The X Factor: Trust

One issue I rarely see discussed in articles about ERP, open source or just about any software is trust.  When looking for an ERP system the number of considerations that have to be thought through from business processes to technology platforms can be overwhelming.  Many people deal with the enormity of this process by coming up with a list of feature requirements which are then blasted to all the ERP vendors they can find.  They work their way to a short list of candidates by selecting the top vendors that appear to meet most of their requirements based on vendor responses.  "Can we trust you?" is not an explicitly listed requirement.

The unfortunate thing about the feature list approach is 1) There are always compromises.  There is no ERP system in existence that perfectly meets the needs of any given complex business out of the box. 2) Sales people are inclined to check "yes" on far more of these feature requirements than they should and 3) these same sales people rarely let users actually test out these features they claim to support.  The answer to any "Can it do this?" question is "Yes."  Invariably the choice is made to purchase a system based on these claims, only to later find that it requires thousands of dollars of customization or serious compromises to make the system do what was really wanted.  This is how ERP projects run over budget and miss deadlines.  Because the customer never really knows what they are buying until it is too late.

The power of open source in ERP is that there are no shell games. We can't stretch the truth.  We can't make stuff up.  Everything about our application is out in the open.  If we say it can do something, you can try it out and see for yourself.  If you find it doesn't do it the way you want, we talk about that before you commit your company to the project.  In short, open source forces us to be honest.

Why does this matter?  With small applications, maybe it doesn't.  If you don't like them you can throw them away and move to something better.  With Accounting systems and ERP, however, it's a different story.  When you select one of these systems you are entering into a partnership that will last years and involve almost everyone in your company.  It's almost like a marriage, and one of the keys to any successful marriage is trust.  When you trust your partner you can work productively to solve the problems.  When you don't, you live a frustrating life of second guessing what your partner's real intent is... and arguing.  

So throw out the feature list.  Start by looking for a software company that can first and foremost be a trustworthy partner.  How can you tell?  Do they have public forums? Read them.  Do they have online help?  Study it.  Do they offer free demos? Try them.  

Will our software do everything you want exactly the way you want it to out of the box?  Hopefully, but probably not.  Can it be made to do that at a lower total cost than any other system?  Probably so.  Let's have an honest conversation, then, to see how xTuple could fit your business.