CIOInsider India Magazine
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The technology revolution has equipped almost every functional department of an organization to directly contribute to its growth prospects. With the digital transformation becoming inevitable with every passing day, organizations often wind up with multiple applications that cater to their different functional departments. This often results in lack of integration which eventually leads to lack of optimization in the results and failure in serving the purpose itself. If you have individual software solutions that work, but don't talk to each other, it’s a sure bet that you are probably entering in data more than once and missing a comprehensive overview of what's going on.
Need of the hour is an integrated platform that allows businesses to focus on their core operations rather than focusing on the technology aspects. This demand is precisely the reason behind why Odoo – a business software solutions provider has emerged as one of the fastest growing digital transformation partners. Odoo’s platform simplifies businesses’ processes through seamless integration of all functional units of an organization. This removes the need to switch between multiple business apps enabling business owners to savor a plethora of benefits ranging from better turnaround time, hair cut on the application upgrade & maintenance costs, better traceability and much more.
Odoo is currently used by five million users worldwide, over 2500 implementation partners across 200+ countries, and has thousands of members in its online community. The company’s growth trajectory is a strong testament to its deliverables. Odoo’s ‘On-premise’ offer is today one of the most installed business software in the world with its customer ecosystem spread across startup companies to large enterprises (300,000+ users). The company has already developed 30 main applications which are regularly upgraded. In addition, Odoo community members have contributed another 26,000+ apps to cover a wide variety of business needs. CIO Insider recently engaged in an exclusive interaction with the company’s CEO Fabien Pinckaers, who helped us explore the latest endeavors of Odoo. Let’s dig in.
In conversation with Fabien Pinckaers, CEO, Odoo
The global digital transformation market size is expected to grow from $469.8 billion in 2020 to $1009.8 billion by 2025. It poses a great opportunity. Where is Odoo positioned in this industry?
Odoo is a top-tier suite of open-source business applications. We believe that business software should cover complex needs with an extremely friendly user interface. Our mission is to provide soft - ware that is intuitive, full-featured, tightly integrated, effortless-to-upgrade while ensuring a seamless experience for every business and every user. We go beyond ERP and CRM to act as a one-stop-shop solution for all the business challenges, providing highly integrated applications that comprise a wide horizon of futuristic technologies.
For instance, if companies have a jumble of systems, they have to put one information again and again in different stages of the business journey. But with Odoo, CRM enables advanced customer management, the accounting tool automatically records in & out expenditures, and the sales tool keeps a record of all the sales activities for the same customer. Hence, Odoo eliminates the gap by providing seamless integration between all business departments. Moreover, the advanced features like 360-degree view, instant reports, chatter, and cloud access make it easy for the businesses to achieve the aimed goal.
Odoo indeed has created a new market segment with its natively integrated applications. Modern companies could be up against sophisticated business
challenges. Odoo deciphers their pain points and solves those business challenges, using the aptly fitting, natively integrated apps.
Tell us about your platforms.
Odoo can be used by everyone, whether it is an individual, a small-sized company or even big industries. Currently, Odoo has two different platforms that deliver solutions according to our customers’ needs and budgets. In the case of sophisticated, complex requirements, we deliver highly automated and customized solutions through our channel partners.
The second option is trending online solutions. The companies just need a web browser to start using our application online. Our consultants not only implement their online solution, but also help them to import data, fit their business process in Odoo, and train the key person. This approach is also called out-of-the-box implementation. Odoo-experts find alternative solutions for the customers to reduce the customization, and that also reduces the implementation time. The cost of the Odoo subscription is around $10 per user per month which can be reduced to $6 per user when subscribed for a year.
We believe that business software should cover complex needs with an extremely friendly user interface
In a nutshell, Odoo is a perfect solution for companies across all industry verticals that are using legacy applications, a jumble of systems, or possess a lot of spread sheets to manage their day to day business operations. What is the challenge that you solve for your customers? What’s your USP?
If systems are able to solve the problem, they are complicated to operate and if systems are easy to operate, they are not efficient enough. Odoo is breaking this barrier with its user-friendly nature and offers advanced features that can solve any of the business complications. With a modern and elegant technical design, Odoo's framework is unique. Odoo's family of apps work seamlessly together - providing the ability to automate and track everything businesses do - centralized, online, and accessible from anywhere with any device.
Today, the way different functional units of an organization contribute to its growth has transformed progressively, and hence, the challenges for them also have undergone sea changes. It goes well beyond integrating the Sale, Purchase, Inventory, and Manufacturing departments, which directly contribute to the growth of modern-day organizations. Today, besides the core business processes, they are in dire need to integrate a lot of other activities such as marketing campaigns, and customer history & communication.
For example, Odoo CRM comes with built-in features like SMS marketing, email marketing, and lead tracker which make customer management and retention really easy. The fact that our platform is seamlessly integrated, has an easy-to-use dashboard, is built on an open-source model, is agile, and undergoes regular technological advancements takes our company beyond the competitions in the industry. As a result, Odoo solves countless challenges, while automating business processes and operations in shut-eye time.
Your solution removes clients from the hassle of having multiple apps for different functions? Tell us about the features of your solution. What’s the technology framework that goes behind this integration?
Odoo provides a one-stop solution for anything a business would require to succeed in its domain. For example, from CRM to Sales Management to Accounting, we have already made available a complete set of tools. Basically, in Odoo, there is an app for every need. And that's why you don't have to be distracted by jumping between multiple applications serving a single purpose and then combining the data from complex integrations between them.
Features like Odoo Studio allows businesses to build their own custom applications without any coding
knowledge. This is a fantastic feature for people who have zero or limited coding skills. Odoo Studio is an intuitive user-friendly app builder with drag and drop blocks making and creating apps with or without developer skills. Businesses can design the apps they need in minutes rather than weeks. Chatter allows internal communication fluently and transparently. As Odoo is cloud based, you can literally run your business from your handset no matter where you are.
The simple, yet complete & consistent interface throughout all the screens is quite easy to adapt. Being an open-source product, Odoo is written in python, javascript, and XML. For database connectivity, Odoo uses PostgreSQL, an open-source relational database management system.
How would you describe the kind of user experience this platform offers?
Seamless adoption of the solution being the predominant aim, we have long pledged to provide a smooth and extremely friendly user experience. Our platform is designed and built to provide that experience. The fluidity and full integration cover the needs of even the most complex companies and get down to the details. The scalability is another aspect that we have focused on. The flexibility of our platform is such that apps and users can be added according to the growth of your company, adding one app at a time as your needs evolve and your customer base grows.
Modern businesses want to minimize risk while improving productivity and efficiency. If they have a platform completely in sync with their business, what else do they want? Odoo platform can be customized as per the specific needs of the businesses.
When it comes to a challenging case study pertaining to one of your implementations, which one comes to your mind immediately?
One of our happy customers from India, previously, they were using and switching between several applications that served the same purpose. They required a single platform that can be integrated with each business department and provides transparency as well as control. Today, they have transformed their business by completely replacing multiple software like Zoho, Tally, Oracle Eloqua & few inhouse tailored tools with Odoo.
“Seamless adoption of the solution being the predominant aim, we have long pledged to provide a smooth and extremely friendly user experience”
Due to the jumble of different software, they were faced with a number of challenges ranging from slow turnaround times to time consuming statistical reports, and hence the lack of accurate business decisions. At the same time, managing different software becomes very costly, not only to maintain them, but also to continuously integrate with each other and upgrade them.
Now, the company is using Odoo’s Cloud with CRM, Sales, Accounting, Inventory, Manufacturing, Purchase, Helpdesk, Email Marketing, Subscription, and Project Management apps, which helps them to get everything on one platform. Being on the Odoo Cloud platform, they savor a hassle-free experience in terms of server maintenance and upgrading. Currently, they have on-boarded 150 happy users and keep on expanding.
Where is the company headed in the years to come? What are your future goals?
Right from the beginning, Odoo strives for customer satisfaction, while solving their ultimate business problems. The company is already making a mark in the innovative fields like IoT, AI, and BI. Odoo will continue working towards advanced ways to make living easy for our customers, while improving business efficiency. In fact, the upcoming Odoo V14 has outstanding BI features such as built-in BI tools, analytics, and data insights.
