Case Study – ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning

ADempiere
ADempiere ERP & CRM is a sophisticated business solution that provides an industrial strength alternative to
proprietary products. Many ERP solutions available in the market today provide similar functionality and many
organisations only evaluate solutions on the basis of their functional capabilities at a particular point in time. This
approach will lead to different results when two products are evaluated over a period of time because of the leap
frogging of one product over another as new releases are brought to market and should be used with caution.

The life span of an ERP solution is often ten or more years and during this time technology and business
requirements will change. While the functional capability of a product is important, it is equally important to take
into consideration the technology on which the product is based and its ability to be modified and enhanced to
meet the changing needs of an organisation as its business needs change. Furthermore it is critical to make sure
that essential changes do not jeopardise the ability to migrate to subsequent releases of the product whilst
preserving the integrity of the business specific changes. Whilst ADempiere is functionally rich, it is its ability to
incorporate business specific changes and preserve those changes into future releases of the software that
demonstrates its real power.

ADempiere’s Origins

ADempiere is based on the Compiere ERP&CRM project originally created by Jorg Janke and Kathy Pink and
contributed to the community under the General Public License (GPLv2). The far-sightedness of the original
developer’s has allowed the development over time of a very feature-rich ERP and CRM system which is robust
and easily extendible. ADempiere was created on September 2006 based on the original Compiere code base.
Since that time ADempiere has been extended and changed greatly by contributions made by many organisations
and people with an interest in the system.

ADempiere’s Strengths

1. Flexibility

ADempiere adopts open standards which allows:

 standardisation, stability and interoperability of systems

 clear, public and viewable descriptions of data and behavior
 disparate software to act in complementary ways
 Hardware and operating system independence
2. Long-term viability

ADempiere shields itself from obsolescence by

  complying with industry standards and utilising toolsets which support these standards thus enabling
ADempiere to change the underlying building blocks
 ensuring availability of a large developer support base, knowledgeable in the tools used
 providing source code availability allowing support for the long term
 being highly scalable to meet organic or explosive growth through acquisition
 not being subject to the financial success or survival of any specific organisation.
3. Lower Total Cost of Ownership
 No software licence fees (subject to database choice)
 No requirement to pay for annual upgrades (typically the major source of software suppliers’ ongoing
revenue streams)
 Lower costs associated with supplier contract management
 Reduced costs of change management

Different Modules of ERP:

A ADempiere ERP & CRM

ADempiere provides fully integrated and easy to use first tier ERP and CRM functionality for mid-market
enterprises.
Unlike traditional systems it is organized to map onto the typical business processes as shown below. It is
provided as a complete, integrated, unitary system rather than a series of loosely coupled modules with data
transfer between them
This integration applies to the Customer Relationship Management, the web store data as well as the traditional
ERP information .
Why is ADempiere organised to reflect Business Processes?
Business processes rather than traditional departments drive ADempiere's design and in today's world,
especially in mid-market enterprises, employees often perform entire business processes or related processes.
The chart below is a mapping of the ADempiere processes to the modules often found in more traditional
proprietary applications.

Traditional Quote to Requisition Customer Supply Chain Performance

Modules Cash Pay Management Management Analysis
General Ledger
√
Accounts
Payables √ √ √
Accounts
Receivables √ √ √
Purchase Orders
√ √ √ √
Sales Orders
√ √ √ √
Inventory
Management √ √ √ √ √
Fixed Assets
√ √
Customer
Relationship √ √
Management

1. Quote to Cash
Quote to Cash covers the business processes used for creating quotations for prospects or customers, sales order
management, invoicing and cash receipting. The functionality is tightly integrated with Supply Chain
Management and Customer Relationship Management components of ADempiere. This functionality is typically
found in modules entitled sales order entry and accounts receivable.
A schematic showing the process flow from the entry of a Quotation to the receipt of cash is shown below
 2. Requisition to Payment
Requisition to Payment covers the business process used for creating purchase orders, processing invoices
received from vendors and generating payments. The functionality is tightly integrated with Supply Chain
Management. This functionality is typically found in modules entitled purchasing and accounts payable.
A schematic showing the process flow from the entry of a Requisition to the payment for the goods received is
shown below.
 3. Customer Relations Management
Customer Relations Management is an integrated module providing a logical view of all customer and prospect
Related activities. There are (in contrast to traditional CRM systems) no batch or synchronisation processes with
the back-office functionality. Originally the Adempiere CRM functions were focused on dealing with incoming
communications however Adaxa has extended the functions to manage Leads, Opportunities and Campaigns.
4. Partner Relations Management
Partner Relations Management links different clients to each other allowing them to manage lead distribution,
service requests, collateral distribution and marketing expenses. It facilitates the provision of shared (centralised)
services by one organizational entity to the other organizational entities. This functionality enables organisations
which manage a number of wholly or partly owned entities (such as a franchise operation) to provide centralized
services to the remote operations.
5. Supply Chain Management
Supply Chain Management covers all material management activities including inventory receipts, shipments,
movements and stock take count management and processing.
The schematic representation of the process is shown in the schematic below.

Product Catalogue
The Product Catalogue lists the user’s Products and Services with optional Bill of Materials and Substitutes. The
system allows the user to import and update purchase prices from its vendors. Products are organised in categories
and hierarchies and can also be searched based on attributes that apply over a number of products, for instance
“find me all products that are yellow shirts with short sleeves”.
Multiple price lists are supported for all purchased and sold items. ADempiere’s purchase price list functionality
allows simple control of discounts from suppliers. The system provides general and customer specific sales price
lists. Price lists are 'date controlled' to allow new price lists to be creatd well in advance of their start date.
Material Management
Shipment documentation can be created in batches or individually on a per order basis. Goods received from
vendors can be compared directly with the purchase order or the vendor invoice. The system shows ‘available to
promise’, after allowing for reservations for committed future customer shipments and expected vendor receipts.
Material Replenishment lists are created based on inventory replenishment rules.
Requisitions or Purchase Orders can also be automatically generated from the material replenishment report.

6. Performance Analysis
Performance Analysis covers the costing and accounting dimension of the application. This functionality is
typically found in Reporting and General Ledger modules as well as in those modules that generate accounting
entries.
SALES & PURCHASE CYCLES

Sales – Quote to Invoice

Sales – Shipments
Sales Cycle – Payments Receipts
PURCHASE CYLE
PURCHASE CYCLE – REQUISITION OF INVOICE

PURCHASE CYCLE – ACCOUNT POSTING

PURCHASE CYCLE – OUTSTANDING

PURCHASE CYCLE – PAYMENTS TO VENDORS

TYPES OF REPORTS:

GENERAL LEDGER:
SECURITY CONFIGURATION:

INTEGRATION WITH OTHER SYSTEMS: