Susie’s Thoughts

In my Open source and business strategies post I mentioned that we have planned to only use open source software for managing our business processes. I teach at a business university who partners with SAP and therefore we offer courses on how to use that software. At the same time I work on projects with many small and middle-sized businesses that still use Excel or a simple database in Access to manage their customer relationships. Well, to tell the truth, there are still some business owners only using a small black book filled with addresses and notes. Many of these businesses are small family businesses and when I talk about CRM or ERP, they have no clue of what I’m talking about.

As a teacher I’ve learned to not assume people know what I mean, so I will start this post by shortly describing what ERP is and what type of software I need. ERP means Enterprise Resource Planning, and Wikipedia says ERP systems attempt to integrate all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple modules of computer software to help integrate what used to be stand alone applications into one integrated system. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a database to store data for the various system modules. ERP systems attempt to cover all basic functions of an enterprise, regardless of the organization’s business type.

Examples of modules in an ERP are: Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Financials, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resources, Warehouse Management and Decision Support System.

Doesn’t matter what type of business you do, without a customer there will be no business. That means storing information of our customers will be the most important part. I don’t know yet for sure, but for now it looks like we will have both consumers and businesses as customers, so we need to be able to categorize our customers. And even though we are planning only a web based business, we haven’t ruled out a brick and mortal store. My sister owns a hair saloon and our products could easily be sold at her saloon.

With sales both in Europe and in US we need to be able to handle different currencies. We also need to be able to track sales in US and in Europe separately. I don’t know who will do the accounting yet, both me and my daughters have the proper education for taking care of the accounting in Finland, butwe have no knowledge of how to handle accounting in US.

There are a lot more we need to figure out before we decide which system to use, but these are to most important parts.

In a comment to my previous post Compiere was mentioned, I have already installed another open source system called OpenBravo. There are others I haven’t checked out yet, like Adempiere, ERP5, TinyERP, OFBiz, and Opentaps. There are probably even more systems than this. The Enterprise category on SourceForge returned 1772 projects out of which OpenBravo was the most active with ADempiere Bazaar on second place.

I was lucky enough to find a blog called Open Source ERP Guru with a lot of information about different ERP systems. I’m going to check the blog out before I decide which system to check next. I recommend everyone who’s out there looking for an ERP system to check out the blog too.

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Sorrow mentioned in her last post of her fear of losing herself in the process of making a living instead of living her life. I understand her fear because one of the reasons I feel I’m not a business person is the image I have in my head. Business is something you do when you don’t care about others or care about the wellbeing of your environment. In business you do everything to be the best and make most money, no matter what. Sell your soul to the devil and gain power and wealth. Lose your life in the process of making a living.

In an ideal world we wouldn’t have to give up living to make a living. In an ideal world we would be able to make a living while living the best life we know. I guess I’m an idealist because I believe it should be and it is possible to make a living and live a worthy life at the same time… live a life with inner peace and strength, without selling your soul to the devil, and yet make a little more money than you actually need.

Recent research suggest that moderately happy people are more successful than happy people. If you are happy and content with what you have you wont change. If you have everything you wish for you will not pursue more, or anything different from what you have. When you are moderately happy you live a good life, but you still have something to work for, everything isn’t perfect.

Many people seem to think that getting more money than you will ever be able to spend during a life time is the ultimate happiness. Yet media suggest otherwise. Rich and successful people seem to have as many or even more problems than the average joe. It would be interesting to know if there have ever been any research made on the happiness level of the rich and famous. Is success really the way to a happy life, or is happiness found in the simple things? Should we try to get back to a life where happiness was a loaf of bread and a warm bed, or should we continue to work for unlimited wealth?

I know I want more than a loaf of bread and a warm bed to be happy. I don’t want to spend every moment of my day worrying about how to get my next meal or how to keep my children warm and safe during the night. I want to make enough money to be able to keep my children safe and to feed and cloth us all. I want to make enough money for me and my family to be moderately happy… happy enough for us to feel we have a good life, but not so happy we feel there is nothing else for us to achieve. I want to make that money by doing something I feel good about, something that makes me feel proud of what I do. I want to make money without selling my soul to the devil.

Green business and sustainable business is the word of the day. We need to do business without destroying our world. At the same time many big corporations outsource their production to the third world. Nokia is one example and there are others. Outsourcing might be a good thing for the third world. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.” Whoever said that was right. I already know how to fish, I should allow others to get a chance too. Unfortunately outsourcing is done because I know the value of my work and I know how to demand a clean environment. I have been able to feed myself long enough and I’ve gotten time and energy enough to think things over and to make sure I get a fair share of the wealth I’m contributing to.

I personally believe we need to give our business models a second thought. We need to rethink a lot of things. We need to rethink the value of money and decide what we are willing to do to make money. We need to make choices when we shop, and these choices will not be easy to do. I’m a single mother and I have to look for a bargain whenever I can find one. And yet I shouldn’t shop if the product I want to buy makes another persons life a hell somewhere in the world. I shouldn’t shop if the product destroys the earth, if it exploits children or take advantage of someone without their daily leaf of bread. When I look for a bargain, to make my hard earned money last as long as possible, I have to make a lot of hard choices and sometimes I’m just so tired I’m not able to make a choice at all. I just buy the product without a second thought.

I certainly understand the people wanting to get back to a simpler life without a lot of things, it’s easier in one way, harder in another. I also understand the people who choose not to get bothered, life is complicated enough for us to start worrying about some person in another part of the world. In this I have no answers, I just wish it would be easier to make the good choices…

I’m planning the risk management strategy for our business and decided, together with my daughters, to only use open source softwares. There are several reasons for this decision. One is about money, we don’t have enough money to use on expensive software. Another reason is about control. We have the knowledge needed to evaluate, install, learn to use and even modify the open source applications we need, and therefore it is better for us to use a type of software that we have full control over.

When you start a small business, and invest in expensive software you take a risk. You give the software developer the power over how you run the computer based processes in your company. You need software and systems that make it easier for you to run your business, giving you the time to do what you do best, working on your core business. You need stable, reliable software that will be around for a while, and to be honest, there are a lot of commercial softwares that fulfill that criteria. There are also a lot of open source softwares that are both unreliable and buggy, and they haven’t been around long enough for you to know if they will stay. In open source everything is based on the energy and resources of the developers working on the project.

Why do I think using commercial software is a business risk? I’m going to start a small, web based business, with limited resources. We are only going to be four people working on our business plan, and we have planned to do business on two continents, Europe and North America. With the limited resources we have, we will not be able to serve the whole market, instead we have to find our own niche and build our costumer base from there.

What we need is a CRM/ERP/E-commerce system that can be managed both from Finland and USA. We need a document management system and a supply chain management system too. These systems need to be able to work together to avoid duplicated information. A commercial system doing all this is expensive and it takes time to implement and use any of the available systems. The problem is that once we’ve put the money and time required to implement a commercial system, we will pretty much be stuck with it for a long time and that means we’ve put our business in the hands of the system developers. We will have little control over how the system is developed and what to do with it if it doesn’t fulfill our needs.

With an open source system we will be able to test and run the system before we decide if we want to use it. We have full control over the source code, and if we want to, we can hire someone to develop the system for us. We only need to get the knowledge to be able to choose a good system to begin with. To keep the open source project going we might have to donate money or time to it, but we only have to invest if the system is worth investing in. Time is money, but this is time I think is worthwhile spending.

I will be sharing the knowledge I gain while investigating the softwares we are going to use. I have a couple of projects I’m following with interest and I’ll post more about them later.

I’m not a suit person, I’ve never been one, and even though I teach at a business college and study business administration, I suspect I will never be one. I’ve never believed in the cosmetics industry, I’ve never believed that a lotion in a bottle would make me beautiful and guarantee me eternal happiness. I want a lotion to help me keep my skin healthy and a healthy skin in itself is beautiful, with or without wrinkles.

I believe in Open Business. I believe that when I produce something and sell it to you, I have to tell the truth about the product. I believe that if my product is good I wouldn’t have to promise you things that aren’t true. I shouldn’t have to promise you beauty and eternal happiness for you to buy my lotion. Sometimes I wonder why I’m planning a business in the cosmetics field, since it seems to be a field that is so different from who I am and what I believe in.

I know there are people like me. I know there are a lot of women using beauty products that help them keep a healthy skin without them thinking the product will bring them eternal happiness. They are fully aware of happiness being up to them to achieve, it doesn’t come in a bottle. I know there are people who believe in fair and honest business. Unfortunately it seems to me that the ones doing fair and honest business are the ones that struggle to keep their business afloat.

Every company needs a mission statement and while working on mine I’ve been thinking about business ethics… or the lack of business ethics. Businesses are built by people, some are like you, others are like me, some are like us, but all of them are people. Some people build their businesses for the future. They want their business to be around for a while and make sure their products are good enough for people to want to buy more. Others build their business for today. They want as many people as possible to buy as much as possible today, without a thought about tomorrow. They promise a lot and their products hardly ever live up to what they promise, but that’s not a problem. When people figure out the product is no good, these businessmen have already moved on to a new product.

Then there are those companies building for the future, and once they have developed a good product people want to buy, they stick to that, no matter what. The world might change, the product might be good for someone, but not so good for someone else. They develop their product, use a lot of money and time to make it perfect. But they overlook one small part, they don’t have all the knowledge and one small part of it might not be so good after all. What should they do? Should they change the product, use more money on research and make it as good as it was before without the harmful part? Or should they try to prove the harmful part isn’t harmful after all and stick to a product they already know a lot about? What would you do and what do you think is the right thing to do? Is ethical business something we should strive for or should everything be about economics? Should we do the business that pays the most and forget all about ethics?