PSA or ERP - paradigm and requirements analysis

I get a lot of questions about PSAs, ERPs, and overall paradigms related to core business software. This podcast summarizes things you should be thinking about in your software selection process.

After three years of investigating PSA and ERP options including spending a lot of money on software and payroll, the product we like is Odoo. Organizations using a PSA with add-ons approach are really missing the mark. There is no PSA that does project management well. None of them have accounting systems. Most of them are terrible at quoting. And they are all expensive. They also are all weak at analytics and business visualization or analysis.

So a company ends up paying for:

• PSA
• Quotewerks
• Zomentum
• eCommerce processor
• Payment gateway provider
• project management platform
• QuickBooks or Xero
• PowerBI
• website hosting
• Applicant tracking system
• HR / people management system
• email newsletter system
• marketing automation platform
• CRM
• Social media marketing platform
• and more

Whereas, a business could just get Odoo.

Let's look at a brief cost analysis.

Halo - $15,000/yr

Quotewerks or Zomentum $500/mo

QuickBooks or Xero $1300/yr

ConnectBooster $300/mo or more

Project management  $300/mo or more

ATS $5000/yr

HR system $150/mo/employee

Infusionsoft or Hubspot $1200/yr at least

Social media marketing  $200/mo

CRM - $300/mo

 

OR you could just stop all that nonsense.

 

Odoo. $47/mo/user.

Remember that this includes your website hosting too. And it turns out to be much better than WordPress, Joomla, or other smaller CMS.

What I find really hilarious is when I ask other business owners how much they are spending on all the components they use that spackle over the deficiencies in their PSA, they rarely know. It's like it is a financial hole in their business that they don't want to look at.