This is the kind of story that blows me away. It has all the right ingredients: authenticity, originality and innovative thinking. Last week, I had a fascinating email conversation with Martyn Shiner, CFO at Severn Delta Ltd, a small British manufacturer of kitchen textiles that sell under the Sarah Smith brand but which are also supplied as own label. This is your classic FMCG environment where there are many transactions on both the buy and sell side, albeit there are a relatively small number of customers. Martyn’s an unashamed open source fan. The conversation started in comments he made on a post entitled ‘Vista Eviscerated’.
In the knockabout world of ERP, it’s easy to forget that real businesses have to get real things done. So while SAP is slugging it out with NetSuite, I’m much more impressed by what I see users doing to keep their computing costs in check. As Ali-G might say: ‘For real.’
Martyn is 50% co-owner of the MBO’d company so anything he spends comes out of his profit share – focuses the mind. It has been using MAX an Infor acquired product for manufacturing/accounting:
MAX has been “sunsetted” by Infor (nee SSA) and we only have third party support through to 2008 – they want us to buy Bann at a cost of £50k plus at least, plus support, installation etc etc etc – can’t afford that! MAX support has been woeful. Everybody wants to sell us MS SQL Server, new hardware, consultancy, training etc etc etc. It also means BIG BANG implementation which means big bucks and disruption.
As a result, Martyn’s internal IT is developing a replacement for MAX along with an open source CRM solution. These systems will work in a browser based environment. Once the basic accounts coding work is complete, Martyn plans to return the code to the community. Here is his rationale:
The community support on all the open source stuff is fantastic. You can get a fix, hints on usage etc etc pretty quickly. Dave (my IT co-ordinator) and I try to feed back where we can – so its a two way street – you get out what you put in. And when we’ve finished the accounts stuff in conjunction with the CRM guys we’ll be releasing it into the wild – our contribution to the greater good, so to speak.
So why the move away from closed source, packaged systems?
Once we get off MAX I’m in control. Nobody can stiff me for more fees if I want to move to a bigger server. I can upgrade and develop at my own pace, and I can use old hardware ‘tll it falls apart. Thats how the real world of manufacturing has always worked, so I don’t see why the IT bit should be any different.
I asked why, instead of building, the company didn’t go for something like Compiere. Martyn said:
It seemed very complicated and needed work to make it UK compliant. Also it only runs on Oracle which scared
me off a bit and the licencing seemed a bit opaque.
The only in-house application running on Windows is Sage payroll which will be retired in favour of an outsourced solution once the replacement system is complete. That should all be done in time for when MAX is retired. Total savings over four years: £50,000.
This is the first case of its kind I’ve come across and I would be interested in hearing about other projects. Here we have a small company that fits into the mid-range for UK computing solutions. Eschewing commercial applications, it is both consuming and returning code back to the community. This is a lone example yet I wonder whether the future competition for applications won’t be led by big brands like SAP and Sage but from open source providers with the distribution channel being replaced by service centres that provide both open source and bespoke coding services with the emphasis on community. It’s already happening at many levels.
Later today I’ll show another example. One that is so simple, anyone can do it but which has the potential to add HUGE community value.
Technorati Tags: Compiere, open source, Sage, SAP
