A clear “ERP for life” example

by Asier Zabaleta

Senior Consultant at Global Partner Services

Just one year ago the first Quickstart implementation reached the "go live" milestone. Idea Innovación Asistencial is a management company, developer of  social and health services under the clinical and care sector, with an interesting Openbravo ERP customer case.

After a successful QuickStart implementation in 60 hours (including system configuration and user training), Idea started managing one of its organizations, including around 100 customers, and over 150 transactions every month. Their daily work changed completely, as they abandoned their accounting software, and started using Openbravo ERP for issuing invoices to customers, effectively managing collections, and knowing on time the cash situation for vendor payments.

Today, the picture is quite different, as the use of the ERP has grown exponentially. Now the ERP supports the management of seven organizations, and two more to come in the following months. The number of users in the ERP has been doubled in just a year, and the number of transactions multiplied by four. Now there are over 300 customers to be managed, and lots of payment situations to be taken care of.

This is a clear example of the Openbravo QuickStart value proposition both for the customer and the system integrator.

System integrators should see this kind of implementations not just as “quick-wins”, but as a way to start a long term relationship with their customers. With Openbravo QuickStart, system integrators can reach many small companies looking for a quick, standard implementation; a low risk proposition for a successful ERP implementation.

On the other hand, end customers should see a low risk first implementation, establishing this starting point that can incrementally grow in the future, based in a solid ground that Openbravo ERP provides. Openbravo's modular architecture, combined with Openbravo Exchange and the associated Central Repository, make it very easy to embrace new modules directly from the browser via the click-thru installation process. In Idea's case, the "Mass Invoicing" module was added during the initial QuickStart implementation to streamline the invoicing process.

Idea Innovación Asistencial began with the Openbravo QuickStart option based on the promise of a rapid, low-risk ERP implementation with a minimal upfront investment.  The deployment was  hosted on the Amazon EC2 Cloud to avoid upfront hardware acquisition costs, with the assumption that the application would likely be brought in house at some point. To date, Idea has actually stayed on the Amazon cloud, finding it cost-effective and reliable, with off-site backup for full peace of mind. While Openbravo ERP started as a "quick win" for Idea, its web-based scalability and modular extensibility have made Openbravo a strategic part of this customer's business -truly an "ERP for life" -, that they will continue to grow with in the future.

Have you got similar experiences?