Tag: Odoo CRM
Does your business require Odoo ERP? Look at these aspects and decide.
Building a business is not an overnight endeavor. Spreadsheets and separate solutions may have worked years ago, but that is old news. In the current scenario, the business world is changing every second. It is important for businesses to make informed decisions quickly. Having up-to-date data can help businesses make these decisions that impact them for growth. However, as William Pollard said, “Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.” To achieve that, businesses need Odoo ERP, a centralized information structure.
Read More: 5 Salient Features of Odoo that Make it a Reliable ERP for Enterprises
If you find that your business is experiencing difficulties in managing aspects such as finances, order volume, and customer satisfaction, then maybe it is time to invest in a workable ERP system. Businesses must decide which ERP can solve the majority of their problems and empower their business to succeed in its growth strategy. Before we even get to that, you must know for sure if your business actually needs an ERP system or if you can do without it. This article points you to five distinct signs that show whether you need ERP software. If your business is facing any of these 5 problems, it may be a clear sign that it needs the efficiency introduced by Odoo ERP system.
1. Accessing data related to your business is a horrendous task
Is it a time-consuming task to find out what your average sales margin is or the number of orders per day? Is your company totally dependent on separate systems and spreadsheets? Do you need to update them constantly and reconcile them manually? If your answer is YES to these questions, then this is a clear sign that you need an efficient ERP system to help you.
When your business experiences growth, you will notice that your employees need quick access to data at all times. You would not want your employees running around or calling each other across different departments until they find the information they are looking for. Also, business owners need a holistic view of business operations at any given point in time. Your sales representatives too should be able to view the full transaction history of your customers so that they can increase upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Odoo ERP system helps your entire staff get the necessary information more quickly and effectively. Odoo ERP system produces accurate and real-time data. This will save your staff the precious time that is otherwise used upon the duplication process. It can enable a seamless flow of information across all your departments.
Read more: Top 5 Open-source ERP Systems for Medical Equipment Suppliers
2. You have different software to manage different processes
Do your accounting team and sales team use two different systems while your warehouse team uses the third solution to track shipping and receiving? Do your employees feel that the job of processing orders is a tedious manual task?
Multiple software can create problems such as inaccurate and insufficient data. Odoo ERP can integrate these systems for a smooth business functionality within a single database. It is a source that contains accurate real-time data and prevents information confusion. This in turn helps your employees make quick decisions while freeing up their time to work on high-value projects that promote business growth.
3. Your accounting system is too complicated
Is your accounting department still relying on paper-based invoices and sales orders? Is your staff spending many hours manually entering information into various accounting systems? Has your financial reporting become a horrendous task? If so, you need the Odoo ERP system to make a significant impact and save you some valuable time.
With the Odoo ERP system, you can have all your financials on a single database. This means you can save time in manually cross-posting information and reconciling data. Implementing Odoo ERP reduces frustrations and minimizes delays in delivering critical reports.
Read more: Meeting the HR Requirements With Odoo
4. You have a complex and time-consuming IT system
Is managing your IT system consuming a lot of time? Managing multiple systems can be complex, costly, and time-consuming. Trying to add additional software to an already ineffective system is as good as patching a hole in a bucket with a cotton ball. In contrast, adopting Odoo ERP system gives you the capability to respond effectively to changing business and IT requirements. The cloud-based edition of Odoo ERP offers customized solutions. It increases flexibility and efficiency within your business. It can give you an edge in managing your partners, customers, and suppliers.
5. Your sales are suffering because of bad customer support
Are you finding that your inventory management has become more challenging as your business continues to grow? Are you running out of popular stock just when it is most in demand? Are your employees unable to locate products that your customers are requesting? These situations can undermine the trust of your customers in your reliability and customer service. No business can survive without retaining old customers in addition to acquiring new ones.
Odoo ERP allows your entire staff to access information in real-time. This enables your customer service representatives to answer customer queries without having to transfer them to another department. This also helps warehouse managers to replenish the stock before it completely runs out. It is a failproof way to stay ahead in business competition.
Read More: 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP
You Know You Need ERP. What Next?
If you see these signs in your business, you now know that you need an ERP system, so where do you go from there? You might want to know if it is worth the investment and how you can implement it.
Firstly, remember there is no limit to the improvements brought into your business by a well-implemented Odoo ERP system. It can fix your existing problems and also enhance what is working well, which is the best driver of growth and innovation. The Odoo ERP system is a single powerhouse software that covers all your business requirements. It can improve business efficiency while providing the much-needed flexibility to run your business smoothly. As an integrated management system, Odoo ERP focuses on the main business processes often in real-time. It can collect, store, manage, and interpret data from all aspects of your business. Investing in Odoo ERP software can help businesses improve performance. It can assist with the automation of certain processes within the organization making it a worthwhile investment.
How do you implement it? Fingent is an official partner of Odoo and has hands-on expertise in consulting, implementation, and customization of Odoo for clients all over. We can help you implement and customize Odoo ERP solutions for your business needs and answer any other questions you might have. Get in touch with us and let’s get the conversation started.
Read more: A 3-day Odoo CRM implementation story!
A list of 5 popular open-source ERPs that support healthcare equipment suppliers
The global healthcare expenditure is anticipated to rise at a CAGR of 5% till 2023. The healthcare industry can, therefore, look at a bright future. Medical equipment suppliers have to deal with various challenges. They have to ensure that all products comply with the regulatory guidelines, are of high quality, and are entirely traceable. Robust ERP systems can help medical equipment suppliers to gather insights from data to make quick decisions. Let’s take a look at some of the open-source ERP systems out there that are suitable for SMEs.
1. Odoo ERP
Odoo is an open-source ERP platform that allows ease of deployment. This is specifically helpful for SMEs that do not have dedicated IT infrastructure. The flexibility helps integration of different business processes and systems. Odoo for medical equipment suppliers is a comprehensive ERP solution that helps manage financials and operations with ease.
The core modules of Odoo like Accounting, Project Management, and Inventory Management make it suitable for medical equipment suppliers. Developers can create custom third-party apps to meet the specific needs of a medical equipment supplier. Odoo offers more than 10,000 apps to meet most business needs. Fingent is an official partner of Odoo with years of experience in implementing, customizing, and providing consultation for clients. As an Odoo development company, Fingent has catered to the needs of various customers and streamlined their operations. Our motto of increasing efficiency and ease-of-use has made us a popular choice among various organizations for Odoo implementation requirements.
Read more: 5 Salient Features of Odoo that Make it a Reliable ERP for Enterprises
2. ERPNext
ERPNext is a contemporary ERP solution that allows you to focus on delivering medical equipment of high-quality by effortlessly managing your supply chains. It enables you to intelligently track orders, monitor stock levels, implement promotions, and minimize errors in inventory sourcing. You can leverage the numerous built-in integrations offered by ERPNext and start supplying in no time. With ERPNext, you can have real-time updates on the movement of equipment, control equipment transfers within different warehouses, and generate required reports quickly and easily. You can also create your customized software on-the-fly without any code.
3. Epicor
Medical equipment suppliers have to deal with difficult delivery timelines, complicated pricing arrangements, unique inventory, oversee seller agreements, and concessions. Epicor ERP solution enables you to carry out all your operations with ease. The Epicor Prophet 21 ERP is specifically designed for supply and distribution. This user-friendly ERP system can help suppliers maximize profits and scale without limits. Epicor allows you to integrate all your business applications with RESTful API. You can also automatically manage your warehouses with Epicor Prophet 21. This helps in the smooth running of all processes in your warehouse. This, in turn, improves precision enabling you to provide better services to your customers.
Epicor Commerce Connect helps you to create and maintain an online presence which is the need of the hour. The increased visibility across the supply chain helps medical equipment suppliers even forecast demand.
Read more: ERP or Digital Transformation: The Best Technology Solution For Your Enterprise
4. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics 365 combines the best practices of Microsoft’s ERP, CRM, and BI solutions into a single product that is cloud-based. These features enable the system to scale and grow along with your business. Capabilities like Material Resource Planning and Vendor Self-Service Help minimize vendor lead times and inventory carrying costs. The fully automated warehouse management system (WMS) helps optimize your warehouse space, labor, and resources.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 gives medical device suppliers full visibility across the entire supply chain and the ability to track information and job at all touchpoints. This helps improve efficiency, reduce expenses, and promote smooth communication within different segments of the medical device industry supply chain. As a medical device supplier, you need to understand who has purchased the device from you and whether it has come back for service. You have to take information from different systems and combine those to give meaningful reporting. You also may have to rework your inventory according to changes in regulations. Microsoft Dynamics 365 allows you to be unique in the medical device industry because that’s what gives you the edge.
Read more: ERP E-commerce
5. Oracle NetSuite
Oracle Netsuite is proven to be a very mature SaaS solution that brings in next-level integration and seamless nature to the table. Though NetSuite is ideal for SMEs who can leverage the relatively low-cost entry point, many enterprise-level companies are also considering Netsuite due to the scalability that it provides. Oracle NetSuite helps medical device suppliers to react to the diverse market and deal with different customer bases and different routes-to-market. NetSuite helps you reduce indirect costs and get through the maze of the regulatory framework by allowing modifications and customizations. You get one central source of information that helps simplify the complexities of the medical device business. The flexibility that Oracle NetSuite offers, helps the medical equipment industry to adapt to the changes in customer demand and provide them with what they want and when they want.
Read more: 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP
Conclusion
Analyses of the medical equipment supplies and distribution industry show that companies that have demonstrated the ability to leverage cloud computing and ERP have increased their profitability and revenue. This was achieved as a result of seamless integration of all business processes which enabled real-time financial and operational visibility, better cost management structures, improved forecasting and revenue tracking, and the ability to access data from anywhere.
A large number of medical equipment suppliers usually are small to medium-sized businesses, where the one-off system automation model proves to be inefficient. Cloud-based ERP systems eliminates the old standalone computer systems and replaces them with a single, unified software program. Thus, someone in Finance can easily look into the Warehouse software to check if an order is shipped. ERP cloud computing can help you see exactly where your business is, at any second of the day. You can see how much revenue you’ve earned for the day, how much inventory you have, how you are trending over previous days, months, and years.
Read more: A 3 day Odoo CRM implementation story!
Cloud-based ERP systems becoming the rage for medical equipment suppliers, it’s high time that you too invest in one, if not done already. Fingent helps you leverage the benefits of the open-source ERP systems mentioned above by understanding your unique business requirements. Because we know that this uniqueness is what gives you that competitive edge. Contact us to know more about how your business can benefit from ERP integration.
How your online store can benefit from Odoo ERP integration
The share of global retail sales generated via e-commerce witnesses a steady rise year over year. Thanks to COVID-19! The 2020 digital commerce market saw many new entrants including the brick and mortar purists who were always hostile to investing in modernization.
Looking at the current scenario, we can rest assured that the surge in online shopping activity will not take a back seat even after the economic crisis settles. The increasing convenience offered by multiple digital channels will lure customers to make more purchases online, be it daily necessities, medical supplies, precious gadgets, or other seasonal goods.
As of 2020, there are around 2 bn digital buyers in the world, which is roughly 25% of the global population. According to a study, 20 years down the line, 95% of all purchases are expected to be via e-commerce. Imagine the vast online buying population demanding access to details such as order histories, past invoices, product comparisons, ratings, reviews, descriptions, warranty, usage, and more such data! Is your e-business equipped to handle this?
Read more: Odoo CRM vs Salesforce CRM: How to make the right choice
Any business- small/ medium/ large– ambitious of growing its online presence should tap the right technology, and any e-commerce business that wants to deliver exceptional customer service requires powerful integration with an ERP system. You can consult with an Odoo ERP software development partner for customized needs.
In this post, we look at the five advantages of integrating your e-commerce application/business with Odoo, one of the popular open-source ERPs loved by many leading brands.
Why Odoo, among many?
1. A complete package with multiple functionalities
Odoo ERP is a holistic, full-fledged package that comes with the principal solutions needed for managing a business including sales, CRM, project management, financial management, inventory and warehouse management, manufacturing, logistics, HR, and more. With its 1000+ modules available both on cloud and on-premises, Odoo integration offers a complete software system that allows you to manage your entire e-store from a single location.
Be it your inventories, orders, customers, shipping, tracking, or any other dynamic function, Odoo ERP integration helps manage every task through a single solution, thus eliminating the need for maintaining disparate third-party wares for each module. The integration also supports multiple store management via a single software, maintaining a common inventory for all.
2. Breaks data silos to improve visibility across your business
Siloed data is one of the major challenges that stand in the way of e-commerce companies. This will prevent you from getting a unified view of your operational and experience data essential to expedite your marketing strategy and growth. Post Odoo ERP integration, neither do you need to look into different departments for data, nor do you require to manually enter data into your system.
You can see in your e-commerce application all the key data like your shipping information, product information, inventory levels, customer feedback, etc. By de-compartmentalizing data from multiple systems, Odoo saves your time and labor considerably.
Read more: What makes Odoo the best ERP solution for your business?
3. Flexible payment options
When it comes to adopting a digital payment option, the convenience of customers comes first. It’s important to adopt the payment type that’s both preferable to them as well as compatible with your system. Integrating Odoo ERP into your e-commerce application helps you gain flexibility with the payment method. It allows you to integrate payment gateways such as PayPal, Ogone, Adyen, Buckaroo, Authorize.net, Stipe, etc. You can customize payment through modules suitable for your store.
4. Shipping integration
Odoo ERP can be integrated seamlessly with popular third-party shipping carriers such as FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS, ShippingEasy, and more through APIs. Odoo e-commerce module allows you to use add-on connectors to manage your shipping activities and track your orders from the ERP itself. This enables real-time tracking of data and order fulfillment.
5. Realizes faster ROI and profitability
Getting faster returns is the key pain point of any business. Odoo ERP- eCommerce integration will help you realize faster ROI and profitability by performing a precise analysis of your sales and inventory via reports and automatic stock adjustments. The ERP allows you to stay organized with updated customer information by tracking orders and claims. Besides, your customers can view or download their invoices and track their order status, pending shipments, and deliveries.
Read more: A 3-day Odoo CRM implementation story!
Explore unlimited possibilities with Odoo
As technology advances, the need to simplify customer experience also moves to the next level. Implementing a smarter business process management solution while keeping your investments to the bare minimum will require you to bank you on the safe shores of an open-source ERP like Odoo. With its powerful inventory and sales management features and easy-to-integrate modules, Odoo makes the best contender for small and medium businesses to scale up in the e-commerce space.
Fingent is an Official Partner of Odoo with an ace team that offers consulting, development, and implementation services. Whether you want to integrate Odoo ERP with your existing e-commerce store or build an online store from scratch powered by Odoo integration, give us a call right away.
A Head-to-head Comparison of Odoo CRM vs. Salesforce
The race for business success is tough. Mimicking your competitors in what is working for them might seem like a good idea, but it will get you nowhere in the long run. Success comes only when you find that perfect recipe that is unique to your organization and gets you a notch above everyone else. This is particularly true when it comes to your CRM software. You must choose the right software that fits your sales teams’ unique and complex needs perfectly.
The quest for that perfect CRM software requires analyzing various crucial factors. Making the right choice can radically impact the effectiveness of your daily operations and boost the productivity of your sales team. The factors you need to consider are vendor reliability, real total implementation cost, pros and cons, full list of features, and user reviews. In this article, we provide a comparison of Odoo CRM and Salesforce CRM against six key criteria. We hope this helps you in making an informed decision.
Read more: Odoo CRM Vs SAP CRM: How to Choose Between Them
What is the Difference?
Salesforce is often described as “the world’s #1 CRM sales app.” It claims to put everything you need at your fingertips – accessible from anywhere. It makes collaboration across your global organization easier and gets your deals done faster.
Odoo, on the other hand, is often described as “the open-source ERP and CRM.” It is a business management software that includes CRM, e-commerce, accounting, billing, warehouse, manufacturing, project management, and inventory management.
So, here we’re comparing these two popular CRMs against these 6 criteria:
1. Marketing automation comparison
One of the proven strategies to generate sales by any enterprise around the globe is being able to send messages to customers at exactly the right time. In this regard, both Odoo and Salesforce have great marketing automation features.
- Salesforce allows you to send a customized email to your customer through web personalization.
- Odoo kicks it up a notch, allowing you to design an entire workflow for your enterprise. You can automate your action depending on the customer’s reaction to your email which might include replying to your email or deleting it.
2. Cost comparison
The actual cost of CRM software includes the subscription fee, software license, software training, and customization cost, hardware, and the cost of other services such as support and maintenance. It is crucial that you account for all the costs involved to understand the system’s “total cost of ownership.”
- Salesforce CRM starts at $25 per user/month. They also offer a yearly plan. Apart from this, you will have to make additional payments for integrations that you will add to your software.
- Odoo CRM too starts at $25 per user/month but offers a free plan which is helpful for startup companies. Although integrating paid apps incurs charges, the Odoo Community Edition is free.
3. Integration comparison
Your software serviceability requires powerful integrations.
- Salesforce can integrate with a variety of apps making it suitable for all businesses.
- Being an open-source software Odoo provides free apps that can be integrated into any kind of business.
4. Contact management comparison
One of the key capabilities that businesses require is the ability to view and manage contacts.
- Since Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM, it can obtain certain missing details of your contacts from other sources in the cloud. Also, it can analyze the interactions between the contacts over various social media platforms which can be a great help to your business in generating leads.
- Odoo gives you complete access to the history of business interactions for each customer. This allows you to adjust your business strategies according to the purchasing habits of your customers. You can also synchronize Odoo with your Google Calendar so you can keep track of your meetings and additional follow-ups.
5. Dashboards and reports comparison
While dashboards assist you in presenting and viewing your business performance, reports help you audit sales and gauge work performance. Dashboards and reports help you make smart business decisions.
- Salesforce allows you to build a customized dashboard according to your business requirements.
- Odoo offers free apps to create customized dashboards allowing you to create a variety of reports, balance sheets, tax reports, and bank reconciliation.
6. Vendor comparison
- Salesforce is a global software company best known for its cloud-based CRM. In 2012, Fortune ranked Salesforce 27 in its 100 best companies to work for. It was also listed in the New York Stock Exchange.
- The Odoo community has 1,500 active members and has contributed over 4,500 modules. It has a network of certified partners established in over 100 countries. Odoo is one of the most frequently installed business suites with more than 1,500 downloads per day.
Read more: A 3-day Odoo CRM implementation story!
Make An Informed Decision
While taking a decision, remember to compare the features of Salesforce and Odoo through the lens of usability, flexibility, and the unique needs of your employees and business. The highly modular and customizable solution provided by Odoo CRM is designed specifically for cost-effective and high-performance scalability and growth.
Although Odoo is newer to the market when compared to Salesforce, this open-source CRM is used by certain popular names such as Hyundai, Toyota, and Alta Motors. There is no denying that Odoo has gained the trust of many users and is highly coveted by businesses of all sizes including SMEs/ SMBs.
Read more: Meeting the HR Requirements With Odoo
Fingent is an Official Partner of Odoo and has hands-on expertise in the consulting, implementation, and customization of Odoo for clients across several industries. If you need further help in making your decision or want to get started with Odoo, give us a call right away.
What makes Odoo the best ERP solution for your business?
As business leaders, you may find that you’re spending too much time running your company rather than growing it. You may easily get bogged down due to exhaustive paperwork, long spreadsheets, or have to assemble discrete software to actually work together. This is where the open-source Odoo ERP comes to your rescue. With its vast suite comprising over 40 business productivity applications, Odoo provides a smoother and simpler way to run your business. The range of business apps offered by Odoo is highly comprehensive, fully-integrated, easy to use, and supports numerous different industries. Fingent, utilizing its partnership with Odoo ensures their clients are leveraging one or more apps from Odoo to boost their business efficiencies.
With Odoo, you can easily create your professional website, manage your relationship with customers, design and launch your own marketing strategies, and manage online payments through e-commerce. You also have Odoo apps to manage your warehouse, accounts, and invoicing behind the scenes.
Whatever be your business needs, Odoo provides apps that work together seamlessly. Though a relatively young contender, Odoo comes packed with powerful ERP features and a user-friendly interface like any other market leaders such as SAP, Oracle, MS Dynamics, and so on.
Read more: Odoo CRM Vs SAP CRM: How to Choose Between Them
Here are 5 distinguishing features of Odoo that make it a reliable ERP for any business.
1. Easy to set up and use
Odoo has a very clean, consistent, easy-to-use interface. It is also easy to set up and configure. You can effortlessly carry out an entire transaction all the way from a quotation to the sales order, invoice, and payment due to the consistency between the various applications within Odoo. It helps you to get started within no time.
2. Powerful communication tools
Odoo has powerful inbuilt communication tools. They use messaging systems to keep track of internal communications on either your sales orders, invoices, or purchasing. So if you have a question on your sales order, you can write a message to all the followers of the sales order at the bottom of the documents. Thus, you can attach notes and messages and communicate directly from within the document giving you a great audit trail. All the team members stay on the same page both literally and figuratively!
Read more: Meeting Your HR Requirements with Odoo
3. Integrated front-end and back-end tools
You can have a full-blown website builder with a single click. So, once you install the web platform, you can use it integrated with all the other Odoo applications. Odoo provides powerful e-commerce tools that integrate with your website and are completely tied-in to the web framework. Moreover, the shopping cart looks clean, is built-in to the e-commerce app, and is ready-to-go. Another interesting feature of Odoo is that even if a customer didn’t make it to checkout and has just added items to his cart, you can view it as a draft in Quotations instead of a full Sales Order.
4. Great mobile support
Though Odoo is completely web-based, it looks pretty good on mobile phones and tablets. You even get a mobile preview to check how your website is going to look like. So, unlike a lot of legacy accounting systems that are still trying to catch up, Odoo was founded as a three-tier mobile application platform and it has continued to improve.
5. Powerful enterprise and cloud solutions
Odoo has very powerful enterprise and cloud solutions. You can host it yourself or on Amazon, or on digital cloud. You can also use Odoo.com or Odoo’s own hosted solution. Thus, there are a lot of different ways to host it as Odoo is very cloud friendly. Fingent extends support for deploying Odoo on web servers like AWS and other secure environments.
Other factors that make Odoo unique
Odoo is highly customizable, completely open-source, utilizes Industry Standard Libraries, and is written in Python. The backend database is PostgreSQL which is also open source. Another important aspect is that you can build custom Odoo Applications without modifying the source code. You can easily upgrade or extend without breaking things.
Read more: A 3-day Odoo CRM implementation story!
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that going digital is no longer an option, but a necessity. Choosing the right ERP that suits your business requirements and unlocks the returns on your investment can help you get there. The modular framework has given Odoo a wide functional scope. While using Odoo, enterprises do not need to resort to 3rd party platforms or use additional bridging software to build fully integrated websites. Thus, Odoo supports the uniqueness of each business. This ability to customize every aspect of your system gives you a competitive advantage. And all this can be done at minimal cost, compared to the other ERP systems available in the market. As enterprises have to look at the eventual ROI before implementing an ERP system, Odoo shines because of its functionality, scalability, and affordability. Partnering with Fingent, a leading custom software development company, ensures that your projects are meticulously customized for effortless adaptability. Contact us today to strategize and develop a reliable Odoo application that will seamlessly assist your daily business operations.