These days there are no businesses that do not use enterprise resource planning or ERP system. It is an effective system that is used to streamline business operations. It handles several departments such as accounting, manufacturing, sales, marketing, supply chain, and many more. The software offers an all-in-one solution to promote efficiency and collaboration between all of them. However, some businesses are not able to afford the heavy price of installing an ERP solution.
This is when the Open-source ERP software comes as a saviour. It is a cheaper alternative that many small companies use. Many medium-sized businesses or SMBs also use this option. So, the companies need to pay only for the features and customisations just in case they need any.
An open-source ERP system is an efficacious enterprise resource planning system that uses publicly available source code. In this software, the people can access the open-source code without incurring any fee. They are also allowed to customise the software themselves without needing to contact the vendor for the same. In ERP solutions, the customers are not allowed to access the source code.
Talking about the benefits of Open-Source ERP, here are they:
They offer low costs: ERP software may take away a lot of your budget amount. It may cost you from $75,000 to $750,000 for having ERP. But when you have an open-source ERP software, then you will be able to implement the solution easily in a cost-effective way. In this option, since the customers do not need to pay a license fee to access the source code, it is a cheap option.
The ERP solutions offer a range of features and modules, but open-source ERP systems come with only basic features and functions. The companies can decide whether they want to add proprietary features.
Ability to customise
To add customisations to your open source ERP solution, the companies need not work with the vendor, their internal IT team and even an external consultant. They can create customisations internally, and they can enjoy ready-made features created by user communities. This reduces your time significantly.
You can upgrade open source ERP software easily.
One of the biggest problems in selecting the ERP solution is finding its future scalability. The upgrading of the software or increasing the number of users needs the companies to bear an extra cost. But Open-source ERP is easy to upgrade and can be done frequently too.
High-quality coding
Several low-cost open-source ERP solutions offer very high-quality coding since they are built on previous open-source projects, monitored by many independent developers. The internal IT staff is always able to audit open-source code for quality, but in the closed source ERP solutions, IT employees are unable to access the source code.
