A Survey of Free and Open Source Business Software

This blog is sponsored by Fred Blauer and Associates

Background

After implementing many mid level ERP software systems for businesses in different industries, I found myself working on Systems Audit and Sarbanes, Oxley compliance projects for a number of years. When I returned to this space, after my mandates were completed, I decided to investigate and see if the open source development model had infiltrated into the business application areas like accounting, ERP, vertical and horizontal markets, and other business areas like productivity etc. I found that Open Office was dominant in the productivity class, but most of the other areas were fragmented and had a lot of players. I started my research by looking for a short list or “best of breed” in each area that I could spend some time installing and evaluating. There were too many alternatives to look at everything. I created a data base, and classified systems into small, medium, and large, and then by industry or type of product. One of the most important criteria for selection was the strength of the community behind the product, support and commercial backing.
I found some very interesting programs in the accounting and ERP space, and also for various industry sectors like manufacturing, distribution and wholesale, Retail/POS, Non-profit, Services, Real Estate etc. There were also a lot of good ones in the domains of Business intelligence, Human resources, eCommerce, CRM, Workflow, budgeting, Integration tools etc.

OpenERP is going social with the launch of the new version 6.1

from Open ERP blogs by admin

Yes, it’s that important announcement! OpenERP is excited to announce the release of its 6.1. final version. After more than a year of joint effort with our community and partners, we are proud to present the final version of OpenERP 6.1. With the new version we have developed many new features like touchscreen POS, electronic invoicing, kanban views, assets managements, etc. The performance has also been significantly enhanced through the new web client and a new architecture that can now support multi servers and multi processing. Worth mentioning is that the latest technologies, like those used by gmail and facebook have been incorporated in this version. Read more about the new features

 

 

Even easier to use and learn

OpenERP has been already recognized for its ease of use compared to other leading ERP softwares. We are going one step further, once you have installed it, you can immediately start using it! No need for configuration, with the exception of the accounting module.

With a much more straight forward welcome page, it’s easy to dive right into the applications you need most. As you start using the application and want to use some of its most advanced features, progress bars with menus will help you set the application just the way you want. Users can also enjoy kanban views to manage the flow of applicants, the tasks in a project or even their sales pipeline. Not bad for an ERP!

 

A brand new web client

The new web client has been entirely redeveloped. We have used the latest web technologies and have redesigned its architecture. As a result, the new OpenERP web interface is more intuitive and the performance is astonishing. The navigation speed through the screens is incredible providing an unmatched level of comfort for the user. But this is not all. The new web client is also extremely modular and allows integrating OpenERP with a web site or a portal in only a few clicks.

 

Touchscreen Point of Sales 

OpenERP 6.1 provides a new module for outlets. This module is 100% web, works offline and automatically synchronizes with the OpenERP server when the connection is restored. The POS module is compatible with all PC tablets and iPad, offering multiple payment methods. Product selection can be done in several ways: using a barcode reader, browsing through categories of products or via a text search.

 

A social and flexible ERP

Companies still exchange many documents in paper format. An expensive and inefficient way of working. OpenERP 6.1 is offering several options to help companies boost their poductivity. First, integrated portals will allow companies to provide access to OpenERP in a completely secure way to its external partners. At the other end, customers can, for example, refer to the inventory, place orders and track shipments, as well as manage their bills. OpenERP 6.1. goes further than that, as you can send an invoice and/or a sales order and your customer will have an option to access it in OpenERP and even integrate it automatically in his own ERP instance.

 

New additional modules 

Other additional features introduced with OpenERP 6.1 are: new payroll engine, an asset management module, new financial reports, a new event management module and many more. OpenERP is continuing to expand its functionalities through both internal modules and now over 1800 apps available at http://apps.openerp.com

 

How to discover the latest version 6.1.?

• Demo: http://demo.openerp.com
• Online: http://openerp.com/online
• Download: http://openerp.com/downloads

 

A New Zealand Company (Xero) Reaches For The USA Small Business Accounting Market: Xero’s Going After QuickBooks

February 21, 2012 By Ramon Ray

One of the things I dread most about running my business is dealing with the administrative hassles of the day to day, but so important, aspects of running it.

I love organizing events, but even more, I love sharing with the attendees of the event.

But to do an event means you’ve got to deal with contracts, invoices, bank accounts, credit cards and so many other things.

Out of all these things and more, one of the things a business owner must constantly do is mange their income and expenditures – financial management.

A large part of this financial management hassle is to enable one to pay taxes every April – all the deductions and forms need to go through an accounting program to be properly accounted for.

Another reasons is to manage payroll.

And yet another reason is to know what products are selling best, what products are most profitable and etc. But all of this is centered around your bank account – the money in it and the money leaving it.

To properly manage your bank account you MUST have a financial management program.

Intuit’s QuickBooks is the leading software that many small businesses use. Sage’s PeachTree has another swath of this fragmented market, and other vendors such as Outright, Indinero, GreatWave Accounting provide accounting solutions for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Into this ecosystem comes Xero.

Xero is a New Zealand based company who has recently expanded its footprint to the USA. Jamie Sutherland is the President, US Operations, before Xero, Jamie worked at Sage.

A few weeks ago I was able to speak with Jamie (see the interview below) about Xero and his plans to dominate small business accounting. Here’s few highlights from our conversation:

• Xero is first and foremost beautifully designed online software. I’ve seen many online applications and few are designed with the features and rich interface that make you think you are using a traditionally software, installed on your computer.
• Accountants are a huge part of Xero’s connection to small businesses and Xero is making a concentrated effort to partner with accountants. Jamie said that in Xero’s discussions with accountants he finds although it is the defacto standard, that many accountants don’t like QuickBooks Online. Xero hopes to leverage this to Xero’s advantage.
• Xero is simple but also very robust for mature and growing businesses – hence double ledger (or entry) accounting and multi currency conversions.
• Working well with other software is fundamental to Xero as well – demonstrated by their membership in The Small Business Web
• Accountants will find Xero’s value proposition very compelling as Xero is not just giving them a product to resell but also a platform to run their accounting practice and better manger their small business customers.

Check out my interview with Jamie here (or below) and more videos at http://www.youtube.com/smallbiztechnology

Read more

File management in Podio just got smarter and better looking

We just made collaboration around files easier and we did some significant design improvements to the files section of Podio workspaces.

Read more

Ford OpenXC open source car

By Edwin Kee on 02/16/2012 10:01 PST

We all know that Ford churns out plenty of cars for America, as well as pickup trucks, but they did suffer a dip in popularity Stateside when the Japanese invaded the US with cheaper and better built vehicles. Well, Ford has more or less remained in the picture much of the time, and has done reasonably well for itself, too. The company looks to the future in the form of an open source car, and has just announced OpenXC, their open-source connectivity research platform. Having rolled out beta test kits already, those will be shipped to developers and universities worldwide.

Basically, this is an exercise to encourage developers to create apps for the car just like how they would churn out app after app for a smartphone. Of course, the dynamics on how a vehicle app works would be very different from that of a smartphone. To view a vehicle as the equivalent of a software platform for a smartphone is definitely an evolutionary step.

Is Google Hangout A Threat To Web Conference Services ?

from Small Business Technology by Mandira Srivastava

The growing popularity and implementation of web conferencing services has changed business-to-business interactions. Particularly, the GOOD OLD days of small meeting rooms, auditoriums, large conference facilities and business travel have passed. Web conferencing has made it easy. If you want face-to-face interaction with your client or an employee who is sitting thousands of miles away, all you need is a broadband connection, a laptop, a Webcam and a subscription for unlimited conferencing. Web conferencing services have contributed to increased productivity and efficiency of staff and provided the ability to receive and send information at all hours of the day, no matter what  time zone you are in.

With expanding internet broadband connection, increasing airline ticket prices and the increasing popularity of home based work, web conferencing solutions have enabled enterprises to spark interactive discussions. As the web conferencing industry is growing, many IT giants have introduced various cost-effective, sophisticated web conferencing solutions; some of which are free and some that come at a cost. Now, web conferencing has become an important tool for both personal and business communications.

When I looked around for the best video conferencing software based on their reliability, pricing, and set of useful features, I found Adobe Acrobat Connect, Citrix GoToMeeting, IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte Meeting, WebEx MeetMeNow, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Google Hangout as prominent players in this industry.  While each of these products presents their own advantages and specific features, the question that is on everyone’s mind is will Google Hangout, the cool, new, web conferencing product from Google, be a threat to the other Web Conferencing Services.

While the potential advantages of video conferencing features of Google Hangout are appealing, it may increase the competition among the web conferencing players. Hangouts is one of the many new features of Google+, and it gives people a way to connect with up to nine individuals at once.  One advantage that they have over many of the other web conferencing services is that they are not targeting themselves as a ‘web conferencing’ service, but as a cool new way to connect with individuals.  Since so many people are on Google ever day, either with G-Mail or Circles, they automatically had the ability to gain exposure and introduce their new product to millions of people.

However, Google Hangout is not the only one to offer free web conferencing services. There are many other companies that offer free, simple and easily accessible online meeting services. Last year, LiveMinutes launched free, simple document-based web conferencing service. More recently, AnyMeeting, the completely free web conferencing and webinar service, introduced ‘’ Meet and Win’ content for users that will enable users to win a new Kindle Fire. The consumers will have more chances to win, if they have more meetings. This contest will run through February 29th , 2012.

Read more

LibreOffice 3.5: the best free office suite ever

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5: “the best free office
suite ever”

Berlin, February 14, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces
LibreOffice 3.5, the third major release of “the best free office suite
ever”, which shows to end users the improvements derived from the
development strategy adopted since September 2010. LibreOffice 3.5
derives from the combined effort of full time hackers – the largest
group of experienced OOo code developers – and volunteer hackers,
coordinated by the Engineering Steering Committee.

During 16 months, an average of 80 developers each month have provided a
total of over thirty thousand code commits, introducing new and
interesting features:

Read more

More capital, SPP and WorkflowMax

from the Xero Blog:  2 February 2012 by Rod Drury

Exciting day for our Xero team with a few big announcements.

Firstly we’ve raised $20 million from existing Directors and major shareholders. We are thrilled with the internal support. This allows us to continue to accelerate our growth plans.

We have also launched a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) that allows other shareholders to participate on the same basis.  SPP’s are a mechanism that allows listed companies to raise capital inexpensively. We particularly like SPP’s as small shareholders are looked after – which is very important to us.

Share purchase plans allow a company to issue up to NZ$15,000 worth of shares to existing shareholders utilising a fairly short, simple offer document. The rationale for the Exemption Notice is that a full disclosure document, such as an investment statement, is not necessary given that issuers are subject to the continuous disclosure requirements of the NZX and thus existing shareholders will be fully informed about the company.

If you are a shareholder on the 14th of February you will receive SPP information in the mail.

Click here for the full Capital Raising and SPP announcement.

Our next bit of news is we have acquired leading Xero Partner WorkFlowMax.

Read more