What to check when you are evaluating Odoo

Things to watch when you implement Odoo yourself

Odoo is open source software, so with a certain amount of systems literacy you can install it on a server yourself and try it out.

But "easy to try" and "able to use it well" are two different things. We do hear, here and there, from people who managed the install and tried operating the standard features, but who are hesitating over adoption because of some difficulty.

So what are those difficulties, at companies trying Odoo on their own? Typically they are these.

1. Not knowing how to configure the relatively complex areas, such as accounting and the warehouse
2. Not being able to judge whether a gap is merely under-configuration or genuinely needs customization
3. Not knowing the basics of customizing, or how to follow up when a bug turns up
4. Requirements that will not settle, from unfamiliarity with accounting rules or insufficient grasp of the business
5. Nobody in-house who can manage the project

Few users can cover all of those on their own, but every one of them is a basic that has to be cleared when implementing an ERP or any other core system. Precisely because Odoo is easy to try, we get the sense these points are often forgotten — the more so because many of the people trying it appear to have no prior ERP experience. As you find once you have done it, implementing an ERP presupposes a deep grasp of accounting, of the business and of the system, and on top of that it requires driving the project forward through patient, repeated coordination with a lot of people. Before any question of what the system can do, that means unglamorous work: pulling stakeholders with assorted agendas together into a team, and explaining things over and over so that users' understanding catches up with the system. (Odoo makes agile implementation easier, which lowers the difficulty of this work somewhat, but it does not make it go away.)

Get expert support early

Where a company pursues this on its own resources, then ends up blocked by difficulties like the above and never reaches adoption, the sunk cost is far from trivial. So if you are implementing yourself, we recommend checking from the trial stage onward that you have not overlooked these points. And if, having recognised them, you want expert support, we hope you will not hesitate to consider our pilot implementation service or our on-demand support service. If the conclusion is going to be that expert support is needed, the important thing is to get it before the situation turns chaotic.

That said, #4 and #5 are of a kind that outsiders cannot fully support, or can only support expensively. If you have nobody in-house who can cover those, then even with expert support, implementing Odoo as an ERP is likely to be difficult. Odoo is a system that small and medium-sized companies find easy to adopt — but by the same token, it does tend to throw their shortfall in project management and change management skills into relief.