I had a conversation with an acquaintance the other day and we got a chance to discuss our respective work.
“What do you do?”
“I work with the family business and recently started an IT Company focused on Open Source ERP. It’s called iDempiere.”
“What?”
“iDempiere i-Dem-pi-er-e or i-Dem-peer. How you say it depends on who you talk to.”
“Uhm. Okay. What’s an ERP?”
These are the two most common questions I encounter when discussing iDempiere with random people and managers/businessmen who are not familiar with this type of business software. The third most common question I encounter is – what’s Open Source?
iDempiere ERP is a complex system and appears to have a lot of technical jargon. It has a wide range of functionalities and capabilities and is not an off-the-shelf plug-and-play software. It is tailored to fit to the specific needs of an organisation. On my side of the world, the wide scope of an ERP makes it more difficult to describe especially to small and medium-sized business owners who are used to Google Sheets or Excel. At this point, we haven’t discussed the definition of open-source yet.
In a nutshell, I normally end up saying “iDempiere ERP is a super-charged accounting system”, “iDempiere allows sharing of information across all business units regardless of location by using a central database” or “iDempiere is like Oracle or SAP but for the masses”.
Each ERP practitioner may have his or her own definition along with a common understanding of an ERP. However, no matter how you explain or describe an ERP, as long as you get your message across and spread the word about iDempiere, then you would have succeeded in creating awareness about the benefits of iDempiere ERP.
By the way, that guy I was talking about, said he would look up iDempiere. Who knows where this conversation will lead next?
I’ve been using iDempiere for a considerable amount of time and have now fully embraced Open Source iDempiere ERP as a modern, robust and a comparable alternative to other proprietary and Open Source ERPs in its tier. I believe it gives many small and medium size businesses the flexibility and opportunity to obtain a world-class ERP at a fraction of the cost of other ERPs.
I have the same experience. People I talk to also ask where the system is already working and where they can see it “in battle.” Small companies are often wary of the process automation that iD provides. They are very used to “manual” process control.