Reasons Why Small Businesses Prefer Odoo ERP

With over 7 million worldwide users from different industries, Odoo stands out to be the perfect ERP software solution today. Apart from plenty of Odoo ERP customisation options, there are tons of more reasons why small businesses prefer Odoo ERP and here’s the checklist of the reasons.

Odoo ERP is the most popular ERP system today. It is open-source in nature and is a highly flexible, scalable, and affordable ERP software solution. It was introduced back in 2005 as the ‘Tiny ERP’ that later changed to ‘OpenERP’ and finally to ‘Odoo ERP’. Odoo is an all-in-one integrated ERP software and comes with thousands of different customisable modules and applications to meet every unique business need. As an open-source ERP software, Odoo offers tons of benefits that the other ERP solutions lacked.

Well, most small business owners often think that there’s no need for any software or tool for managing their day-to-day operations. However, this is not the case and be it a startup or a small business, every organisation needs a powerful ERP software solution to streamline, automate, and efficiently manage the processes and enhance business productivity and performance, helping small businesses to grow rapidly.

Here, you can find out the key reasons why small businesses prefer Odoo..

One-stop solution for your entire business:

Odoo ERP is a comprehensive suite of applications that covers all business needs and operations. It has thousands of modules for managing different business processes and functions like sales, inventory, CRM, HRM, supply chain, warehouse, orders, marketing, purchases, finances, accounting, and more. The Odoo app store has over 16,000 applications so even specialised business needs can be addressed.

Low-cost implementation:

Odoo ERP ensures a relatively low-cost implementation and recurring costs. A major reason to choose Odoo is that the Community edition of Odoo needs no license fee though this edition lacks a few features including customer support. However, it's Enterprise edition that comes with all the features does have a very low license fee but even that is also much cheaper as compared to the other available ERP solutions.

Transparency:

Odoo ERP stores all business data in a single location in one database, making all data accessible to all employees of all the departments. This centralisation of the data increases transparency between employees and departments and eases data flow and cross-departmental communication and collaboration.

Quic decision-making:

Odoo centralises all data and makes it easy-to-access by all employees and departments and with the access of all data, it becomes easy for the employees to make quick and better decisions for the business no matter it is a decision related to accounting, marketing, customers, human resources, sales, or any other aspect. Quick decision-making ensures smooth workflow as well.

Increased productivity:

Odoo automates the processes and repetitive tasks. This speeds up the tasks and moreover, reduces data redundancy and errors while managing the accounting tasks. This increases as well improves the overall business productivity, making it easier for businesses to meet the customer demands and business goals.

Reduces operational costs:

The ERP reduces the overall operational expenses by automating the processes under the same platform. Odoo is an all-in-one integrated software solution and if you have Odoo, you won’t need to invest in multiple software systems for managing various business processes. Also, with this ERP, there’s no need of engaging more manual resources, which again reduces the operational costs.

Odoo is Customisable:

One of the most compelling benefits of Odoo implementation is that it is fully customisable. There are plenty of Odoo ERP customisation options which makes it the perfect ERP solution for small businesses. The ERP can be modified and customised to fit every business need. So, even if one comes with a specific request which goes beyond the app store of Odoo, an Odoo partner can easily develop it for you. This is highly valuable as the adoption of an ERP comes often with the immense behavioural changes from the staff and employees. The more accurately you can make the ERP fit your business requirements, the less you will need to change the business model and practices. This increases the chances of successful and precise ERP implementation.

Easy and quick integration:

Apart from being customisable, the software is API-friendly and allows easy integration of third-party tools and APIs. For instance, if you are using Quickbooks or some other software and find it beneficial for your business then you can easily integrate it with the Odoo ERP system. Just like customisability, this benefit too reduces the need to bring any behavioural changes while adopting the new ERP software.

Odoo is easy to implement:

As Odoo ERP has a modular structure or comes with separate modules for managing individual tasks, the ERP can be implemented phases-wise, that is one single module can be implemented at a time. This helps to implement the software in a manageable way and this approach is useful especially if you have a large-scale business.

It is highly scalable:

One noteworthy trait of Odoo ERP is that it is highly scalable and ensures business growth. When you are choosing an ERP software, you should not just see that it is compatible with only your present business needs but instead you should always choose and implement the ERP that ensures to streamline your business needs as your business grows as well. And Odoo is a fantastic option in this case. If your business is scaling up in terms of the increasing number of processes and functions, you can keep on adding more new modules to it according to the functions that are getting added to your business. In simple words, you can initially implement only the basic modules and can keep on adding more modules as per your changing and increasing business operations.

Plenty of options to choose from:

Unlike many other ERP software systems that allow only cloud hosting or on-premise hosting, Odoo ERP allows both on-premise and cloud hosting and businesses can choose as per their requirements or what you think will be best for your business. Other than this, as already mentioned earlier in this article, Odoo offers two editions, the Community edition, though lacks some features, can still be useful for startups or small-scale businesses while the Enterprise edition has the full set of features of the ERP but is still much more affordable than the other ERP systems.

A powerful community support:

One of the biggest benefits of using Odoo is that it has a huge community support that is always ready and active to make the product better and businesses can keep on updating the ERP or implement the additional or upgraded modules to leverage the most of the ERP.

High security:

Odoo offers high security of the business data. All the business information is stored securely in a centralised database.

Intuitive Interface:

Odoo has an extremely intuitive and user-friendly interface. Finding the features, apps, and modules and accessing the modules and features of the ERP is extremely easy. Users can easily navigate the required modules without even using the navigation bar that’s there on the top of the dashboard. And the software improves its UI with even new versions.

Odoo has upgraded itself a lot since its inception and has been offering tons of features and benefits to businesses, helping businesses of different sizes and sectors with efficient and effective management of the processes and streamlined workflows.

Alex Forsyth is an experienced Odoo ERP consultant associated with a reliable and leading Odoo Partner in Australia, Envertis Software Solutions. The company offers end-to-end Odoo services including Odoo ERP customisation, configuration, integration, training, go-live support, migration, and Odoo maintenance services. And here, the author has shared the major reasons why Odoo is preferred by small businesses.

Alex Forsyth is one of the expert app developers in Sydney who is working for Envertis, an earmarked Australian company for mobile app development which has been delivering dynamic and revenue-centric apps to businesses.