Developing a home-brew Open Source ERP
5150fantast, 17 November 2006
A really good start to the day yesterday with the third in our company demo series. Kindly hosted by the eOffice on Wine St, people started turning up from 8.15 which caught even me out!
A whole bunch of new folk came along which is great to see, building the entrepreneurial ecosystem is what Open Coffee is all about. Apologies to everyone I didn’t get to say more than a quick hello to I know there’s a great cross-over taking place between Open Coffee and the BEN group on LinkedIn which is fantastic to see – please leave a comment about you and your company if you’d like to.
Lots of new relationships and discussions taking place & it was a shame to break things up a bit to introduce the presentation / discussion topic.
We had a couple presenter’s drop out but that gave Martyn Shiner from Severn Delta a chance to really go through their software development journey. Having engineered a Management BuyOut, Martyn and Clive Birnie (the MD and Positive Churn blog, full story here) were faced with a legacy planning system that was based on Sage. While a good accounting package, it didn’t do what they wanted and since Martyn’s a self-confessed open-source fan the journey for a replacement went firmly down that route.
There wasn’t anything available that did what they wanted, as a small manufacturing business they have more complexity than you can manage on spreadsheets, but not sufficient resource for a full-blown Enterprise Resource Planning system that can cost from £75k upwards. That was just over a year ago, they now have a fully functioning ERP system that they’ve developed themselves. The original Customer Relationship Management project they began working with is developed by a separate company as Tactile-CRM and they’ve now forked the code-base so that the ERP & CRM software projects are individual products (though obviously very complementary as they still share the open-source code base).
Leaving aside the more technical parts of Martyn’s talk, it was great to see their future road map. I say road map, Martyn’s description of SCRUM was to lean over the desk to his in-house developer and say “Dave, wouldn’t it be great if …” or Clive would ask Martyn “Do you think it could do…” and off they’d go!
We touched on hosted instances on Amazon, Android apps on the new HTC Magic, various business models around open source and what sort of businesses would use the system. Through a link with the South West Manufacturing Advisory Service (SW-MAS) they already have their first customer, sort of. Another manufacturing company into motorbike gear sprockets is now using the MRP system, Martyn estimated 1 day from starting with a blank PC, installing Ubuntu, extra bits, the MRP system, configuring, and being ready to receive orders through Web-EDI and raise the first invoice.
Not bad for some home-brew software from an accountant in a textile printing company!
Following Martyn, Martin Coulthard introduced himself and what he’s doing with the Bristol Enterprise Network. Having launched, built an sold a couple of businesses, Martin is taking up the reins on BEN. There have been quite a few changes with BEN recently and the next year promises to be an exciting one with much more focus on enterprise and entrepreneur support & connecting plus the exploration of services to try and make it a self sustaining (and funding) network.
A large part of this is moving the ‘home’ of the network from the Research, Enterprise & Development team within Bristol University to the Science City Bristol as a core delivery for the Bristol & Bath city regions. [Disclosure: From today, 1 July, I am the Manager of Science City Bristol as my part-time 'day job' so it's great to have Martin joining right now.]
Everyone was really keen to continue the networking so we ajourned at that point for more coffee and informal discussions.
Around that time, Sam and the Chinwag folks popped in. They’d been holding their Bristol leg of the Digital Mission tour the day before and had a few more flyers but also some great opportunities for digital companies to go to the US with substantial help from UKTI. All in favour of that! 
So thanks to everyone for supporting, asking questions and contributing.
We’re back at The Boston Tea Party, Park St [map] on Tues, 14 July from 8.30 for our regular networking, look forward to seeing you all there, then. The next company demo will be around Sept/Oct, I’m just nailing down a date/venue confirmation.
Entrepreneurial gardening
This morning’s Open Coffee Club meeting took place in the very pleasant surroundings of The Boston Tea Party’s garden. A lovely summer’s morning complemented the positive ideas being discussed in the light of HP Lab’s partial pull out of their Bristol facility.
Stephen Maudsley was first after me but headed up to the first floor before I could catch him, meanwhile Dave Simpson from Engine House Solutions (holding site) arrived and we began chatting while Stephen explored the upper reaches of TBTP. I first met Dave at the Bristol leg of the FOWA tour, where he was launching his web development and software company.
StephenM soon found us and we began talking about the start-up scene and different requirements of growing companies for executive support as well as cash. Around then Steve Cayzer arrived and we began to discuss his ideas for launching a new venture based on some of his research into environmental computing and ways to underpin the low carbon economy.
A quick flurry introduced Brian Dorricott with his newly launched Meteorical, Andrew Wray from Bristol University’s enterprise support team, Andy Seaborne (also thinking about launching an enterprise semantic knowledge application) and Nadya Anscombe (freelance science & technology journalist). Introductions, connections, business opportunities and much coffee ensued.
Thanks to all for a great morning of stimulating discussions and opportunities to be explored.
The next Open Coffee is the Demo Session, Tues 30 June at eOffice, please sign up on Eventbrite (http://opencoffeedemo30june.eventbrite.com) so we’ve some idea on numbers.
If you have a company / product / service that you’ve developed (or are thinking about) and would like constructive comments & ideas, please sign up as a presenter and we’d love to help contribute to your success.
Business networking – the Bajan Rum Punch way
When my dad was introducing me to mixing cocktails he taught me the classic rhyme to remember the best punch recipe, ever:
“One Sour, Two Sweet, Three Strong, Four Weak.”
This morning we had one IP patent attorney (Chris Vigars), two connectors / evangelists (me & Martin Coulthard), three support professionals (Zoe Chalk, Charles van der Lande & Robin Beecroft), and four entrepreneurs (Mark, Ray McConnell, Nigel Legg, and Sam Machin). Seemed like a pretty good mix.
Then I spotted Ian Burden talking to Charles, Zoe and Nigel, and my analogy rather breaks down from there onwards (especially as most people had mixed interests).
Oh well, the discussions were flowing freely. The new influx mixing well with the more regular OpenCoffee folks and a couple of business ideas are already percolating (just to mix my metaphors).
Apologies to anyone that I missed, especially as I had to leave early. Special thanks to Nigel for helping to look after everyone after I left.
Next OpenCoffee Bristol 2 June
Just a quick note that OpenCoffee Bristol will be on next Tues, 2 June at Starbucks on Park St. from 8.30am.
[map]
We also have another company demo session coming up. This will be at the eOffice on Wine St, on Tues 30 June from 8.30am. and a great chance to see some innovative Bristol companies and an innovative managed office space.
Your physical complement to the digital social web; OpenCoffee provides entrepreneurs, investors and business support professionals with a regular opportunity to build relationships and businesses.
Anniversary post
April 24, 2008 by Arkadiusz Benedykt
Looking back, it’s been just over a year since Open Coffee relaunched in Bristol at Starbucks on Park St. Since then the email list has grown to nearly 70, around 30 members equally on LinkedIn, Facebook and Upcoming, and the website has had nearly 1,000 page views in 6 months. There are even 64 people following OpenCoffeeBR1 on twitter!
Not massive numbers but the purpose of Open Coffee isn’t to challenge world records for signing up 1m ‘friends’ but to provide Bristol’s entrepreneurial community with a focused, fortnightly gathering of genuine friends and colleagues to discuss business, opportunities and ways to grow their companies.
That said, the more the merrier!
We’re between Bank Holidays and building up to another Company Demo session opportunity, this time at the eOffices on Wine St. so please do pass this email on to colleagues or entrepreneurs that are looking to widen their network in the area.
Look forward to seeing you again next Tues, 19 May in Starbucks on Park St from about 8.30am
Open Coffee Bristol
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