Monday, September 22, 2008
welcome....
Welcome to my blog. This assignment is about open source ERP5 for Information Technology for Management class…
Background
The ERP5 project started in 2002 when Coramy, an apparel industry leader in Europe, decided to migrate its in-house ERP solution to a new open source model. The choice of open source for Coramy ERP was a strategic move to reduce software maintenance costs and to allow Coramy to retain complete control over its custom developments, something that would have been impossible with standard proprietary ERP solutions.
Nexedi was created as an independent company in charge of developing, implementing, and disseminating the ERP5 technology. Nexedi was given a budget of 80,000 EUR to develop a generic ERP framework published under GPL license and customize it for Coramy's specific needs.
© Nexedi SARL - ERP5 is a registered trademark of Nexedi SARL
Nexedi was created as an independent company in charge of developing, implementing, and disseminating the ERP5 technology. Nexedi was given a budget of 80,000 EUR to develop a generic ERP framework published under GPL license and customize it for Coramy's specific needs.
© Nexedi SARL - ERP5 is a registered trademark of Nexedi SARL
Definition of ERP 5
ERP5 is a free Enterprise Resource planning system based on the Zope application server. It is mainly developed in the Python programming language and the source code is freely available under the GNU General Public License. ERP5 is developed by the French company Nexedi which also offers consulting, customizations and training for ERP5. There are currently two version of ERP5:
ERP5 Enterprise is used in enterprise level customer projects which are mainly focused on custom development and customizations based on the individual business processes of the company.
Express is a hosted solution offered as Software as a Service for a monthly fee which is standardized for the typical needs of small companies. It offers HR and CRM functionality and Accounting and Document Management features will be added at the beginning of 2008.
What are the 5 in ERP 5
The 5 in ERP5 represents the 5 core principles which form the basis of ERP5. These five principles are explained in the book Beautiful Code [1] as follows:
Resource. Describes a resource necessary to realize a business process, such as individual skills, products, machines, and so on.
Node. A business entity that receives and sends resources. It can be related to a physical entity (such as industrial facilities) or an abstract one (such as bank account). Metanodes are nodes containing other nodes, such as companies.
Path. Describes how a node accesses resources it needs from another node. For instance, a path may be a trade procedure that defines how a client obtains a product from a supplier.
Movement. Describes a movement of resources among nodes at a given moment and for a given period of time. For example, one such movement can be the shipping of raw material from the warehouse to the factory. Movements are realizations of Paths.
Item. A unique instance of a resource. For instance, a CD driver is a resource for assembling a computer, while the CD driver PART NUMBER 23E982 is an item.
Resource. Describes a resource necessary to realize a business process, such as individual skills, products, machines, and so on.
Node. A business entity that receives and sends resources. It can be related to a physical entity (such as industrial facilities) or an abstract one (such as bank account). Metanodes are nodes containing other nodes, such as companies.
Path. Describes how a node accesses resources it needs from another node. For instance, a path may be a trade procedure that defines how a client obtains a product from a supplier.
Movement. Describes a movement of resources among nodes at a given moment and for a given period of time. For example, one such movement can be the shipping of raw material from the warehouse to the factory. Movements are realizations of Paths.
Item. A unique instance of a resource. For instance, a CD driver is a resource for assembling a computer, while the CD driver PART NUMBER 23E982 is an item.
Functionality
ERP5 provides the business logic in so called Business Templates. Currently the following functionality is provided:
Accounting provides multiple accounting features such as multi-key analytical accounting, multidimensional budget accounting, activity based accounting, project accounting, previsional accounting as well as asset- and cash management, generic reports and invoicing.
Immobilization extends the Accounting Business Template by providing support for immobilizations.
Payroll extends the Accounting Business Template to provide administration and generation of payroll sheets for employees.
Budget extends the Accounting Business Template by providing the creation, planning and administration of budgets.
Product Data Management provides a transparent overview of products and the corresponding BOMs.
Trade provides all necessary elements to support procurement and sales. This Business Template provides supplier lists, packing lists, orders, order management and tracking, shippng and transport, fright and inventory management.
Material Requirement Planning provides all elements required for the management of a production facility. This Business Template provides bills of materials, product orders, production reports, material requirement planning and complex supply chains.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) provides CRM related features. It includes features to follow customer development, management of the relations between customers and other organisations, custumer related incomming and outgoing events such as phone calls and email, sales opportunities, campaign management and meetings as well as a ticket tracking system for support requests and complaints.
Project provides support for project planning as well as project based accounting and cost analysis.
DMS provides a workflow based Document Management System. It is focused on supporting open data formats but also provides support for the major proprietary formats such as ".doc" or ".xls".
Accounting provides multiple accounting features such as multi-key analytical accounting, multidimensional budget accounting, activity based accounting, project accounting, previsional accounting as well as asset- and cash management, generic reports and invoicing.
Immobilization extends the Accounting Business Template by providing support for immobilizations.
Payroll extends the Accounting Business Template to provide administration and generation of payroll sheets for employees.
Budget extends the Accounting Business Template by providing the creation, planning and administration of budgets.
Product Data Management provides a transparent overview of products and the corresponding BOMs.
Trade provides all necessary elements to support procurement and sales. This Business Template provides supplier lists, packing lists, orders, order management and tracking, shippng and transport, fright and inventory management.
Material Requirement Planning provides all elements required for the management of a production facility. This Business Template provides bills of materials, product orders, production reports, material requirement planning and complex supply chains.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) provides CRM related features. It includes features to follow customer development, management of the relations between customers and other organisations, custumer related incomming and outgoing events such as phone calls and email, sales opportunities, campaign management and meetings as well as a ticket tracking system for support requests and complaints.
Project provides support for project planning as well as project based accounting and cost analysis.
DMS provides a workflow based Document Management System. It is focused on supporting open data formats but also provides support for the major proprietary formats such as ".doc" or ".xls".
Why ERP5? ERP5 Advantage Illustration
Open Source Advantage
Open Source means transparency, flexibility and evolutivity for customers. Open Source means no risks of forced upgrades, guaranteed lifetime maintainability. Open Source means no license and no requirement to stay with the same vendor or Service Company forever.
Feature Advantage
Complete Coverage
ERP5 covers accounting, CRM, trade, warehouse management, shipping, invoicing, human resources, product design and production management. Togther with CPS portal technology, it also provides enterprise collaboration and content management.
Customisable Workflows Everywhere
All ERP5 business processes are implemented thanks to Zope transactional Workflows. Workflows directly describe the business process of the customer. ERP5 workflows can be customised through the Web and extended to fit each customer specific needs.
Variations Everywhere
All resources in ERP5 can be variated in any number of dimensions, providing built-in configuration for products and reduced design cost for bill of materials (BOM) and bill of operations (BOO), as well as structured rule based approaches to complex pricing.
Technology Advantage
Multilingual Web Based Interface (User & Developer)
ERP5 interface is designed and optimised for the Web and for global business operations.
Unlike most ERPs, ERP5 can be hosted on a single site and used worldwide over high latency VPNs without excessive performance degradation or loss in usability. ERP5 interface is completely based on UTF-8 standard and supports complete internationalisation and localisation including in Asian languages and regions. ERP5 rapid development and configuration environment is also Web based and eases integration processes handled by disseminated teams of developers and consultants.
Built-in Data warehouse and Reporting Engine
A general principle in ERP5 is to store data as it was entered by the user without further processing it. This guarantees that data will remain consistent in the long term and that it will not depend on potentially evolving business and calculation rules. To provide efficient reporting, ERP5 includes a flexible data warehouse engine which converts information entered by users into pre-processed data optimised for efficient table based reporting. ERP5 itself embeds a fast PDF reporting engine which is already used in many financial institutions.
Built-in Synchronisation Engine
ERP5 includes a SyncML based synchronization engine to enable deployment on remote sites with unreliable network connectivity or to enable mobile users to bring a complete ERP5 system on their laptop and later synchronise it.
Innovative Design Advantage
Multi Category Design
ERP5 design is based on a documentary approach and on classification of documents. All business information is managed in dedicated documents, just as it used to be long time ago with papers and folders : Purchase Invoice, Sale Invoice, Person, Product, etc. Categorisation of documents in multiple categories provides the base for reporting and aggregating information. Complex organizations are described as hierarchies of groups, sites, functions, roles, etc. Thanks to this design, a single ERP5 instance can manage a group of companies structures in subsidiaries, representation offices, business units, partner companies, distributed all over the world with exclusive permissions on sensitive documents.
Unified Business Model Design
The same business model is used in ERP5 for accounting, warehouse management, production or human resources: the ERP5 Unified Business Model. All features developped for one module (ex. accounting) are available in another module (ex. Warehouse management) thanks to a unified vocabulary independent of specific business processes. ERP5 unified approach dramatically reduces in-depth learning curve and reduces the risk of data inconsistency over multiple modules.
Simulation Based Planning
ERP5 is a Simulation based ERP. All future consequences of every business decision are calculated in real time according to configurable business rules and made available to reporting. MRP is for example a simple application of ERP5 Simulation based approach. ERP5 simulation rules can be extended to cover new functional areas.
Open Source means transparency, flexibility and evolutivity for customers. Open Source means no risks of forced upgrades, guaranteed lifetime maintainability. Open Source means no license and no requirement to stay with the same vendor or Service Company forever.
Feature Advantage
Complete Coverage
ERP5 covers accounting, CRM, trade, warehouse management, shipping, invoicing, human resources, product design and production management. Togther with CPS portal technology, it also provides enterprise collaboration and content management.
Customisable Workflows Everywhere
All ERP5 business processes are implemented thanks to Zope transactional Workflows. Workflows directly describe the business process of the customer. ERP5 workflows can be customised through the Web and extended to fit each customer specific needs.
Variations Everywhere
All resources in ERP5 can be variated in any number of dimensions, providing built-in configuration for products and reduced design cost for bill of materials (BOM) and bill of operations (BOO), as well as structured rule based approaches to complex pricing.
Technology Advantage
Multilingual Web Based Interface (User & Developer)
ERP5 interface is designed and optimised for the Web and for global business operations.
Unlike most ERPs, ERP5 can be hosted on a single site and used worldwide over high latency VPNs without excessive performance degradation or loss in usability. ERP5 interface is completely based on UTF-8 standard and supports complete internationalisation and localisation including in Asian languages and regions. ERP5 rapid development and configuration environment is also Web based and eases integration processes handled by disseminated teams of developers and consultants.
Built-in Data warehouse and Reporting Engine
A general principle in ERP5 is to store data as it was entered by the user without further processing it. This guarantees that data will remain consistent in the long term and that it will not depend on potentially evolving business and calculation rules. To provide efficient reporting, ERP5 includes a flexible data warehouse engine which converts information entered by users into pre-processed data optimised for efficient table based reporting. ERP5 itself embeds a fast PDF reporting engine which is already used in many financial institutions.
Built-in Synchronisation Engine
ERP5 includes a SyncML based synchronization engine to enable deployment on remote sites with unreliable network connectivity or to enable mobile users to bring a complete ERP5 system on their laptop and later synchronise it.
Innovative Design Advantage
Multi Category Design
ERP5 design is based on a documentary approach and on classification of documents. All business information is managed in dedicated documents, just as it used to be long time ago with papers and folders : Purchase Invoice, Sale Invoice, Person, Product, etc. Categorisation of documents in multiple categories provides the base for reporting and aggregating information. Complex organizations are described as hierarchies of groups, sites, functions, roles, etc. Thanks to this design, a single ERP5 instance can manage a group of companies structures in subsidiaries, representation offices, business units, partner companies, distributed all over the world with exclusive permissions on sensitive documents.
Unified Business Model Design
The same business model is used in ERP5 for accounting, warehouse management, production or human resources: the ERP5 Unified Business Model. All features developped for one module (ex. accounting) are available in another module (ex. Warehouse management) thanks to a unified vocabulary independent of specific business processes. ERP5 unified approach dramatically reduces in-depth learning curve and reduces the risk of data inconsistency over multiple modules.
Simulation Based Planning
ERP5 is a Simulation based ERP. All future consequences of every business decision are calculated in real time according to configurable business rules and made available to reporting. MRP is for example a simple application of ERP5 Simulation based approach. ERP5 simulation rules can be extended to cover new functional areas.
Real Life Examples
1. ERP5 includes specific extensions for the apparel and banking industry.
2. ERP5 has been designed to support clusters of inexpensive Linux servers to provide high scalability.
3. ERP5 leverages 64 bit IBM eServer 326 and provides a 30% performance increase over 32 bit servers.
4. ERP5 leverages worfklow technology to provide leaner management of complex business processes.
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