on premise: 3k€ extra for hardware and maintenance,

complexities for email gateway/servers, updates, migrations, etc.● Do not propose complex modules:

e.g. Stock Management with serial numbers, full traceability and Repair module → Too complex and no value added for 100 machines/year

● Do not try to answer all their need as it, but find an alternative solution for all their need (i.e. no automatic accounting synchronization as a first step).

● Do not try to automate everything, it's not a problem if some operations remains manual (e.g. produce the monthly invoice with information coming from the maintenance) → today all these operations are manual.

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Case 1: Results

● Very happy customer: 10k€ project including OpenERP Enterprise, training and support

● Customer in production and regurlary buys extra services (1 or 2 days) for new demands

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Case 2: Service Company

The customer:

Service company with 20 users

Initial Customer demand: Traditional service company: timesheets, contracts, sales,

invoices, projects

Advanced reporting needs: sales commissions, forecasts of sales, budgets, etc.

Lots of interrests in extra modules: holidays management,

Accounting need to be covered

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Case 2: Do Not

Do not propose custom developments for reporting purposes: risks of exploding the project budget for just 7 reports

Do no not answer all needs in one big phase: risks of having a blocking point in one application/department

Do not start analyzing customer need in all area (hr, management, sales, invoicing, ...)

Do not cover accounting unless you are sure the accountant is ready for this.

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Case 2: What we did

How did we answered customer need: All reporting need are covered by Google Spreadsheet integration, no

custom devs. (http://bit.ly/16NxQhs)

Initially, the customer did not want a Google integration (security issues) but we convinced him. → what do you prefer? 15k€ of custom devs vs 2k€ of Google Spreadsheet integration

Instead of a GAP analysis of all it's need (sales, hr, accounting, ...): A good demonstration to convince him

An offer of 5 days to cover the base operations: sales, timesheet, invoicing, reporting

All extra features (holidays management, analytic accounting,...) not included in the offer to limit risk of complex need to handle

No accounting integration for now on, to limit risk of resistance to change from the accountant. Will be discussed later.

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Case 2: Results

● Very happy customer, 8k€ project including training, support

Customer already asked 5k€ of extra features to deploy

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Case 3: Expertise Company

Let's watch a short video...

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Case 3: Expertise Company● The customer:

● 8 employees managing expert reports and about 20 external experts

● Initial customer demand:

● Manage the service process:

● Entering a new mission asked from an insurance company (lots of files attached)

● Find the right expert according to the demand● Subcontract the job to the expert● Follow-up● Invoice the insurance

● With full traceability on all operations and automated emails

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Case 3: Do Not

● Do not go for specific developments:

The customer got a quote from an OpenERP partner for 40k€, mostly in specific developments (limited training & support)

The customer budget was 15k€

● Do not be afraid of high customizations in terms of views and automated actions

● Do not start doing custom workflows (too complex and will end up in custom developments)

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Case 3: What we did

How did we answered customer need:● Process managed by the Issues Kanban view in Project with

custom columns: Initial Demand, Find Expert, Case Filed, etc● About 20 fields added in the Issues form view:

● Broker, insured, etc● Number of visits, description of the case, etc

● High usage of “base action rules” to:● Automate emails for each step of the process● Automate transitions from one column to another

● Why issues? To invoice from timesheets in a second step● Traceability / Documents: chatter feature of v7

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Automated actions

Trigger server actions:

● Assign responsibles / followers

● Send emails

● Change field values

● Etc.

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Summary

What do I want to reach?

● Reduce the time spent behind the screenGain of productivity: able to do other activities within the company

● Less clicks to find the info → Faster response time

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Case 3: Results

● Very happy customer, 15k€ project including training, support

● Customer already asked 10k€ of extra features to deploy (+help in import)

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Summary

● First step:

● OpenOffice Report Designer

● View customization

● Google Docs integration

● YOUR CREATIVITY... → Try to stick to the most simple modules!

● Second step:

● More complicated modules

● Automated actions

● Google Spreadsheet synchronization

● Webkit for more elabored reports

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And now...

It's you to play!

Thank you!