Only for big ones?

ERP-systems have traditionally been used in big stock listed companies, or when the target is to get in that category.  It has been used to manage internationalization, several physical locations and/or countries, different product groups, sales offices, real time reporting etc.

Lighter and more focused systems have been available for smaller companies. Usually there are several of these available and some of them are popular either regionally (e.g. certain country) or there is a specific application for certain business. These compact applications may serve well and often are quite cost effective in their focus area! But they don't always cover all the business needs, typically just some areas of it. In which case company needs to run several such systems and ends up copy/pasting data between them. A commonly found division is to have separate logistics and finance system, so for instance customers and vendors are needed in both. And it also often happens that these entities are not created in exactly the same accuracy - maybe finance system has one vendor per VAT code and logistic system one per delivering location. Because of these little differencies in definitions, and occasionally missing counter parts in one of the systems, there could be difficulties in creating reporting that should combine those two. Or maybe there is a user that regularly spends time  cross-checking the systems monitoring and fixing these kind of issues. 

This "silo-effect" can happen between any two systems, e.g. between CRM and logistics, or project systems and logistics and/or finance. Or HR.  Or eCom. Or quality system. Or...  - basically between any two systems that company has purchased. Or what it has ended with after mergers and acquisitions or while going into new markets and countries. 

Some have solved above integration issues by building interfaces between the systems, which usually takes time and money. Furthermore their constant monitoring and gradual changes due to changes in business may become a pain point. In worst case these interfaces are so critical, that companies are hesitant to upgrade the (as such inexpensive) basic systems, because the estimated workload and cost for rebuilding the interface is too much. Even if they have the money to do it, there could be bottle neck in IT department to provide the resources.  If there even is an IT department in small company - maybe the interface was built by some people who already left the company. There are lots of worries for the CIO trying to manage integration! 

The big companies are of course facing exactly the same issues, except that for them both the quantity and scope of issues is bigger, as their operations expand to more countries and markets and product divisions. And often they have more mergers and acquisitions in their history, so system landscape could be really scattered! Which is why typical large enterprise has already implemented ERP and is running it to manage the integration. Stock listed company without ERP is hard to find! 

It has been a challenge for medium or small company to find system capable of running business in several functional areas in several countries in one system and one that would also have reasonable price tag! Reasonable meaning that investment could be in the magnitude of family car and not a yacht! Only recently there has been options such as Odoo to make ERP a real option for SME!

We would be happy to discus and estimate how Odoo might serve for your company. It is being used in more than 50 countries by more than 8 million people. There are experts available around the globe for support the implementation and one can run several companies in single database.

I would like to discuss how this might work for us