Sage, EBP or Odoo: is it time to change your business management software?
Sales, stock, purchasing, accounting: what Odoo offers compared with Sage 100 or EBP for an industrial or trading SMB, and how to migrate without risk.
Sage 100 and EBP have been used by a large share of French SMBs for twenty years. They do their job well, but over time they have often been supplemented by tools alongside them: a CRM, a production tool, spreadsheets. Odoo takes a different approach: everything in the same software.
What business management software does in an SMB
For an industrial or trading SMB, the management software covers:
- sales: quotes, orders, deliveries, invoices;
- purchasing and stock;
- often production: bills of materials, manufacturing orders;
- the link with accounting.
What Odoo offers
Odoo is modular open source business management software. Its Community edition is free; the Enterprise edition adds modules and support from the vendor.
- Everything is connected: a customer order triggers the stock reservation, the missing purchase, the manufacturing order and the invoice.
- A single tool for CRM, sales, stock, production and projects.
- No per-seat pricing in the Community edition hosted on your own infrastructure.
- Accessible anywhere, in the browser, with nothing to install on each workstation.
What to look at closely
French accounting
Odoo handles accounting, but many SMBs keep their chartered accountant (expert-comptable) and his or her software. In that case, we set up a clean accounting export rather than migrating everything.
The specifics of your trade
Complex pricing, batch management, traceability requirements: these need to be listed from the audit stage. Odoo adapts, but each adaptation has a set-up cost.
Data migration
Items, customers, suppliers, sales history: migrating from Sage or EBP needs preparation. This is the part that demands the most rigour.
How to migrate without risk
- Audit of actual usage and of side files (spreadsheets, satellite tools).
- Prototype on your data, with one or two key processes.
- Switchover on a quiet date, often at the start of a financial year or month.
- Support for the teams during the first few weeks.
In summary
Odoo is not a miracle solution, but for an SMB that has piled up tools around its ERP, it often simplifies things a great deal, and removes some of the licences.
Compare your current costs with the simulator, or let's discuss your case in a free audit.
