Odoo: A Business’s Comprehensive Operating System

If you want to call someone, you can click a phone icon on your smartphone to make a call. If you want to check contact details, click the contact icon. Want to browse online or check social media, there’s an app for that, too. You can even make payments from your phone using e-wallets, and there are applications to keep on top of your finances.

Your smartphone has an app for every function, in the same way, your business functions have an app in Odoo, be it:

Businesses must assess their budget demands in light of their specific requirements and available resources.

Just like you keep track of your personal finances on your phone, Odoo offers several apps to simplify business finances. Due to centralized, real-time data management, Odoo processes accounting data within 90 milliseconds to keep track of what goes out and comes in by:

• Tracking expenses
• Automating invoicing
• Keep your books up-to-date

Every accounting aspect of your business happens with a few clicks, be it:

• Syncing your bank statements
• Making and scheduling payments with applicable taxes and country laws
• Mark payable accounts, receivable accounts, and so on

When you use Odoo to manage your business’ finances, you can enable data-driven decision-making with its business intelligence analytics. It uses the financial data to generate real-time reports to give you an overview of your company’s financial performance.

Customers today expect more than just quality service; they expect personalization. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution enables seamless customer data sharing between different departments of your business. You may use the data to strengthen relationships to personalize each customer’s journey. It can readily boost your outreach when you combine it with various marketing tools, such as:

• Email marketing 
• Social media marketing
• SMS marketing 

You don’t need to invest in a separate CRM when you use Odoo for your business. Odoo’s very own CRM app lets you monitor and manage each customer's data within the system.

You may use several productivity apps on your PC or phone to coordinate with your team on a project. However, when you use Odoo for business, you don’t need to rely on any other tools to do that. You can easily manage and keep all your business projects compiled within your dashboard. 

Odoo Projects is a collaborative and user-friendly app that offers a clear and comprehensive picture of your ongoing projects. You may: 

• Assign and track the status of tasks
• Set milestones 
• Categorize with tags 
• Chat with the stakeholders without leaving Odoo

Enjoy real-time collaboration between all the departments through an organized project management tool integrated into your overall end-to-end business operations.

Odoo can be a one-stop solution for manufacturing firms, too. Odoo offers a unified platform for manufacturers integrating multiple functions, such as:

• Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
• Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
• Quality Maintenance 
• Shop Floor Planning

The lean manufacturing app is part of Odoo's suite of business applications, designed to be both user-friendly and fully integrated. It offers manufacturers a single roof to manage:

1. Real-time simulated operations
2. Planning, scheduling, and processing orders
3. Production recording
4. Paperless company management
5. IoT integrations

You’ll need an organized way to track billable time, whether you are: 

• A solopreneur
• Company billing projects per hour
• Or paying employees on a time-based structure

Odoo has a solution within its dashboard to help your business keep track of time, tasks, interventions, and other business activities. It offers an easy-to-scan overview of:

1. Ongoing projects and tasks
2. Allocated hours for each task
3. Overtime or missing hours on any project

Odoo’s sales timesheets offer a centralized space to keep all the data you need to generate customer invoices. Make a decision on whether to invoice all recorded timesheets or only the ones that have been verified.

What if we tell you that your customer service department can also use Odoo to support your customers? Yes, that’s right! Provide customers with the support they need from your company from your Odoo dashboard with its helpdesk app. 

The helpdesk is a part of Odoo’s comprehensive business solution to boost the productivity of various departments with a single software. Businesses can offer smart customer services by integrating Odoo’s automated workflows into customer support management. 

The Helpdesk app's user-friendly interface ensures you are always aware of customer interactions. The app creates tickets on the dashboard from various customer communication channels, such as emails, website forms, and live chat.

You may check a ticket's current status according to your own service level agreement (SLA) standards and get a quick picture of your team's workload before assigning the next action.

Good and clean website design is key to attracting new customers. However, not everyone is a master at web design. Odoo’s small and medium business-centric focus offers a solution.

 

Odoo offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder to build a clean, user-friendly experience without coding expertise. The AI-based website builder can build a no-code mobile-friendly eCommerce website. 

Since the website becomes an overall part of Odoo, you may manage all your store operations from the dashboard thanks to the holistic business management capabilities through integrated workflows and data-sharing.

As the business grows, so does the complexity of inventory keeping. Odoo can take care of this aspect of your business, too! It makes things simple by giving you an overview of your warehouse with real-time inventory control in your Odoo system. 

Odoo facilitates centralized stock management, preventing stockouts or overstock situations. The module supports multi-location and multi-warehouse management, allowing businesses to manage stock across different facilities efficiently.

Managing and controlling inventories becomes much easier with a centralized system. Keeping track of remaining inventory and managing fulfillment for several channels simultaneously becomes considerably simpler when you just have to keep an eye on one place. 

Warehouse personnel can choose options for batch picking and single picking and get picking suggestions from Odoo to pick the product units based on the FIFO method if set.

Odoo even offers a smart replenishment and reordering feature, where you can set triggers to:

• Picking and packing suggestions for order fulfillment
• Replenishment of items from a larger area to a former area of the warehouse
• Place purchase orders with vendors manually and automated

Using Odoo for your eCommerce business, you can manage all your business sales and quotations from the sales module. The CRM data readily works with the sales app that allows you to manage all your business sales activities from a single point, which includes:

• Sales orders
• Quotations
• Customer service
• Create and record orders
• Generate invoices
• Keep track of completed payments

Take advantage of Odoo’s third-party integrations with major e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, and more, to automate workflows on your store, such as:

• Shipping
• Price and tax calculation 
• Post-order follow-ups, and more

The Odoo Employees app gives you an overview of your workforce while keeping all their information at your fingertips. You can keep all the employee documents under restricted access and sort each employee by:

• Working hours
• Job title
• Contract status

Let Odoo also become your HR team’s best friend with streamlined processes for employee management. 

Windows or iOS are dynamic operating systems that let users utilize apps for various functions they need from their devices. In the same way, Odoo acts as an OS for companies by offering every operational part of a company with apps, such as the functions mentioned above and more! It also streamlines communication within the organization and with prospective and returning clients with several channels of communication, such as:

• Odoo Inbox for internal communication
• Live Chat on the website for customer support
• Email management to never miss important messages from stakeholders and customers

Investing in an ERP solution is always a long-term decision because of:

1. The costs involved 
2. The implementation time and complexity
3. The time and effort of training your team 

If you decide to implement an ERP solution, you want to invest in one that scales well to fit your needs as your business grows. Here’s why Odoo offers scalability that small and medium-sized businesses and startups need:

• Open Source Customization: Odoo is exceptionally customizable, with access to the source code to fill any gaps for businesses in any niche. 
• Community and Support: Odoo has a vibrant community testing the software to its limits undertaking constant development. The community dedicates itself to helping each other overcome problems and issues they face.
• Modular Architecture: Odoo follows a plug-and-play model, where businesses can download apps pertinent to their needed features and use them on the go. The Odoo App Store consists of 16,000 custom apps. If you need it, download it and use it. Uninstall to discontinue at any time. 
• Third-Party Integrations: Odoo can connect smoothly with third-party apps, such as payment gateways, external CRMs, existing accounting systems, and more, to integrate with your existing tech stack. 
• Continuous Support and Updates: The platform constantly develops to push out new updates and versions yearly. Odoo helps organizations maximize the platform by providing technical, live chat, and functional training.

Just as any operating system scales to meet the usage of device owners, Odoo fills the gaps in your business needs as it expands and calls for more functionalities. It sets you up for a long time, updating versions and releasing new apps to meet rising demands.

• Automated Workflows

Odoo, empowered with AI tech, enables businesses to free their workforce from mundane,  repetitive tasks that can continue without human intervention. Additionally, you can set triggers to automate various workflows in different parts of your business, such as:

• Marketing
• Sales order processing
• Lead generation
• Tasks management
• Inventory management
• Order fulfillment
• Invoicing and accounting
• Tracking and managing projects

Automating routine and mundane processes can help your employees focus on carrying out tasks that matter the most to grow your business. It saves time and money and provides a solid ROI on Odoo software.

• Business Intelligent Analytics
  

The modular ERP software automatically manages and organizes all your business data from various apps and entries, like orders, customers, products, and sales channel-wise analytics, making data retrieval and processing even easier. The Analytics app on Odoo can process business intelligence to present the data in easy-to-understand, visually pleasing charts.

Odoo can enable data-driven decision-making by: 

• Giving you a real-time view of your data
• Helping spot trends and patterns
• Showing short-term and long-term results of any news adjustments

• Mobile Accessibility
  

Odoo acts as a mini operating system for businesses on any mobile device powered by iOS and Android. You can access several major features with its app, such as:

• Expense tracking 
• Reporting
• Task management 
• And more

Originally released with Odoo 10, Odoo apps offer an intuitive and efficient experience on the go to facilitate remote work and prepare companies for the future. Odoo's mobile apps provide many resources that may improve remote workers' efficiency, collaboration, communication, and productivity.

Odoo’s modular architecture makes it like any of your favorite operating systems but customized for your business. Windows, iOS, or any other operating system fits your needs with inbuilt or downloadable features to offer various functionalities. With the plug-and-play nature of Odoo’s apps, the system consolidates a company's essential functions right at your fingertips in a unified dashboard.

With all the features in one place, users won't need to leave the Odoo ecosystem to access any features. Odoo itself becomes more than enough to manage all company processes, leading to more:

• Streamlined processes 
• Better data exchange 
• A unified approach to all business operations

It can scale to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, from early startups to big organizations, greatly improving workflow efficiency.

Wondering how Odoo can bridge the gaps in your business needs? Consult with one of the experts at Emipro, India’s no.1 Odoo Gold partner. We’ll determine your business needs and help you choose the best course of implementation. Once properly implemented, Odoo can bring all the data and resources needed to run a business in one place. 

Contact us today to learn more about Odoo.