The Open Source Pragmatist

As we trudge through the weak economy looking for ways to attract new clients and grow our business, the old Marketing 101 adage comes to mind:

“Your best new customers are the customers you already have”

At Levementum, we’re finding that this rings true in an amazing way.

With our SugarCRM, Compiere, and Magento Open Source service offerings, we’re finding that the hit rate (on new Open Source apps) for customers that previously have implemented one of these outstanding products, is well over 50%…an amazing rate of Opportunity conversion.

Why is that?  I think its a reflection of how these clients have crossed their own chasms relative to the key “Objections” raised in the course of a Commercial Open Source sale.

When we talk to a new customer - one that has never implemented an Open Source product at an enterprise level, the four concerns we tend to see are:

1. Concerns about the Project/Company viability.

2. Concerns about support and SLA.

3. Concerns about Intellectual Property rights of derivative works.

4. Concerns about quality and features.

Clearly these objections are colored in the spirit of Open Source as a “new” and “disruptive” force, and customers have to be carefully navigated through these discussions.

The key  is, once the bridge has been crossed with one application project, the propensity to steamroll through these objections on the following application project is very high.

We’re finding that SugarCRM customers love Compiere…Compiere customers love what SugarCRM has to offer, and we’re also seeing an interest in Magento from customers of both SugarCRM and Compiere.  Again I propose its because they’ve already taken the Open Source plunge - and already subscribe to the unparallelled value proposition that they can take advantage of:

1. Control of Your Own Destiny.

2. Cost Benefit and TCO.

3. The Quality factor (as a strength)

We’re hoping to continue to see more and more progress - its a bet Levementum has made in spades - and why we continue on our path to being at the forefront of service firms that help Enterprises make sense of how to deploy broad Open Source solutions as an enabler for their own value propositions.

We’re in exciting times in the world of Open Source…The strength of the community has been, well, the community!  I see the opportunity for the SugarCRMs, Compieres and Magentos of the world to cross pollinate - share customers - share ideas - define boundaries - maximize opportunity value.  Its a win win for everybody, mostly for our customers .

Insight & Thoughts, Software & Technology compiere, crm, ecommerce, erp, levementum, magento, open-source, pentaho, sugarcrm, talend, varien

Consider the scenario. You’re the CIO of a regional distribution company, supporting a “knowledge worker” environment of 200 users spread though 18 warehouses in 7 states. Your accounting team is demanding a flexible and scalable solution that lets them adapt in the face of changing economics and measures. Your warehouse teams are demanding more feature rich Order Management solutions that provide better information at the Point of Sale. Your Sales team is screaming for wireless access to orders and inventory, so they can respond to customer needs in real time…and of course your boss, the CEO, is demanding that you deliver all of the above, on a shoestring budget, and wants a working proof of concept that covers all these solutions - Accounting, Sales and Inventory/Order Management with Wireless…in 3 weeks…for less than 10k.

So you’re the CIO. What do you do? Laugh? Polish off the resume?

Well, if you’re Russell Smith, the CIO of Estes Industries, you take a deep breath – and look to Open Source. Estes Industries, based in Wichita Falls, TX, is a distributor of crop protection chemicals, specialty chemicals, seed and fertilizer. Smith turned to Levementum LLC, an open source consulting firm, to help complete this “Mission Impossible”.

Levementum brought three enterprise class solutions to bear, SugarCRM, Compiere ERP and Talend Data Integration to implement a complete ERP, CRM and Data Integration solution, in less than 3 weeks, and at an astoundingly low cost.

Levementum selected all three of these solutions, recognizing them as best of breed Open Source Software solutions. All three software packages have come of age relative to the tried and true(…but expensive) commercial closed source solutions in the marketplace.
Compiere, a robust Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution was deployed to support accounting and operational needs. SugarCRM, the leading open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution, was deployed to support the myriad of Sales Force Automation needs, as well to satisfy the need for Wireless access to Customers, Contacts, Orders and Inventory (using SugarWireless). Talend, a software product touted as the first provider of open source data integration software, was used to tie the systems together in a clean manner. Using add-ins and prebuilt adapters available in the Open Source community, Levementum was able to assemble, connect and deploy the solution quickly and cleanly.

The integrated pilot solution was built by Levementum using free “community editions” of all 3 software packages, but Estes intends to upgrade these to the Professional or Enterprise versions of the software packages, to take advantage of software support for these mission critical systems as they begin to roll the solution out in production.

Certainly there was a lot of excitement among Estes’ users – certainly a highlight of the project was demonstrating Order Tracking and Inventory management on an iPhone…but beneath the fun and excitement of accomplishing the critical functional goals of the program, there were a couple key takeaways, that are lessons for any CIO:

1. The Breadth of Open Source Solution offerings that are available to the public, are empowering companies to cover almost any information challenge they have. Whereas in the past all you had was Linux, today you have SugarCRM, Compiere, Talend and a host of other robust software packages that you have to choose from.
2. Open Source Solutions have “Come of Age” (like Compiere, SugarCRM and Talend). From a feature and architecture perspective, these applications have “grown up” and provide the depth of functionality, and the scalability that Medium and Large companies require.

The fact is, what cost hundreds of thousands or millions in the past, can now, with Open Source, be accomplished at a fraction of the cost. Open source solutions are the “great technology/value equalizer”. Luckily, over the past decade, these solutions have come of age – and as CIOs tackle their most challenging problems, Open Source tools are steadily proving to be far and away the most valuable tools in the arsenal.

Uncategorized compiere, crm, levementum, sugarcrm, talend, wireless