Odoo 14, the most clever Odoo ever
Today, we are proud to announce the release of Odoo 14, the most beautiful and intelligent version of Odoo to date.
A Brand New Website Builder
This year, our Website Builder underwent massive changes. We thoroughly reviewed every block, every screen, and made it the best solution to create a website. We reworked the builder to make it more intuitive, with more options, customizations, widgets, and blocks to help users design outstanding pages
The blog interface has been revamped to make it more understandable. New options are also available, so your writings are unique. But what would a blog post be without a strong SEO score? To help you handle that, we also improved our Promote feature to make it possible to customize your URLs and sharing across the Internet.
To strengthen it even more, we also added a connection to the Google Search Console, so everyone can optimize their website to have the best possible position in the search engine.
Have you ever dreamed of creating fantastic and complete reports of your revenues and sales teams’ commissions? Of being able to use filters and still have your reports’ data up-to-the-minute? Well, that dream has become a reality, thanks to Odoo 14. Our latest version comes with an intuitive tool that allows you to create reports that are automatically updated. Yes, you read correctly! Any new lead won, or new sales closed, will be automatically added to the reports. Just refresh your page and start upskilling your business intelligence practices! And, to keep up with the Odoo Style, the feature is fully integrated with ALL Odoo apps.
New and Improved Menus for Inventory & MRP
To answer the demand, Odoo worked on improving the visual aspect of its MRP and Inventory apps. Several menus have been added, or moved to a more suitable position to offer a better vision of all the process’ actions.
For example, the routing information is now included in the bill of materials. This decreases the number of pages to load in order to access the operation needed to proceed. The same goes for Batch Transfers. You can now see the detailed operations for each transfer without having to click on it. Product availability also received a visual improvement, showing which products are available or not. And, by clicking on the “availability” option, you can now access the forecasted report of each product used in the MO.
Last but not least, manufacturing orders went through a lot of changes, too. Landed costs can now be applied to MOs, and the link between parent and child MOs can be shown. The scope of flexible consumption has also been increased, which updates MOs and consuming components that weren’t part of the initial BOM.
Several other upgrades have been made. The product configurator is now available in PoS, cash rounding can be set on a PoS, a single transfer is created when closing a session, and the payment interface has been made clearer when handling several methods.
With Odoo 14, create live tracks and broadcast them, via YouTube, with the new Odoo integration. After the talk, assess your attendees with quizzes and create competitions by displaying a leaderboard of the best answers.
Of course, interaction also comes from social networks. At Odoo, we understand that it is a vital aspect. That’s why you can create Twitter walls, and nest them under your event sub-menu. That way, you can keep an eye on what people say about you and your event, and, eventually, answer recurring questions.
Finally, make your attendees’ lives easier by letting them wishlist the talks they are interested in and, thanks to “push notifications,“ remind them to join the conference.As you can see, Odoo 14 can help your business grow in many different ways, and all of them can be found on our release note. Of course, you can always discover our apps by trying Odoo for free.
Thank you for your attention, and see you soon in Odoo!
The Odoo Story : Making companies a better place.
Making companies a better place. One app at a time.
I needed to change the world. I wanted to ... You know how it is when you are young; you have big dreams, a lot of energy and naive stupidity. My dream was to lead the enterprise management market with a fully open source software. (I also wanted to get 100 employees before 30 years old with a self-financed company but I failed this one by only a few months).
To fuel my motivation, I had to pick someone to fight against. In business, it's like a playground. When you arrive in a new school, if you want to quickly become the leader, you must choose the class bully, the older guy who terrorises small boys, and kick his butt in front of everyone. That was my strategy with SAP, the enterprise software giant.
So, in 2005, I started to develop the TinyERP product, the software that (at least in my mind) would change the enterprise world. While preparing for the "day of the fight" in 2006, I bought the SorrySAP.com domain name. I put it on hold for 6 years, waiting for the right moment to use it. I thought it would take 3 years to deprecate a 77 billion dollars company just because open source is so cool. Sometimes it's better for your self-motivation not to face reality...
To make things happen, I worked hard, very hard. I worked 13 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no vacations for 7 years. I lost friendships and broke up with my girlfriend in the process (fortunately, I found a more valuable wife now. I will explain later why she is worth 1 million EUR :).
Three years later, I discovered you can't change the world if you are "tiny". Especially if the United States is part of this world, where it's better to be a BigERP, rather than a TinyERP. Can you imagine how small you feel in front of Danone's directors asking; "But why should we pay millions of dollars for a tiny software?" So, we renamed TinyERP to OpenERP.
As we worked hard, things started to evolve. We were developing dozens of modules for OpenERP, the open source community was growing and I was even able to pay all employees' salaries at the end of the month without fear (which was a situation I struggled with for 4 years).
In 2010, we had a 100+ employees company selling services on OpenERP and a powerful but ugly product. This is what happens when delivering services to customers distracts you from building an exceptional product.
It was time to do a pivot in the business model.
The Pivot
We wanted to switch from a service company to a software publisher company. This would allow to increase our efforts in our research and development activities. As a result, we changed our business model and decided to stop our services for customers and focus on building a strong partner network and maintenance offer. This would cost money, so I had to raise a few million euros.
After a few months of pitching investors, I got roughly 10 LOI from different VCs. We chosed Sofinnova Partners, the biggest European VC, and Xavier Niel the founder of Iliad, the only company in France funded in the past 10 years to have reached the 1 billion EUR valuation.
I signed the LOI. I didn't realize that this contract could have turned me into a homeless person. (I already had a dog, all I needed was to lose a lot of money to become homeless). The fundraising was based on a company valuation but there was a financial mechanism to re-evaluate the company up by 9.8 m€ depending on the turnover of the next 4 years. I should have received warrants convertible into shares if we achieved the turnover targeted in the business plan.
The night before receiving the warrants in front of the notary, my wife checked the contracts. She asked me what would be the taxation on these warrants. I rang the lawyer and guess what? Belgium is probably the only country in the world where you have to pay taxes on warrants when you receive them, even if you never reach the conditions to convert them into shares. If I had accepted these warrants, I would have had to pay a 12.5% tax on 9.8 m€; resulting in a tax of 1.2m€ to pay in 18 months! So, my wife is worth 1.2 million EUR. I would have ended up a homeless person without her, as I still did not have a salary at that time.
We changed the deal and I got the 3 million EUR. It allowed me to recruit a rocking management team.
Being a mature company
With this money in our bank account, we boosted two departments: R&D and Sales. We burned two million EUR in 18 months, mostly in salaries. The company started to grow even faster. We developed a partner network of 500 partners in 100 countries and we started to sign contracts with 6 zeros.
Then, things became different. You know, tedious things like handling human resources, board meetings, dealing with big customer contracts, traveling to launch international subsidiaries. We did boring stuff like budgets, career paths, management meetings, etc.
2011 was a complex year. We did not meet our expectations: we only achieved 70% of the forecasted sales budget. Our management meetings were tense. We under performed. We were not satisfied with ourselves. We had a constant feeling that we missed something. It's a strange feeling to build extraordinary things but to not be proud of ourselves.
But one day, someone (I don't remember who, I have a goldfish memory) made a graph of the monthly turnover of the past 2 years. It was like waking up from a nighmare. In fact, it was not that bad, we had multiplied the monthly turnover by 10 over the span of roughly two years! This is when we understood that OpenERP is a marathon, not a sprint. Only 100% growth a year is ok... if you can keep the rhythm for several years.
As usual, I should have listened to my wife. She is way more lucid than I am. Every week I complained to her "It's not good enough, we should grow faster, what am I missing?" and she used to reply: "But you already are the fastest growing company in Belgium!" (Deloitte awarded us as the fastest growing company of Belgium with 1549% growth of the turnover between 2007 and 2011)
Changing the world
Then, the dream started to become reality. We started to get clues that what we did would change the world:
- With 1.000 installations per day, we became the most installed management software in the world,
- Analysts from Big 4 started to prefer OpenERP over SAP,
- OpenERP is now a like Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- 60 new modules are released every month (we became the wikipedia of the management software thanks to our strong community)
- In 2013, we had 2.000.000 users worldwide
Something is happening... And it's big!
New financing in 2014
After years of rapid growth, we achieved another amazing goal - we secured a new round of USD 10 Millions of financing, jointly provided by leading venture capital firms XAnge (France), SRIW (Belgium), Sofinnova (France), and the management team.
The new financing will support the acceleration of the outstanding growth the company has seen over the last years, enabling the doubling of the commercial force and increased R&D staff - already 100+ people strong.
The rise of Odoo
After having disrupted the ERP market, OpenERP moved far beyond the boundaries of traditional ERP players. The integration of business activities is not anymore restricted to sales, accounting, inventory and procurements. In june 2014, we released version 8 with an awesome CMS & eCommerce, a Point of Sale, an integrated Business Intelligence engine and much more. (and 3000+ modules)
Our exceptional technology allowed us to move to newer markets (CMS & eCommerce) and propose a product that disrupt existing open source players (Wordpress, Magento, etc). The OpenERP CMS is so good that even top competitors admited it publicly when we released the beta version.
If current open source players have a real technical challenge to follow us, we also have a huge marketing challenge. Wordpress has 22% of all internet websites. We were the leader in management software, but we start with 0% of the website market.
To move forward, we raised USD 10 millions in may 2014 in order to boost marketing and sales activities. In order to support our vision, we had to change the name that is not restricted to ERPs functions. We needed a name that allows to support our ambitions; build business solutions like CMS, eCommerce, Business Intelligence and, who knows, even sky rockets or driverless cars in the future...
In may 2014, we rename the company and product to Odoo. And a new story just started...
How Toyota Uses Odoo After Just 6 Months of Integration
Toyota Material Handling France is a member of the Toyota Industries Corporation, which operates in 5 regions in the material handling industry. The company mainly focuses on manufacturing and selling forklifts throughout Europe, with their specialty being electric and IC-powered counterbalanced trucks under the Toyota brand. In addition, they also provide technical solutions and support, with 735 Toyota certified technicians available at an average of 25 km from any location.
In addition to their own production, the company also does some importing and exporting within Europe of trucks bought from Japan, China and the US. Depending on the customer's request, some of these are then modified in their factory in France.
A Quicker Return on Investment
A couple of years before implementing Odoo, Toyota Material Handling, underwent some big organizational changes in their group. The aim was to restructure their operations in order to properly manage their distribution network and supplier units in Europe: one in Sweden, one in Italy and one in France.
Before Odoo they had built in a custom-made solution for the configuration of their highly customizable trucks. These trucks are custom designed by their customers and represent nearly 40% of the business. The problem they were faced with was that behind the scenes, the factory in Italy was not equipped with an adequate solution to go through all the necessary steps:
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to properly acknowledge and take care of the orders received
- to organize the production or purchase of the right trucks from the right business unit abroad, and subsequently organize shipment and invoice the customers
As their previous solution was also used as the configurator, it meant that changing one part of the solution meant taking down the entire old system and replacing it with something else. Therefore, they did some research and found that they had two possibilities; to replace the old solution with a new custom-made solution or replace it with an out-of-the-box solution.
Toyota Material Handling didn't have an ERP in place, so that was one possibility they explored, but as they are in an "aggressive" market they couldn't afford to take risks with very big investments. They needed to a quick return on investment and a traditional ERP proved not to be the best solution for their requirements. That left them with a simple choice; to build their own system or to choose a cheaper solution - and the only solution that was able to pass the test was Odoo. For these any many more reasons, Toyota Material Handling decided to go with Odoo, with the official partner, Smile.
The Scope of the Odoo Implementation
Even thought their initial focus was on Sales, the scope of solution that was implemented was much bigger than that;
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First they needed Odoo Sales in order to manage their orders. As soon as an order is placed by a customer, they need need to make sure that the corresponding products are available, and for that they need Odoo Inventory
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Next was managing the procurement. They have two flows for that;
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On one hand they have products that are manufactured in-house and for that they use Odoo Manufacturing.
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Then they have also some products that are imported from their factories in Japan, US and China, and for that they use Odoo Purchase.
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Odoo Accounting was added in order to be be able to invoice their customers directly from Odoo
10 Reasons to Hire a Marketing Agency
One fact is that a marketing Agency has the power to grow your business fast than most marketing techniques. More over knowing that each business can have 10, 15, 20 social accounts, hiring a marketing agency allows you to get started with your campaigns on all your accounts almost immediately. You should start by first understanding your needs and sharing them with the agency. Digital campaigns work best if all parties are on the same page. Plus, your agency should enjoy the freedom of making decisions that best suit your interests and budget plan.
1)BROADER SKILL SET.
The primary reason that businesses choose to partner with a marketing agency is that they get an entire team of specialized, experienced professionals working on their project for significantly less than it would cost to build that same team in-house. Most small businesses don’t have enough work to justify bringing on a full-time developer, full-time SEO expert, and full-time social media account manager. However, a large majority of companies would benefit from the services of each. Partnering with an agency brings those skills and more to the table without any additional investment. Having such a vast range of skills at your company’s disposal also makes it easier to diversify your marketing efforts.
2. EXPERTISE.
Not only are there more people with different skill sets within an agency, but also those people generally have a greater depth of experience. Agency professionals are typically specialists in a particular area, plus your company benefits from the competitive landscape in which agencies are hiring talent. In-house marketers often adapt to be more like a jack-of-all-trades in order to cover all of the company’s needs. Agencies devote resources to educating employees and keeping them on the cutting edge of their respective discipline. Additionally, the team environment within an agency fosters continual learning and growth.
3. COST.
Generally speaking, it’s significantly cheaper to partner with an agency rather than bring on a full in-house team. That being said, total cost can vary greatly based on the size of your business and how much you’re looking to accomplish. Both internal and external marketing can amount to a sizable investment. A full in-house group requires significant overhead, including salaries, benefits, office space, equipment, training, recruiting, and more. An external agency can be one of the largest line items in a marketing budget, and because of that can be an easy target for cuts and renegotiations. All things considered, a digital marketing agency is usually the most cost-effective solution for high-quality marketing work. For the same price as one or two full-time salaries, you gain access to a complete team of professionals across multiple marketing specialties.
Using a hybrid approach allows you to take advantage of having lower-cost internal creative help full-time, while also gaining the flexibility and skill diversification from a digital marketing agency when needed.
4. LOWER COMMITMENT.
Partnering with a digital marketing agency is much less commitment than hiring a full in-house team. Your company isn’t responsible for any recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, or any of the other time-consuming and often expensive tasks that come along with a new employee. Marketing agencies are easier to hire and also easier to fire than an in-house employee (or at least, they should be), which means it will be easier to find a good fit between an agency and in-house team. Trust and communication are the foundation of a successful agency partnership, and finding an agency with which you can build that relationship is paramount.
5. PRODUCTIVITY.
When you partner with an agency, 100% of your investment goes toward the production of deliverables. None of your marketing budget is being spent on benefits, equipment, ongoing education, PTO, etc.
Agencies are also driven by efficiency. Managing multiple accounts means that agencies have a proven process in place that makes it possible for them to produce high-quality work that meets both deadlines and budgets. Typically, they can get this type of work done more quickly than an in-house team who might be working through it for the first time.
6. ACCOUNTABILITY.
One of the biggest challenges for internal marketers is proving ROI. Agencies are results driven, and therefore want to make sure that they are gathering accurate, insightful data to guide the marketing strategy. Reporting is a crucial part of strengthening the partnership and for making informed decisions moving forward. Providing meaningful data is valuable to both the digital marketing agency and your company; it illustrates a mutual investment in success. Agencies are held accountable to all of their clients, and it’s another process that they have down to a science.
7. LARGER NETWORK & ACCESS TO ADVANCED TOOLS.
Working with multiple clients builds a large network of vendors and channels that can lead to further partnerships for your company, too. Agencies also have access to a vast number of tools and resources that either aren’t practical to have for only one company or that are exclusive to industry professionals. In addition to building a network through partnerships, agencies often exhibit work and are featured in publications, which can offer your company even more visibility.
8. STABILITY.
Aside from the skill-gap, one of the biggest challenges in-house teams face is employee turnover. Marketing employees can be especially prone to burnout when working internally for one company for a few years, and their creativity can stagnate. As a result, many junior-to-mid-level marketers change jobs every 2-3 years. When an employee leaves, not only are there recruiter fees, interviewing costs, and training to account for, but also the work burden that falls on your other in-house employees while a replacement is found. That can mean a delay or halt in your marketing campaigns. With an agency partner, you can be certain that your marketing strategy will still be consistently executed month after month.
9. SCALABILITY & FLEXIBILITY.
In order to increase overall production from an in-house team, you’d need to hire on more employees or contractors. Partnering with a digital marketing agency gives your company the flexibility to ramp up engagement (or slow it down) as needed. If you want to launch a new website, you can quickly increase the agency to create it. Once the website is live, you can allocate that time to another aspect of your campaign.
10. CREATIVITY & OBJECTIVITY
One of the greatest advantages that collaborating with an agency can offer is their creativity and objectivity. Keeping all marketing efforts in-house can sometimes lead to groupthink and tunnel-vision. A digital marketing agency isn’t influenced by any internal biases or assumed knowledge, so it’s easier to distill a clear message to the target audience. Internal teams often have such an in-depth knowledge that they try to say too much, and the core message is lost on the audience. An unbiased perspective can help sift through all of the unnecessary information, while remaining grounded enough to communicate clearly to the outside world.
Striking the right balance between internal and external work might take some adjustment. Perhaps it will make the most sense to hire a large internal team, only bringing in an agency for big-picture projects such as rebranding, strategy planning, or long-term campaigns that always take a back seat to immediate internal work. Or, maybe it will make more sense for your company to hire one or two in-house marketers to create daily deliverables while being the point of contact for your marketing agency, and then outsourcing most of the strategy and production to your agency partner. Even having one marketing manager in-house is a huge advantage. It provides a clear channel of communication, keeping other departments focused. It also means that your company has a dedicated person to review the reports, and who can then provide insights both internally and to the agency while they plan the next month’s strategy.
Odoo is Coming to Malta!
Odoo is proud to announce the release of our newest version, and is celebrating by coming to a city near you! Come join business professionals and software experts from a wide array of industries at this event!
This event brings together business owners, team leaders, IT professionals, and service providers from all over, to stay connected to a community dedicated to learn more about business management solutions. Come join us for presentations, demos, networking, and drinks at this exciting event and see how Odoo can help you grow businesses with a suite of fully integrated apps for every business need.
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Find the Perfect Solution for You:
· Discover Odoo integrated business apps
· Learn the best practices and strategies to improve the efficiency of your processes
· See how Odoo will help you scale operations and grow your business
Benefits of Attending:
· Meet Odoo experts for in-person demonstrations
· Network with business professionals who share your interests and industry passion
· Stay on top of the latest business management trends and technologies
· Have fun and make connections with business professionals that go well beyond our event and last a lifetime
5 reasons you need a website for your business
Today, more than ever it is essential to have a Website. Whether it is simply for people to get in touch with you or to increase your customer list, a web page is the best tool to achieve your objectives since the web is accessible from all over the world, at all times and by everyone.
Hence the importance of a website to a company!
1) Tell Customer Who and Where You Are .
Having an active website is important even for small, local businesses. According to a study done by Nielsen, 85 percent of consumers use the internet to find a local business. Without a
business web design , these customers may not even be able to contact or locate the business. Search engines such as Google are heavily focusing on local results, so a website is even more important if you are a local business.
A professional business web design gives you an instant global presence and allows your business to capture customers from around the world. This has the potential to greatly increase your customer base. If you can service customers nationally or globally, a website that reflects that is a must for prospects that are researching your business.
2) Cost Savings
A business website can cost very little maintain. When compared to other advertising techniques, it is fairly inexpensive. Considering the power of a business website, the return-on-investment is higher than other advertising channels in most cases. A website should be a sales tool, explaining products and services and generating leads from that information. If you compare this to a salary of a person and the cost of sales collateral, it is a fraction of he cost.
3) An ever growing customer list
Since the arrival of large search engines like Google, it has become easier to be visible on the web. People from all over the world can find your site with internet and view your products and services. Your customer relationship is not more only limited to people in your city or region. It is constantly growing because people are constantly surfing the web.
Today it is also easier to advertise yourself to increase your visibility thanks to web referencing and to various networks such as facebook and twitter you can increase traffic on your website.
4) Increases credibility
When you design a good quality website, up to the reputation of your company, your customers will find that you are not afraid to do what it takes to serve them better. Today the simple fact of having a web page increases notoriety. More and more people are relying on search engines like Google to find a business and there you are not it is to say that you do not exist.
5) Gives you the chance to promote any latest change in your company
Using your website you can inform your current and future customers of the latest developments in your business, whether it is the launch of a new product, a major purchase, etc. Everything can be online very quickly with the help of an administrative console you can manage your news page easily. And offer a periodic mailing service to a list of your customers.
In short, technology is developing rapidly. The Internet is an external and internal communication tool, a marketing tool, an after-sales service tool and a business intelligence tool essential to the functioning of a business.