As a Philippine enterprise grows, its IT needs exponentially increase as well. In the beginning, an accounting software can handle basic business accounting requirements such as purchasing, inventory, GL Journals etc. However, as a business grows, it finds out that its current accounting software may outgrow its business requirements and processes. Company specific requirements increase which cannot be handled by off-the-shelf accounting packages.
In such a case, it will find ifself looking for alternative IT Solutions to support its business. This is where ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software enters. ERPs are a level-up against Accounting software. It allows a company to integrate the different functions such as inventory, sales, purchasing, marketing etc. into one central database which supports the said functions. In the 1990s, only large companies had the budget to implement ERPs (such as Oracle and SAP). However, times have changed. There is an abundance of proprietary and open source ERP applications that can serve the needs of Philippine SME companies – iDempiere is one option.
iDempiere is an open source, robust and fully functional ERP which can cater to the needs of Philippine Small Medium Enterprises. iDempiere allows multiple tenants, multiple organizations, multiple currencies, multiple accounting schemas and multiple users (i.e. the system does not limit the company to 1 – 5 users and can support as much as 100 users). It is written in Java and uses the PostgreSQL database. iDempiere can be considered as an “open source Oracle” Tier 2 system that can be customized to the needs of any Philippine SME. In fact, the original Compiere was created by Jorge Janke who came from an Oracle background. As a result, iDempiere is similar to Oracle ERP’s financial feature set. If ever you were in need of an “Oracle”-like system and didn’t have the budget for it, then iDempiere is your system!
As an Open Source application under the GPL V2 license, did we mention that all of the functions and capabilities of iDempiere are FREE to the user? Free as in “Free Software”. No user license fees. The company “owns” the software. At the start of any system implementation, the free price tag is the most appealing benefit for a Filipino SME corporation. However, as the business continues using the system, it will soon appreciate that more than the price tag, the system will give the corporation a lot of flexibility in managing its ERP needs. As a business grows, the company will have the ability to update, customize and tweak iDempiere according to its needs. It won’t be tied to additional user licenses nor have to pay huge sums to large ERP vendors for its requirements. It can adjust and customize the system on its own terms. This is the reason why we love iDempiere ERP.