Continue reading »]]> You have likely heard the names before, especially if you are an advocate or user of open source software.  Beginning about, 3 or 4 years ago open source software began to get noticed in the world of enterprise applications.  The clear leader and fore-runner in the enterprise was SugarCRM, now several other common or soon to be common names join SugarCRM as credible enterprise applications and ‘Bossie’ award winners.  SugarCRM, Compiere, Magento and Pentaho are all 2009 Bossie Award Winners.  The Bossie’s are awards bestowed upon the Best of Open Source Software.  These applications though different in their capabilities and purpose share three distinct similarities:

1) They are all Bossie award winners – best in class in their respective categories.

2) They all can be integrated and complement each other in a typical enterprise.

3) They all are partners with Levementum, an emerging leader in the open source community as a system integrator and implementer.

Levementum’s customers span small business requiring CRM (SugarCRM) and a web store (Magento) to the multi-billion dollar enterprise requiring ERP (Compiere), CRM (SugarCRM), e-Commerce (Magento) and Business Intelligence (Pentaho) all complementing each other.  Creating synergy between these applications is both the dream and nightmare of most CIO’s.  Levementum has made this their bread-and-butter and understand the importance of applications that are integrated and support a single verison of the truth in an enterprise of any size.

Congratulations to the 2009 Bossie Award Winners.

Continue reading »]]> The VAR Guy recently introduced an upcoming webinar entitled, Can You Profit From Google Apps And Amazon’s Cloud?

“Instead of discovering the risks (and rewards) on your own, learn from three VARs who already profit from Google Apps and the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)…

This is a rare opportunity to hear from three VARs describing their own business success and challenges with the Google Apps Reseller program and Amazon Web Services. Forget the industry hype. Get the real story from three solutions providers that are working in the cloud today.”  THE VARGUY

Levementum’s Geoff Mobisson is a part of the panel and will be sharing how Levementum deploys open source CRM and ERP applications in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for their customers.

if you are interested in the growing trend of cloud computing and its influence and opportunities for open source software REGISTER NOW for this insightful webinar scheduled for April 15th, 2009

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“Yes We Can.” The chants have hardly faded and one of the first things the Obama Administration is interested in doing is exploring how the United States government can use open source software rather than rely on proprietary software. The economic downturn that started in October 2008 led to increasingly growing awareness of open source software solutions and how they might be considered as alternatives to proprietary business applications. This awareness and visibility has been given another boost by the publicity being provided it by Obama and his technology team which includes co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNeally.

Government agencies using open source software is not unheard of – it is actually much more common in Europe.  I do not advocate government mandating open source software. On the other hand, I believe that open source can stand on its own merit and I cannot fault the government, or any other organization for that matter, for looking to get the best value for their money.

Open Source has much to offer this President, the nation and enterprises in general and I welcome the growing awareness and popularity of open source software.  Open source is increasingly being adopted by enterprise IT—with even more widespread adoption on the horizon.  In less than five years, many open source vendors have moved from marginal positions to being players worthy of consideration and influential in their own right.

Continue reading »]]> Compiere Inc., an open source ERP and CRM provider, is growing and getting noticed by key decision makers in the market for ERP applications.  Compiere is the pioneer of open source ERP and is the emerging leader in this application category.  Compiere recently received the award “2008 InfoWorld Bossie Award – Best of Open Source Enterprise Applications“.  As an open source business application, Compiere is an alternative to the traditional proprietary ERP applications like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics.

I have recently evaluated and reviewed Compiere and wanted to outline some of my findings.  I have limited this evaluation of Compiere to some key areas.  For a more exhaustive outline of capabilities and features I would suggest visiting the Compiere website.

Compiere’s solution capabilities span Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).  These include the following capabilities:

• Financial Management (Accounting)
• Sales Order Management
• Materials Management (Purchasing)
• Warehouse Management
• Customer Service (Support & Self-Service)

Role-Based User Interfaces

One of the things I liked most about Compiere is its flexibility to adapt to an organization and to the roles within an organization.  Through years of observation, I have found that 80% of ERP users, use about 20% of the features and functionality that are available to them.  Dealing with the confusion this creates has always been a challenge when implementing some of the traditional ERP solutions.  In Compiere, the ability to tailor a user’s online experience in terms of ‘look and feel’ is defined easily using roles.  Roles are easily setup by an administrator, no development is required.  The menus, windows, forms and fields that are available to the user are all determined by the user’s assigned role.  When roles are established, they are specific to a group of user’s tasks and responsibilities ensuring that the users only see what is required to do their job.  Despite a broad array of features and functionality Compiere makes it easy to provide a simple streamlined user interface to your users.  This easily translates into reduced training and support costs.  Amongst complex applications, I have not seen an easier way to do this – Compiere hit this one out of the park.

Adaptability

Compiere employs an innovative model-driven architecture that gives you unprecedented adaptability, speed of deployment and a lower cost of ownership.  I personally think that Compiere is under-selling this particular capability.  The Compiere ‘Application Dictionary’ is a library of business logic meta-data that can be updated or extended to allow an organization to adapt Compiere to fit the unique requirements of their business.  The level and extent of the customization that can be accomplished using the ‘Application Dictionary’ would require significant development time and effort in any other application.  Compiere allows this adaptability while maintaining easy upgradability.  The time and expense this saves during initial implementation as well as during periodic upgrades contributes to the already lower cost of ownership when compared to traditional ERP solutions.

Warehouse Management

Recently released in Compiere 3.2, Compiere offers one of their best modules to date – WMS (Warehouse Management System).  WMS expands an already solid Materials Management module with a broad range of brand new functionality that automates inbound, warehousing and outbound operations.  This is ideal for organizations that are looking to cut costs, improve productivity, reduce warehouse space utilization or increase customer satisfaction.

At the center of the WMS module is a highly flexible and configurable rules engine for setting up intelligent materials movement through all phases of warehouse management operations.  This expansion of the Materials Management module is offered by Compiere for an additional fee per user or per warehouse.  If an organization only requires basic inventory and materials management functionality, I recommend using the functionality included in the Materials Management module at no additional cost – it is solid and mature.  However, for the mid-size to larger organizations in the distribution, retail or manufacturing industries where the warehouse operations are complex, there are numerous warehouses or the number of items and transactions are  high – the advanced functionality provided by WMS is worth the additional cost.  In situations where you may be looking to cut warehousing costs as it relates to warehouse moves and utilization – Compiere’s WMS solution is worth looking at as either an add-on to a larger Compiere implementation or as part of an integrated ERP solution.

Compiere has expanded their network of partners by about 40% in 2008 resulting in a growing ecosystem of knowledgeable and experienced system integrators ready to help with everything from Compiere support and hosting to Compiere implementation and integration.

Continue reading »]]> Leads Management is a part of every good CRM package and we are implementers of two such packages – Model N for the Semiconductor Industry and SugarCRM for everyone else. Over the course of implementing leads management for a few dozen companies I have had the opportunity to go back and talk to the occasional sales manager, marketing manager, or IT person responsible for implementing leads. There is a common theme amongst those who feel their implementation of leads management was successful – they don’t rely on the software. Leads management is not all about the software or the tool, like building a house is not all about a hammer. An effective and successful leads management program requires planning, execution, and evaluation. The software tools may assist in all three of these key areas, however all three also involve active and focused attention by committed individuals to be successful.

1. Lead Planning and Generation – this stage consists of planning the entire campaign, determining lists, developing messaging, selecting the medium, setting the timing, planning the marketing project. The tools help, but can’t do it all – plan and organize.

2. Execution – this stage consists of sales/marketing management and staff capturing, distributing, qualifying and nurturing leads. If this is not an actively managed function, you get marginal benefits.

3. Evaluation – this stage may be the most important. Only through active analysis and evaluation of past successes and failures can your lead management solution become increasingly successful. A business intelligence solution that drives continuous improvement in the planning and execution stages results in greater leads efficiency, improved scoring of leads and ultimately more leads converted to customers.

Levementum is a system integrator of CRM software for the enterprise and has successfully implemented leads management in many industries and companies of all sizes.

Continue reading »]]> Today’s business environment is changing and evolving faster than ever before. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make the incremental improvements that lead to improved profitability and competitive advantage. The survival of any business in this highly competitive environment requires adopting a strategy and culture of continuous improvement. Continuous improvement can be equated to Darwin’s hypothesis of ‘survival of the fittest’. Those best suited to adapt and change are most likely to survive.

Businesses have now been evolving for many years, those who have survived the long-term have done so in large part as a function of their willingness to change and adapt. We have learned from the failures and successes of those who came before us and as a consequence the changes we seek now are in terms of ‘tweaks’. We look for the small changes and corrections that lead to greater profitability, success and survival.

The key to continuous and incremental improvement is understanding the data that drives and is derived from business-as-usual, knowing the environment. Once you have a clear view of the environment, then making informed decisions and taking action can be the difference between growth and stagnation.

The keys to understanding the environment and making informed and intelligent decisions based on this understanding is commonly referred to as Business Intelligence. The path to effective Business Intelligence (BI) can be summarized as follows:

1. Establishing clear business goals, objectives and/or initiatives.
2. Identify and prioritize the metrics and measures that are linked to each goal, objective and/or initiative.
3. Map specific individuals or teams to the measures and metrics being monitored and ensure they are empowered to influence each measure.
4. Monitor the data for next actions, progress and for intended results.

The path above may be simple and understated, however it clearly and concisely outlines the keys to successful BI. It requires the participation of management and staff as well as technology to help collect, organize and present the identified measures and metrics.

Levementum has implemented BI solutions for businesses of all sizes and specializes in guiding companies through the process of implementing a successful BI strategy coupled with industry leading technology. The Business Intelligence solutions are designed to meet specific business goals and objectives through the use of technology coupled with empowered teams or individuals. The combination of Levementum’s staff expertise, structured methods, and industry visibility can help your company take ideas from inception to deployment.

Visit our website for more on Open Source Business Intelligence.