Building An Open Source ERP Company From Pamplona, Spain: OpenBravo CEO Paolo Juvara (Part 4)

Sramana: ERP has largely been a channel business and the accountants choose the accounting system, especially in the small business world. Somehow you have managed to make open source ERP a valid strategy for your company. How did you do it?

Paolo Juvara: The adaptability of our solution is the reason we have been successful and are adopted by people within organizations who are forward-thinking. One of the comments we often hear when it comes to QuickBooks and other similar tools is, “Our accountants like it, but the product is limiting the ability of the rest of the company to grow,” which is true. Just because something works for accountants does not make it a good fit for a company. OpenBravo is adaptable to so many situations, and we help companies grow.

Smaller companies will end up growing to a certain point, and then they realize they have to drop QuickBooks. They will then try to adopt another solution that has a few additional capabilities, and then when they outgrow that they move on to another solution. Growing a company in that manner requires not only continual investment in technology but a constant change between different vendors ERP systems. That is why ERPs have gained a reputation as being difficult products. That is always precisely why people like OpenBravo.

OpenBravo frees companies from that costly growth cycle. We allow companies to start very small. You can begin using our ERP the moment you have an account. You can grow functionality through our agile ERP mentality and add on as you need it.

Sramana: Small companies have hardly any IT resources. They need to focus on their core business. OpenBravo would require them to have at least some IT resources. Are you primarily getting customers who are moving on from a first solution such as QuickBooks?

Paolo Juvara: We do see a lot of customers who originally used a product like QuickBooks and have found that their business is pushing them beyond what their current offering can provide. They then want to avoid costs, so they begin to explore open source ERPs, which inevitably leads them to OpenBravo. Many of them will become customers. That is the pull effect.

The push effect is different. There are a lot of service providers that rely on open source products. They can differentiate themselves by becoming experts with OpenBravo. They can then make the recommendation to their clients, who will likely be the small businesses.

Sramana: Essentially you are appealing to businesses that are using the open source base, and your offering is easy to customize to match their workflow. Are there trends in the types of businesses using your software?

Paolo Juvara: If we are talking about the pull effect, then those are companies who have an IT department, and they are actively looking at open source to reduce their costs. If we are talking about the push effect, then the company demographics are much more varied as those solutions are essentially sold by third-party service providers that will use the OpenBravo software as part of their solution.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Building An Open Source ERP Company From Pamplona, Spain: OpenBravo CEO Paolo Juvara
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