Johannesburg, 13 Aug 2014
GlassCode is now in partnership with Openbravo Spain, making it the only official and certified partner in South Africa. With over 3 million downloads and thousands of organisations across 35+ countries using Openbravo solutions every day, Openbravo is a world leader in the open source enterprise software space.
This partnership brings Openbravo (Professional Services) ERP to the South African market as an affordable and alternative ERP solution to small-medium sized companies in manufacturing, distribution, services and retail sectors.
Openbravo ERP is divided into a core ERP platform and a commerce/retail platform. Openbravo for Retail is a multi-channel and Web-native retail solution, affordable, mobile and cloud ready. It's a solution for managing the entire retail operation, from sales, customer relationships and loyalty management through operations and finance. The ERP platform provides an unmatched combination of a flexible and easily extendable development platform. This solution breaks the rigidity of traditional ERP solutions, with a highly productive Web interface and powerful embedded analytics, to help companies succeed in today's highly dynamic markets.
Openbravo ERP offers key or core functionalities such as procurement management, sales management, financial management, human resource management, payroll management and warehouse management. The enterprise system is 100% Web-based and cloud-ready; the solution helps clients to reduce on infrastructure costs, realise their ROI more rapidly, and enjoy the luxury of not being tied into expensive licensing costs, long and never-ending implementations, inflexible ERP systems that do not fit your current business processes, or solutions that force customers to change their current processes.
Companies are struggling to get value from their current ERP solutions, mainly due to the existence of a gap between key business requirements and ERP capabilities. That gap can be particularly wide with traditional ERP, especially as a firm's business processes change as the organisation itself grows and evolves. This is in fact preventing a lot of companies from successfully implementing very specific competitive advantages that require highly flexible and easy to adapt solutions.
This is aligned with GlassCode's overall strategy, where it is partnering with robust and innovative companies to help it roll-out customer-centric offerings, and Openbravo is in line with that strategy. GlassCode believes in offering innovative and game-changing solutions to its customers and the consumers at large. And as young company, it is advancing key alliances and strategic partnerships to better position itself as an industry leader in the ICT space.
GlassCode's target market is clearly defined as emerging small-medium sized companies in the manufacturing, distribution, services and retail sectors. The solution can also be tailored for public institutions and departments. Its competitive advantage to traditional ERPs lies in providing a flexible and easy to adapt, productive user interface, Web-based and cloud ready and affordable solution.
GlassCode's solution is targeted at those organisations that understand the value of having streamlined business processes without the hassle of implementing a proprietary ERP.
Mpho Majenge, Co-Founder and CTO, said: "Let it be software or hardware, open source is recognised globally as an affordable alternative for smart organisations aiming to leverage proven and trusted collaborative solutions that can easily be customised and extended without requiring huge IT budgets, which are often too risky to swallow, such as propriety solutions with deep vendor lock-ins and custom solutions, which over time becomes expensive to maintain, especially for SMEs. GlassCode was looking for a platform that would provide its current client base with high quality solutions that are affordable for our clients and us. Most importantly, professionally partnering with a vendor with a vision and mission aligned with ours, and Openbravo proved to exceed our expectations."
A considerable amount of time was spent of researching the ERP landscape in South Africa and some of the findings were that more than 7 000 organisations are still in need of an alternative ERP solution that will not cost millions in implementation and bring no real ROI. Organisations which have implemented traditional ERPs understand the frustration of proprietary technology that requires expensive consultants, difficult to deploy systems and lengthy implementation time frames.
The Openbravo ERP minimum implementation time is three months, depending on the level of customisation required. Open source ERP is almost non-existent in the country, and this provides an opportunity for first-movers to take advantage of such solutions. GlassCode has certified solution consultants and certified developers that will assist your organisation with a smooth implementation and hand-over.
South Africa released a policy on free and open source software use for the South African government (FOSS) in late 2006. The South African government made it clear that the "use of open source standards is a non-negotiable base for ICT in the public sector in order to promote interoperability and promote universal access to online government services without prohibitive costs, licence restrictions or similar barriers, to minimise the risk of vendor lock-in to specific vendors of ICT products and services; and to lower the entry barriers for local developers who can offer ICT solutions for use in the public sector".
This is where GlassCode feels this solution fits in perfectly, for the adoption of open source software, as the South African market has not had an opportunity of a local vendor that can provide open source ERP solutions that are reputable and being used across the globe.
Sivuyile Mndawe, Co-Founder and Managing Director, said: "We are very excited about this new offering in South Africa. Openbravo brings a wealth of experience, proven track record and various implementations across the globe, with many customers and partners in different industries around the world. We look forward to creating awareness around this solution and establishing a value-add to our clients and customers. The adoption of cloud solutions is increasing rapidly and transforming the way companies invest and manage there IT assets, and we are strategically aligning ourselves with that. This new offering will challenge the status quo of traditional ERP and software development in the country, and we will be at the forefront of the change."
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