Introduction

Nowadays, Enterprise Resource Planning solutions are becoming immensely popular to achieve business objectives. They help enterprises and small-scale businesses to carry out their day-to-day activities, know their customers better, and implement business strategies accordingly. Although companies implement desirable initiatives for meeting their customers’ needs, they still lack the potential to keep pace with ever-changing requirements. Several ERP software systems are compact with a limited number of applications to perform a variety of tasks, requiring companies to buy more standalone applications for managing their business processes. This is neither cost-efficient nor do these different systems work cohesively. With the continuously changing requirements of businesses, all these software also need to be updated from time to time. To overcome all these challenges Odoo ERP is the best business management software solution. 

An Intriguing Comparison Between Odoo Community and Odoo Enterprise Edition

Odoo solutions manage every aspect of business in a single software. Odoo offers two editions: 

  1. Odoo Community Edition 
  2. Odoo Enterprise Edition

Odoo Community software is a free open-source software with no license fees. This makes it financially friendly for startups with limited capital. It has limited functionalities that make it difficult for many companies to work with it in the long run. As every business’ needs are unique, using this community version can limit their scope of work and can be challenging with the growing business demands in the future. Also, every company wants to make its brand popular in the eyes of its customers. With the Odoo Community Edition, you are unable to add customizations required to leverage your brand name amongst your present and potential customers.

In comparison, Odoo Enterprise is a companion for implementing diverse business functionalities. It is a SaaS-based model offering customization services; thus making it extremely business-friendly. Enterprise edition gives freedom to developers to modify existing features and add new modules to make the software more in tune with their business operations. Customization of the software can be done either by modifying the code at the service level, at the back end, or UI level, and this is not dependent on what Odoo Enterprise version is being used. 

At the user interface level, your employees can have a customized interface that is easier and quicker to work with. Therefore, it increases the potential for businesses to grow substantially.

Odoo Enterprise software provides many significant features like unlimited functional support, version upgrades, and the hosting (private or public) platform of your choice. This is unachievable with the Odoo Community edition. In addition, Enterprise edition software can be upgraded from any previous version of Odoo. With all these capabilities, businesses will have customer-friendly applications with the potential to empower sales. 

Growth in sales is also dependent upon how accessible an application is to the users through the different devices they use. Unlike the Community edition, the Enterprise edition is compatible with mobile and desktop devices. It works with different Android and iOS devices in addition to being used as a web browser desktop application. Moreover, this Enterprise edition can be integrated with different social media platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) empowering businesses to promote their offerings through them. This saves time spent on using standalone social media applications separately. 

Businesses can also grow their customer base by either having third-party applications (30,000+ applications) like Amazon, eBay, Shopify Odoo Connector facilities, etc. or getting similar functionality with modules developed by developers. The third-party applications can be integrated with Odoo Enterprise. Enterprise users can select which third-party application they would like to use for their business and only pay for that. Thanks to Odoo 16 Enterprise’s self-made apps, users don’t have to pay separately for their apps and license. It is all covered under one cost. 

 Below is a table to showcase features and modules of Odoo Enterprise and Odoo Community software. Let’s look at the differences between both of them:  

 

General Features

  Enterprise Community

Unlimited Functional Support

Yes No

Version Upgrades

Yes No
Hosting (Private/Public) Yes No

 

 

UI Features

  Enterprise Community

Desktop – Web Browser

Yes Yes

Mobile – Android and iOS

Yes No

  

 

Finance Features

  Enterprise Community
Accounting Yes No
Comprehensive level of Accounting features – General Ledger, Bank Statement Reconciliation, Analytic Accounting, Vendor Bill OCR, Budgets, Check Writing, Consolidation, Localizations, Reports. Yes No
Invoicing Yes Yes
Invoicing – Payments Yes Yes
Invoicing – AI Yes No
Expenses Yes Yes
Expenses – Payroll Yes No
Expenses – Payroll (Expense Digitalization (OCR)  Yes No
Expenses – Payroll (Reimbursement in Payslip) Yes No 
Documents Yes No
Documents – Spreadsheet Yes No

Sign feature

Yes No

 

 

Sales Features

  Enterprise Community
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Yes Yes
Sales Yes Yes
Point of Sale Yes Yes
POS inclusive of loyalty programs and gift cards Yes No
Subscriptions Yes No
Rental Yes No
Amazon Connector Yes

No

 

 

Websites Features

  Enterprise Community
Website Builder Yes Yes
eCommerce Yes Yes
Blog Yes Yes
Forum Yes Yes
Live Chat Yes Yes
eLearning Yes Yes

   

Inventory and Manufacturing Features   Enterprise Community
Inventory Yes Yes
Inventory – Barcode Yes No
Manufacturing inclusive of Work Center, Control Panel, and Scheduling Yes No
Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) Yes No
Purchase Yes Yes
Maintenance Yes Yes
Quality Yes No

 

Human Resource (HR) Features   Enterprise Community
Employees Yes Yes
Employee Dashboard Yes No
Recruitment Yes Yes
Time Off Yes Yes
Referrals Yes No
Appraisals Yes No
Fleet Yes Yes

 

Marketing Features   Enterprise Community
Social Marketing Yes No
Email Marketing Yes Yes
Email Marketing inclusive of Mailing Templates Yes No
SMS Marketing Yes Yes
Events Yes Yes
Marketing Automation Yes No
Surveys Yes Yes

 

Services Features   Enterprise Community
Project Yes Yes
Timesheet Yes Yes
Timesheet inclusive of Grid view, timer, reminders, timesheet validation Yes No
Timesheet inclusive of Awesome Timesheet (Mobile Application) Yes No
Field Service Yes No
Helpdesk Yes No
Planning Yes No
Appointments Yes No

 

Productivity Features   Enterprise Community
Discuss Yes Yes
Approvals Yes No
Notes Yes Yes
Calendar Yes Yes
Digital Phone (VoIP) Integration Yes No
IoT Yes No

 

 

Customization Features

  Enterprise Community

Studio

Yes No

 

Advantages of Odoo Enterprise Edition software Over Tailor-Made ERP Software

Odoo is the key that unites all major modules of business into one integrated software. Some of the most significant Odoo modules are Sales, CRM, Inventory, Manufacturing, Accounting, Human Resources, and Marketing. The Enterprise software supports custom development of these and many other modules which you may want to use, giving you the freedom to decide when the applications need enhancement. Its benefits outweigh tailor-made ERP software. In addition to this, you can purchase an Odoo Enterprise version and get access to all of their applications (applicable for Odoo 16) through Confianz. Every Odoo’s Enterprise version is more advanced than the previous one and so Odoo has become a prime choice among several businesses. 

On the other hand, tailor-made software is created with business inputs and can be an exhaustive process due to repeated iterations to make changes to the software with the market demands. While such tailor-made applications will be set up better as per the business needs, creating applications like these are time-consuming. Businesses can benefit by paying more for tailor-made applications. However, this ties businesses to such providers making them unable to diversify away from applications easily. 

On the contrary, Odoo already has high-level built-in applications that can be customized easily according to business requirements. With Odoo being a framework existing for many years now, Confianz as a Ready partner of Odoo will help in creating the perfect ERP application for your business. 

Conclusion 

Each type of ERP application has its advantages and disadvantages, and they are suitable under different aspects. 

Tailor-made applications are suitable for companies that need an ERP solution completely designed around their business requirements. Such applications are going to help businesses function smoothly, but are more time-consuming to create, more prone to errors resulting in more bug fixes, and can cost the business a large sum of money. A tailor-made application creates a tightly coupled relationship between the business and its provider, resulting in a very complicated procedure to move away and look for newer options. 

Odoo gives businesses an already implemented, fully functioning ERP system. Businesses can use the Odoo Community version, which works well if they have a very basic setup and are not looking to invest heavily in ERP application customization. Middle to large-scale businesses typically prefer to go with Odoo Enterprise Edition. There is minimal expense related to customization, but it results in having the perfect system to enable your business to operate like a well-oiled machine, especially when done by our intellectual experts at Confianz.

Contact Us 

Confianz is keen to hear your ideas and enlighten you about Odoo Enterprise’s offerings to simplify business practices. We are committed to streamlining your business operations with our expertise. Customization of Odoo is our specialty. Our high skilled Odoo ERP Developers are experienced in working with Odoo customization & Implementation and deliver the best solutions as per your business requirements.

You can email us at [email protected]

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