Compiere

Are you after a 360 degree view of your company? Do you just like the sound of a 360 degree view? Compiere ERP & CRM might be the right choice for you. Compiere contains ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning, and CRM, Customer Relations Management, software containing POS, Point Of Sales, distribution, inventory, e-commerce, accounting, and workflow systems. The e-commerce part connects with a Web site shop so you can sell stuff online. POS connects to a cash register for those occasions when people bang on your door with their hands full of cash.

Download Compiere from compiere.org.

Special Features

Most parts of Compiere have several competitors but one area stands out as rare, their distribution software.

Wholesale Distribution

Compiere ERP & CRM has a special section dedicated to wholesale distribution with multiple warehouses and outlets. If you want wholesale distribution then look at Compiere first.

Prerequisites

Compiere has both a client and a server component. You need at least one server and one client with an additional client per person using the system.

Some of the competitors are purely Web based which means the client part is just a regular Web browser, you do not need to install client software. In the past there were reasons why you might write special client software but not today. Perhaps Compiere will one day remove the client software.

Server

You need a computer to run the main application and store the database. When you grow your business to be huge and profitable, you need a bigger faster server then more than one. Any brand of computer will do so long as it is reliable and fast. You can use Windows, Linux, or Unix, just be sure to use the pro, Server, or Enterprise version of each.

Database

You have to store your data somewhere and Compiere use the Oracle database, which is your first big unnecessary expense. Competing products use free open source that easily compete against Oracle in the ERP and CRM areas. Choose another ERP or CRM product and tell Compiere about your choice so Compiere will switch to another database.

Programming Language

Compiere use Java, which is another limitation of their software. Java is usually reserved for big projects with unlimited money. Think of a cold winter evening with a warm furry pet on your lap keeping you warm. Using Java is equivalent to ignoring cats, small dogs, and instead choosing Mammuthus meridionalis.

Fortunately Microsoft helped make Java go fast and recently Java advanced to open source, which may eventually reduce the overhead of using Java.

Money

How do Compiere make their money and what will your cash go? Compiere charge for training and support. You will spend thousands training one of your staff if you are a big company using several Compiere components. After that, the main cash outlay will be for bigger faster servers and more expensive Oracle licences as your company grows.

Compiere also reserve their best features for commercial versions. Everything that is free in Compiere is also in the free Adempiere.

Editions

Compiere is available in four editions, Community, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. The community edition is free and open but does not contain the web interface and some other basic features you would look for in this type of software.

The standard edition is still open source, adding only documentation and limited support. There are important features missing and you are still better off with Adempiere.

The Professional edition adds the important Web access and makes support unlimited but uses a commercial licence instead of an open licence. The manufacturing software that makes Compiere attractive is available but costs extra. You would have to look closely at the total cost before committing to this version.

The enterprise edition adds only support for multiple servers. The problem is the need for multiple servers for small organisations who want hot swappable servers for disaster recovery. They are immediately pushed into a higher price bracket. The charge is per person and the enterprise edition is more expensive per person. A non profit organisation with a lot of people using the system occasionally would be hit with a huge cost for the professional edition and the cost jumps higher per person when they try to create a hot backup server. The Adempiere documentation does not mention using multiple servers.

Alternatives

Adempiere is the main alternative to Compiere as Adempiere was formed when some Compiere developers split from Compiere. Adempiere has limited documentation compared to Compiere.

There are a number of open source ERP projects, a number of CRM open source projects, and open source POS projects. You can build an alternative to Compiere using several open source components but may prefer to not invest all that time, in which case Compiere is the best choice for enterprise, manufacturing, and warehousing with Adempiere an alternative for almost everything else.

Conclusion

If you want ERP and CRM that includes wholesale distribution, Compiere is a major open source contender and would leap to number one if they let you use the free open source PostgreSQL instead of the expensive closed source Oracle.