What to expect from these pages

Most people should contact multiple Odoo consultants, and devise an implementation plan. This is the fastest, surest, and easiest way to get your business running smoothly using Odoo.

I love DIY, so these pages promote implementing Odoo yourself, using your own servers, in a maintainable way. This is the far more difficult route. Success is elusive, and frustration is all but guaranteed, but isn't that the maker's creed?

What is Odoo?

Odoo is not a ready-to-use solution, despite what you read on odoo.com. Unlike Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you won't be productive in Odoo for quite a long time after starting.

Odoo is a business application framework. The category used to be called Enterprise Resource Planning, with huge legacy providers like SAP and smaller business systems like Epicor Vantage. These systems were (are?) deeply integrated into businesses. ERP coordinates business functions like money management (accounting, bank & cash management), inventory control (tracking parts received, shipped, transferred), manufacturing (making multiple parts into one, workcenters, quality assurance, shop floor control of labor and workcenters).

Over time, all business tasks that could be automated have been automated, often by individuals or departments implementing their own solutions. The sales group needs better calendar management, so they adopt Calendly. The marketing department wants to manage their digital assets, so they bring on Alfresco. Everything is starting to be automated, but the functions aren't nicely integrated.

With integrations (or orchestrations) like Zapier and IFTTT, they added another layer, and more subscriptions. Zapier aims to monitor what's happening in one place, and update another place. A new Calendly appointment might trigger an update to the ERP system to change the sales forecast. These integrations must be managed.

In some companies, these services are not well managed. Security can be lax because users just want things to work, opening up permissions, inviting security breaches. They are often difficult to document, leading to problems accessing data or modifying the integration once someone leaves.

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