Opentaps Errel CRM
Errel SNC is a distributor of industrial refrigeration equipment and parts based in Bologna, Italy. They are the exclusive distributors for some of Europe's leading brands, including Kelvin and Eno, in Italy. Founded in 1992, Errel has eight sales reps based in different parts of Italy to serve thousands of building owners and managers and construction contractors. They provide their customers with product information, quotes, and service for eleven lines of products.
Like many small companies, Errel ran their business with Excel spreadsheets, Access tables, and home built applications. As their business grew, though, they needed a stronger technological infrastructure to support their growing list of customers and product lines. Commercial solutions, however, were priced out of reach for this startup company. A leading hosted CRM solution, for example, would have cost over €20,000 per year for the number of users they needed.
In contrast, the opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM system was available free of charge and met 80% to 90% of their needs out of the box. Furthermore, because opentaps is open source, its source code was freely available, which meant that it could be customized to meet the rest of Errel's specific requirements. Therefore, Errel selected opentaps as their CRM system and worked with Integrating Web from Bologna, Italy to customize and implement opentaps for them.
As part of this project, Integrating Web helped translate the opentaps CRM application to Italian, configured opentaps to support Errel's security requirements, and customized graphics and fields on the opentaps screens for Errel. They also developed additional reports for Errel using JasperReports, an open source business intelligence and reporting tool which is included with opentaps. Finally, Integrating Web used Kettle, the open source data integration tool from Pentaho which is bundled with opentaps, to load Errel's legacy customer data into opentaps. The finished system was deployed with a replicated MySQL database on a Windows 2000 server.
With opentaps, Errel now has a centralized product catalog for all their product lines, and their sales reps could access information about their customers and products remotely, using their laptops or PDA's. The opentaps CRM system allows the sales reps to track their new leads and manage the sales process to convert them to accounts. They can also use opentaps to generate and e-mail quotes to their customers. Finally, managers can access the system to get a complete view of all their customers' and sales reps' activity, as well as up-to-date reports.
For more case studies about opentaps, see Opentaps In Action.
