OpenERP with the launch of OpenERP 7.0 Introduces the First Portal of Integrated Business Applications

OpenERP, the world’s most installed management software, today announces that OpenERP 7.0 has been completely redesigned to feature a stunning user interface, a full featured library of open source business apps, an out-of-the-box use with no prior configuration at the impressive price of $39 or 35 EUR per month for the enterprise edition.

OpenERP 7.0 comes with new modules including: brand new touch screen Point-of-Sale, new contract management, timesheet, fleet management apps, LinkedIn and Google docs integration, social collaboration between apps which promises an alternative to traditional email, innovative kanban views to manage sales pipeline and projects, an integrated customer portal, reviewed productivity tools including GTD notes, agenda and address book.

About OpenERP:

OpenERP is Open Source. The community, comprised of 1200 active members, has contributed 2000 modules and has translated the software in over 25 languages. The network of 430 certified partners, established in 100 countries, deploys the solution locally. With 30,000 installations per month, is one of the most frequently installed business suites worldwide. Venture-funded, OpenERP raised $4 million in February 2010. For more information, see http://www.openerp.com .

At Bista solutions :

We are the official Silver partners of OpenERP and have completed many implementation of the same for our clients across the globe. We offer OpenERP implementation, customization, support & integration services to our clients. You can mail us on sales@bistasolutions.com for more inquiries

How Modern ERP Systems Revolutionize Inventory Management

ERP System in Inventory Management

In today’s dynamic business environment, effective inventory management is pivotal for operational success, especially for businesses like wholesale supermarkets with vast product ranges and complex stock items a high-tech electronics retailer, or a rapidly growing e-commerce platform. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have emerged as essential tools in organizing and managing inventories with precision and efficiency.

The Evolution of ERP in Inventory Management

Traditionally, ERP systems were recognized for their ability to streamline financial transactions and basic inventory management. However, as we delve into 2024, ERP technologies have leaped forward, embracing innovations like Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics, profoundly transforming how businesses handle their inventory.

1. AI and Machine Learning: Intelligent Decision-Making

AI-infused ERP systems use machine learning algorithms to analyze data, recognize patterns, and offer intelligent insights. This capability is crucial for automating routine tasks and optimizing inventory levels, thereby enhancing decision-making processes​.

2. IoT Integration: Real-Time Monitoring and Efficiency

The integration of IoT devices with ERP systems allows for the collection of real-time data from interconnected sensors and equipment. This integration is instrumental in monitoring and optimizing production processes, thereby reducing maintenance downtime and improving resource allocation​.

3. Predictive Analytics: Proactive Inventory Management

Predictive analytics within ERP systems utilize historical and real-time data to forecast market trends and demand patterns. This foresight enables businesses to proactively adjust inventory management and pricing strategies, ensuring optimal stock levels and reducing the risk of overstocking or stockouts​.

4. Blockchain and Cybersecurity: Ensuring Data Integrity

The integration of blockchain technology in ERP systems enhances data security, providing a transparent and immutable ledger. This is particularly valuable in tracking supply chain transactions and ensuring product authenticity​.

5. Cloud-based ERP: Accessibility and Cost-Effectiveness

Cloud computing in ERP provides businesses with on-demand access to computing resources. The cloud-based model of ERP offers flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, eliminating the need for heavy investment in IT infrastructure​.

6. Mobile ERP: Empowering Remote Management

The enhancement of mobile ERP applications allows for on-the-go access to crucial inventory data. Users can retrieve and update information from their smartphones or tablets, making inventory management more flexible and responsive​.

7. Customizable and Industry-Specific Solutions

2024 sees a rise in industry-specific ERP solutions. These tailored systems cater to the unique requirements of various sectors, including retail, with specialized features for inventory management and point-of-sale integrations​.

8. Sustainability: Aligning with Global Responsibility

ERP systems are now integrating features that help businesses monitor and manage their environmental impact, aligning inventory management with broader global sustainability trends​.

The Future of ERP and Inventory Management

As ERP systems continue to evolve, they become more than just tools for resource management; they are catalysts for innovation, adaptability, and growth. By leveraging the latest trends in ERP technology, businesses can enhance their inventory management, making it more agile, efficient, and aligned with modern-day challenges.

If you’re considering modernizing your inventory management system with advanced ERP solutions, feel free to reach out to us at Bista Solutions. Our team of experts can guide you through the process of selecting and implementing the most suitable ERP system for your business needs. Contact us via our contact form or at sales@bistasolutions.com for more information.

Advantages of using Custom made ERP software

ERP software customization

What if you are able to get an ERP software that is:

  • An exact fit for your organization and its users
  • Flexible  and helps you through changes in organizational business processes

Does this sound too good to be true?

In this post, we will shed some light on how customized ERP software can help your organization to achieve your enterprise management.

There are many ERP software available that supports specific business processes such as sales management, purchase management, warehouse management or manufacturing, which can be implemented and used as an out of the box solutions without any customizations.

While such out-of-box ERP software has advantages, the main disadvantage is that either you have you make use of the system as is and add manual business processes around it or you need to change your business processes itself to match the software features. Such software tools are by definition inflexible and cannot adapt to changes in the organization or business processes.

This is where customized ERP solutions come to the rescue.

Custom ERP software allows you to meet all your business processes and even remove features that you don’t need.

Customize ERP software is less expensive.This is especially true if you use an open source ERP software such as OpenERP which is easy to customize using the plug-ins and modules from the developer community.

Custom ERP helps you run your current business processes smoothly since the software can be tailor made to fit your organization rather than your organization changing to match the software features.

Per User Personalization  – You can personalize the user interface of the ERP system at a per user level. This means each user sees only the information that is relevant for him and no more.

In our previous posting, we have covered some of the common misconceptions about using customized ERP system. Do check out our next post – share it and comment your views

Automated Emails for Sales Orders in OpenERP

Here is another interesting feature that we implemented for one of our clients in USA. This feature provides automated confirmation of sales orders in OpenERP  via email rather than logging into OpenERP. This automated feature of OpenERP Sales Orders,We call it as “Sales Order Confirmation by Email”

Use Case Scenario #1

For example, when  a customer is purchasing a product from your company, you can create a sales order in OpenERP. This feature will send an automatic email to the customer who can either reject or accept the sales order directly from the email.

Odoo ERP sale order mail

Use Case Scenario #2

Below is an example for Repair order.  In this case – there is an authorization required from the customer before starting a repair of an iPhone. This authorization can now be collected via an automatic email.

Odoo ERP Automated mail

Advantages of this innovation

  • Customer doesn’t need to login into OpenERP to confirm the sales order.
  • Reduce time for processing multiple sales orders

If you’re interested in this feature or in customizing your ERP system, get in touch. You can reach us using our contact form.

A Note on Quality Assurance in Software Development

quality in Software Development

Quality Assurance in Software application plays an important role and cannot be ignored in software development,  although there are vendors who consider Quality assurance as less important process and ignore them during the software designing or development phase. But in real terms quality plays one of the major role in the development since lack of quality in the coding or during software development may lead to nonacceptance of the project or failure in client requirements.

Although “Implementation of an ERP software or a CRM software is not a success, The success lies when the client start using it.”

Quality Assurance is not just testing the product although testing is a part of Quality Assurance. Quality assurance is a broader concept which start from the inception stage and end at final software inspection. QA process need both verification and validation.

The complete concept of Quality Assurance in software development ensure you with confirmation on the functionality, usability, efficiency, portability, Maintainability & reliability. Hence Proper QA allows you to have a high quality software development and and happy customer base.

If you’re interested in implementing ERP or have any questions, you can reach us using our contact form.

Common Misconceptions about Customized ERP Software

Today there are so many software tools available in the market – both proprietary and open source -that offer you with customizations as per your business requirements. There are many people who argue that development of a customized ERP software is quite costly as compared to the off-the-shelf ERP or plain vanilla ERP implementations. This argument is based on the logic that the modules and the code of the core ERP need to be modified which leads to increase in time and hence cost.

The above mentioned argument about higher costs is based on several misconceptions.

Misconception #1: Off the Shelf ERP system will have all the features that the company needs

The ERP systems sold off-the- shelf don’t have all the features that a company needs. There is always a set of features missing from the off-the-shelf products leading to a feature gap.

Misconception #2:  Off-the-Shelf ERP products do not need any customization

The feature gaps in off-the-shelf ERP products need to be filled by writing additional code or by using manual business processes. Further, business processes at different companies are always different. For example: a tire manufacturing company has different processes compared to an E-Commerce vendor. Hence any off-the-shelf ERP tool must be customized to fit the specific business requirements at a customer to make it really productive.

Misconception #3: Customizing ERP software takes long to implement

The time taken to customize an ERP software depends upon the extent of changes you want to make. For example: in the case of Odoo OpenERP Customizations, there are many ready made plug-ins and modules developed by individual contributors and partners. These library of plug-ins and modules drastically reduces the time taken to customize ERP.

Misconception #4: Customization is Expensive

Customization need not be expensive.  Custom ERP implementation companies have come up with cost-efficient delivery models. For example: Bista Solutions has a development center in India which is a low-cost nation. Using such delivery models, customization of ERP falls well within affordable budgets. Secondly compared to proprietary licensed ERP tools, open source ERP such as Odoo Open ERP comes almost free of cost (you pay for support warranties). Hence you end up saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in total cost of ownership (TCO)

If you’re interested in implementing or customizing an ERP system, get in touch. Bista Solution has over a decade of experience implementing business solutions for hundreds of companies.

Odoo Implementation Quality Assurance by Bista Solutions

Quality Assurance

We at Bista solutions – Official partners of Odoo OpenERP – are pleased to announce our Quality Assurance & Control initiatives. Bista Solution has been delivering Odoo OpenERP related projects to multiple customers across the world. We have introduced a specialised Quality Assurance team would be working with our customers and well as our development team inside our company to ensure that all our projects are delivered with world-class quality.

Our team development team uses the Agile development methodology for delivering features to our ERP customers. The QA team will augment this development methodology with new quality initiatives and processes.

With an addition of the QA team, we are now a team of 50+ people located across India, USA, Canada and Europe.

Major Services we offer for Odoo OpenERP implementations

  • Odoo OpenERP implementation & Customizations
  • Odoo OpenERP for Manufacturing & eCommerce verticals
  • Training on OpenERP
  • Integration with 3rd party tools such as shipping services, eBay integration, Amazon Integration, Paypal integration etc.
  • Onsite Implementation
  • Business Requirement Analysis
  • Open ERP Business Consulting and more…..

Feel free to contact sales@bistasolutions.com for more information

OpenERP Invoicing

OpenERP maintains different logistics for Invoice Automation.  It also allows you to have acutomatice generation of invoices as per the workflows. Invoicing also helps you to remove the double encoding. Invoicing Module comes up with the following key points:

  • A powerful pricelist system
  • Important follow up Module

The Invoice includes the following documents:

  • The Customer Invoice
  • The Supplier Invoice
  • A Customer Credit Note or Customer Refund
  • A Supplier Credit Note or Supplier Refund

The invoice type and the representation mode differ for each of the above four documents. But they are all stored in the same object type in the system.

If you wants to know more then contact us today.

Hey Kadri,

i will do it next week Monday if this ok for you? I still have not received a report from my staff and on the other hand I’m currently in China.

Greetings

Scope of OpenERP implementations

scope of openerp

Scope of OpenERP by www.bistasolutions.com

OpenERP one of the leading Open Source ERP software for small and medium-sized businesses and a modular solution for various verticals supporting Sales Management, Purchase Management, Inventory management, Accounting, Human Resources, Manufacturing, and others together. Apart from this many other modules to support your enterprise needs and enterprise resource planning.

After completing more than 30 implementations of OpenERP across the globe for our client we would like to highlight the scope of OpenERP implementation in your organization. Any ERP software must provide success in your organization business processes and hence ERP software is meant to provide you with strategic insights, increase productivity and flexibility and reliability of your organization.

Today OpenERP is considered as one of the best open source ERP software implemented by many small and mid-sized business to control their business activities may it is for various verticals such as Education, Manufacturing industry, online businesses, Trading organizations or Services.

Here we go with some of the benefits of OpenERP for your organization OpenERP offers you with the functionality you require to increase the effects of your departments or across your enterprise.

  • OpenERP allows you with Business Automation. Being a web based software OpenERP allows you to integrate your entire department by collaborating the data in real time.
  • OpenERP also provides you with linking of your various branches, and departments across different location through multi – company and multi-currency feature.
  • Complete dashboards in opener allow you to monitor your customers, suppliers, vendors, and partners.
  • OpenERP allows you to keep day to day sales tracking via CRM and Sales management Module, in addition, it also helps you to manage the invoices or payments.
  • There are many other points which OpenERP allows you to achieve some of them are being open source there is no licensing and vendor lock-in.

For a demo on OpenERP or to know how OpenERP can help your organization to automate business processes you can contact us here.

ERP Customizations – Key Factors towards implementations

ERP implementation

ERP implementations by many companies in this 21st century here we come up with another post on why erp customization plays an important role in the development. Let begin with 2 examples the first is the ERP  implementation which is out of the box or default is one aspect of ERP implementations and tweaking the module to suit the business requirement (Customizations ) is another important part of ERP implementations.

After completing 30+ implementations successfully towards ERP implementation we found out that many of our clients no matter Small and mid-sized businesses or big organizations wants to implement customize module in the ERP system to suit their business requirement.  The changing Era of technology has proved today that ERP systems are not similar which a decade ago was – this applies to many aspects of ERP software such as Mobility, Speed, integrations, Customizations, Technology, Support & Timeframe.

ERP customizations are the key factor nowadays company are considering while selecting the software. Main reasons towards ERP customizations are that companies can insure that further changes in the software is available when workflows or business changes. Organizations don’t want to invest big amount in rigid ERP software.

Another importance of ERP customizations are that it allows the business workflows and management to remain the same – it means you have a customized software and customized module with you which doesn’t require changing the structure and work as per the available modules and workflow of the ERP software.

Today there are various software available who offers you with customizations in the tool as per your requirement. This is especially in the Open source software category where the developers and companies are creating various kind of modules for their clients to suit their business requirement. Apart from this being open source the modules are available in the community which can be modified further.

If you’re interested in an ERP customization or have any questions, get in touch with us today.