Open Source ERP for Small and Medium Business

When it comes to ERP for small and medium business, there is no one solution that has been immensely popular in this category. The most popular word of mouth, Microsoft Dynamics has at least 2-3 internally competing solutions which is confusing. The other popular solutions like the Sage, Epicor, Infor and others are mature, stable solutions which have not really made real impact. NetSuite has successfully dislodged SAP Business ByDesign; However, NetSuite is a mature and stable solution which is perceived as a competition for SAP and hence loses interest from majority of the SMB. SAP Business One, like many other SAP solutions, looks very cool in the sales cycle. However, a lot of customers have observations around the functionality gaps and the high services costs for customization and extension of the solution.

What other ERP solution(s) are the Small & Medium businesses buying? There is no one conclusive research or reference materials that provides the answers. But given this industry segment has its own limitations and requirements(ranging from simple to complex), the playing field has a large number of small to large players. However, the market is not lucrative for large players like SAP or Oracle since it brings in low revenues that require significant product management and selling efforts.

The open source based solutions like OpenERP, OpenBravo, OpenTaps and others have made significant inroads in to the SMB. It is interesting to see how much success they can achieve in the next 1-3 years.