Key success strategies to secure and accelerate your Odoo-based business transformation

Odoo has elevated itself as a strong contender in the ERP market to support corporates. The main advantages the system offers to clients are the combination of a fully integrated solution, covering a large amount of company functions and a user-friendly interface.

In this context and supported by the growth of the corporate clients in Odoo’s customer portfolio, KPMG Advisory has decided to expand our existing partnership with Odoo to offer Odoo-based business transformation and implementation services to their clients.

The unique combination of Odoo technical & functional, business transformation, and accounting expertise positions KPMG as the preferred partner for Odoo implementation for corporates.

When engaging in Odoo-based business transformation, we have identified 6 challenges that clients commonly face:

1. Identify the ambition and key business drivers.
2. Think long-term scalability.
3. Leverage “Open” architecture.
4. Define a phased approach delivering value and reducing risk.
5. Adopt whenever possible, adapt whenever needed.
6. Never underestimate the importance of documentation.

To turn those challenges into accelerators for business transformation, we leverage the combination of our KPMG Powered Enterprise Methodology and our experience and expertise in Odoo implementations.

By understanding the context, the key challenges, and the ambition of your client, you should be able to define the focus statement of the business transformation. Once defined, you can easily illustrate where your client wants to go.

Implementing an ERP means that at some point, an upgrade will happen. Taking this into consideration from day one will help you to limit technical debt, so you can plan a regular review of your decisions on the way the platform has been deployed to keep being in line with the business. As Odoo releases a new version every year, it is important to consider the upgrade from day one.

Some company functions should not be integrated in an ERP, but those might still need to be managed in a dedicated system. During the business-transformation, it might happen that some solutions can’t be directly removed from the IT landscape. These are the main reasons why accepting an open architecture will have a positive impact. By design, Odoo can be integrated with many modern solutions to offer the flexibility of having the ERP as a backbone, while having other applications that are critical for your business alongside it.

A phased approach means that the complete deployment can be cut into different lots, which can be delivered successively to allow the company to already see a return on the initial investment and reduce the risk of deploying the full system at once. This can be achieved by leveraging the native integration between Odoo’s applications while considering the context of the company’s priorities when designing the most relevant approach for your client.

Deploying a new tool means that the way of working will change. ‘Adopting’ means that the company will learn to use the system as it is, changing their way of working when possible, while ‘adapting’ means that the tool will be modified to fit the customer’s requirements. Odoo can be considered a flexible tool that helps to identify different solutions to support the company’s way of working. It can also be easily customized, but with the risk of increasing the technical debt, complicating the upgrade, and increasing the cost.

Keeping system knowledge within the company is always a challenge. It requires documentation of what is being done, and this task is always the last one to be taken care of. To be sure that knowledge of the system is correctly captured, it is advised to limit the documentation to the way it should be used by users, not detail the way it works. Start from day one and taking it step by step will make it feel easier. Empower the company using a ‘train-the-trainer’ approach, where peers provide the training to employees and each other. Finally, use Odoo and its knowledge applications to create a modern and easy-to-use knowledge and training platform.

Together, Odoo and KPMG possess a unique combination of expertise, methodology, and tools to enable, accelerate, and secure your Odoo-based business transformation. And even if your journey with Odoo has already started, it is never too late to develop new expertise to increase your chances of success.

KPMG Powered Enterprise methodology is our proven methodology for ERP implementation. It contains a suite of assets to accelerate our client business transformation. It consists of 5 phases: Vision, Validate, Construct, Deploy, and Evolve; and it focuses on 6 layers to cover all the aspects of the Target Operating Models:

1. Functional processes
2. People
3. Technology
4. Service Delivery Model
5. Performance Insights & Data
6. Governance

The 6 challenges we cover during this webinar can all be placed either in the Vision or the Validate phase. Those challenges are key for the rest of the business transformation and handling them from the beginning of the project increases the chances of success.