Looking for a modern ERP system?
A few months after we deployed the system, I was very pleasantly surprised that it works without any interruptions. In other words, we did not need to optimize it, restart it, take it down for back ups etc. It just kept chugging for months on end without a reboot.
The only time I had to take the server down was to move it from the Frankfurt hosting zone to the Mumbai hosting zone. I felt my sister’s business would be better from Mumbai than in Frankfurt. See the uptime robot stats for my servers. Whether it is a production site or a demo site, the performance remains stable and almost consumes very little resources.
16 Months of Secure, Stable and Simplicity !!!
When I started to think about starting a business helping small business adopt ERPNext, I really wanted to dig in and validated whether the Rule #4 was true and demonstrable.
Looking backwards, I would say I might have based a bit too much faith on the Rule #4 to be true.
Therefore, In March 2018, So I went and analyzed the forum’s structure, usage, user base and see what I can learn about the community.
And here are my findings.
ERPNext has a thriving user community! A great user community is the engine of any open source software. Whether you have 10 people or 10k people matters a lot.
The discussion forum ( https://discuss.erpnext.com) has more than 7500 users. The user base is growing at about ~600 new users every quarter. There are about ~1000 active users in any quarter (make a new post or reply to a post).
Now, here is a killer estimate. For each ERPNext user on the discussion forum, there are likely about 10x more ERPNext users who haven’t signed up because they are supported by ERPNext Service Providers (ESPs). So by that estimate, there are close to 50k to 100k users who are directly using ERPNext on a regular basis.
For example, I have installed it for 3 businesses (all pro-bono) and each of them has about 5 to 6 users per business. And I am just getting started.
27% of the people that signed up in 2017, are still active in 2018.
14% of the people that signed up in 2016, are still active in 2018.
What that tells me is that not only the user base is growing, they are particularly sticky and that stickiness is ALSO growing!
In 2018, From Monday to Friday, there are a little over 150 new posts or replies. As you can see, the community also likes to rest a bit and operate at about 50% throughput. And the activity is going up!
So after building some graphs and charts for my marketing presentations, I decided to find if the Rule#5 really holds good. Are there any external validations of the system? Something that is well known and independent. So I looked into Gartner’s rating of different ERP systems!
There is not a software, a company or a trend that Gartner fails to spot. And rightly so, Gartner did include ERPNext in its 2017 study.
RATING : High on capability, Low (price) on Value
RATING : High on user recommendation , High on usability!
The design and philosophy of ERP systems (or for that matter any system) is a very important technical consideration that few businessmen pay attention to. That is because it difficult to understand the architecture. Typically businessmen want to know in simple terms the answer to the following questions:
- Is it easy to customise to my business?
- Is it inexpensive to maintain?
- Is it easy to update to newer versions?
What people ignore typically is that Software systems once installed grows in its code base and its interlinks to different parts of business. It is very much like a Tetris game. In a plug-in architecture (one adopted by Odoo), The customizations you build for your business sits around the main building at at point everything becomes a hodge podge construct.
ERPNext believes that they can overcome the problem by being a “ monolith “. Which means, if there is a good feature built by some third party, It can go into the CORE system. Once it goes into the CORE system, it will be maintained / bug fixed and enhanced by the the Foundation / Maintainers. If it is NOT in the CORE, it will not be maintained. So it is a philosophy drive architecture, where if you bring your “feature” into the core, you get the benefit of being truly open source because others will contribute to it. If you keep it out, you won’t.
Finally, how about a screenshot of the home screen?
ERPNext promises a very modern UX. Once you get the hang of how different modules interconnect, it is very easy to use it as a transactional system.
What you see on the left is about 20% of the features available in v11. The pace at which it moves is unmatched. The number of features that get added to it incredible. You can run a hospital, a school or a manufacturing store. There are even fantastic e-commerce stores built around it.
At the moment, ERPNext is a very promising technology supported by a HERO framework. And if you are a decent Python programmer you can add a ton of features to it. It come built in with Webhooks, REST API and all the bells and whistles you might ever need. It is responsive works out of the box.
And since it is open source, it is virtually free to run it. So, in conclusion, ERPNext continues to WOW me in its richness and openness. There is still a long way to go. And it runs like a breeze whether you have 10 people using it or 500. It meets all my big considerations. It has growing community and Gartner is rating it in Top #5 in user friendliness.
Rule #1 : No big names, No licensing fees
Rule #2 : Strictly Open Source
Rule #3 : Option to “Do It Yourself” (Yes, DIY)
Rule #4 : A growing community of users and service providers
Rule #5 : Some external validation
We even were featured in a case study here…
Originally published at https://medium.com on August 20, 2018.
