Quickstart

How to customize OpenERP

for out-of-the-box approaches

Fr d r i c G I L S O N
Fu n c t i o n a l C o n s u l t a n t
OpenDays July 5th 2013

Quickstart
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It's all about mindset!

Quickstart
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What do I want to reach?

Reduce the time spent behind the screen

Gain of productivity: able to do other activities within
the company

Less clicks to find the info Faster response

time

Case 1: Water machines

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Case 1: Water machines

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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.

Case 1: CRM
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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)

Case 1: Invoicing
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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)

Case 1: Traceability
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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

Case 1: Maintenance
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How to keep track of maintenance operations?

Complex view customization?

NO!

Google Docs integration!

Case 1: Do Not
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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.

Case 1: Results
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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

Case 2: Service Company

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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

Case 2: Do Not
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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.

Case 2: What we did

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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.

Case 2: Results
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Very happy customer, 8k project

including training, support
Customer already asked 5k of extra
features to deploy

Case 3: Expertise Company

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Let's watch a short video...

Case 3: Expertise Company

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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

Case 3: Do Not
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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)

Case 3: What we did

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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

Automated actions
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Trigger server actions:

Assign responsibles / followers

Send emails

Change field values

Etc.

Summary
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What do I want to reach?

Reduce the time spent behind the screen

Gain of productivity: able to do other activities within
the company

Less clicks to find the info Faster response

time

Case 3: Results
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Very happy customer, 15k project including

training, support
Customer already asked 10k of extra
features to deploy (+help in import)

Summary
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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

Thank you!
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And now...
It's you to play!