Online systems, for customers and distributors, are the hall mark of a forward thinking electronic component companies. It off loads resources needed in customer service for back-order management, stock checks and others such tasks, to focus on more mission critical ares of the business. One excuse, for from smaller electronic component suppliers is that software is expensive or hard to implement. Well no more excuses need to be heard! We have discovered a new program called opentaps put together by Open Source Strategies, Inc. What is opentaps? Simple put, it is a fully functional system allowing for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). But opentaps is so much more. It goes a step beyond and offers you a full suite of abilities. From their website, here are just some of the functions opentaps suggests it can perform for your company:

• As a fully integrated ERP and CRM suite, handling everything from leads, order management, and customer service to purchasing, production planning, inventory management, and manufacturing, to shipping and accounting.
• As a specialized production and purchasing planning and scenario analysis tool
• As a CRM tool for sales force and customer service automation
• As an inventory, order, and accounting back end application for PHP front end stores
• As an ecommerce platform supporting multiple online stores with special offers, promotions, and gift certificates
• As a specialized vertical industry billing solution
• As a hosted e-commerce product offering

Key features of opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM include:

• A complete suite that deliver a 360-degree view of your business, from customers to orders to inventory to accounting. opentaps is one application running on one unified data model with over 700 tables, so you’ll never have to do messy integration again.
• Compatible all major open source and commercial relational databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server.
• Runs on Linux, Unix, and Windows.
• Service-Oriented Architecture for easy interoperability with external or legacy applications.
• Modular and tiered architecture allows for easy modifications or additions. An add-on application could be unzipped into a directory and start running.
• Synchronize your users’ contacts and calendars with their mobile phones or Outlook and Evolution clients using the built-in open source Funambol Data Synchronization server.
• Built-in business intelligence and reporting tools with JasperReports and Pentaho.
• Integrate with PHP and Ruby On Rails applications, including the Joomla content management system or your custom web storefronts, or use the fully-integrated ecommerce store in opentaps.
• Workflow for adapting to unique business processes.

Did we mention this is free? opentaps is released under a dual open source/commercial licensing model under the Honest Public License (HPL), which is a modified version of the GNU General Public License (GPL) with additional clarification for hosting and for software as a service. The HPL allows you to use, modify, and re-distribute the source code of the software, but it also may require that you publish your own modifications, extensions, or customizations. With such flexibility, we strongly recommend this software as something worth checking out. Read all about opentaps here and download it here.