I believe the evolutionary process at ERPNext is approaching what should be the “knee of the curve”. This refers to the point in a logarithmic curve where the amount of growth (evolution) increases faster over time to the point of almost vertical indicating rapid growth. That graph sort of looks like this:
ERPNext is approaching the point where it should beginning to notice they are moving up (y-axis) faster than they are moving forward in time (x-axis).
However, if you are struggling with finding that “knee of the curve” point, then it is time to go back to your project and think about the parts of that project that will need to change in order to promote that logarithmic growth pattern. The really sad thing to do would be to attempt to control that growth or slow it down so you can think everything through as thoroughly as you would like. Believe me, I have been there, done that, and didn’t survive long enough to get noticed.
You see, those of us with the engineering mindset are prone to wanting to control EVERYTHING!! What we fail to realize is the business (or consumers interests) do are not always logical and tend to follow more of an emotional path. They have to like the product even if it is not the best product for their needs. That is how Quickbooks managed to steal the market from so many of the original software makers in the 80’s and 90’s. They put out a product that was easy to use and promoted some good accounting practices. Their product was not originally the best at getting the job done, but it was easy to use.
Ok, so then why did that matter? Well, because at some point it split the customer base into 2 distinct groups. One group that were accounting majors in college and could be seen carrying around the old HP style calculators designed exclusively for accounting. The other group were the people that did NOT have a degree in accounting but desperately needed a way to manager their business accounting without having to go back to college!
In this case Quickbooks (Intuit, Inc.) went about making their software easy enough for the average well rounded business person to use. The others kept their college level terminology and rules making im place too long to realize they were being overtaken. They were the accounting purists and never saw the Quickbooks train coming. Quickbooks became the default standard for almost all business in less than 5 years because almost ANYONE could use it and master it in a very short period of time. Was it the best accounting available? Certainly not. It lacked (and still does lack) many account tracking methods that are needed in business, but their users find other ways to handle them offline. Over time, Quickbooks eventually filled in all of those missing tracking mechanisms with their own solutions. There are still some things they cannot do, but for the most part, they are a complete system now.
Ok, but how does this compare to ERPNExt and the ERP market? Finally the right question and it all boils down to being able to identify when your user/customer base is about to split into “purists” and “consumers”. EPRNext has been moving along for a long time as a developer’s hobby kind of thing that they seem to have been able to partially monetize with their hosting. However, the fact that ERPNext is finding itself on near equal ground as SAP, means that it has attracted the attention of the largere players in the matket. Now don’t take the “hobby” word incorrectly here. Open source developers are primarily doing what they do to either sharpen their skills with practice, or to satisfy an urge to make something better just because they can (which is pretty much a hobby).
The key now is to find a way to keep the “consumers” coming back to the product and keep the “developers” interested in adding to the core packages with improvements and applications. This requires a different mindset than the engineering type. In my past I developed a very good product that did not exist before and then I tried to control the growth of the company so I wouldn’t crash and burn. Well, I controlled the growth so well, and my product was so good, that well funded competition was able to blow past me with something that worked and was able to meet the demands of growth before I could figure out I was being trampled. I was too focused on improving and not enough on getting it out to the public.
In the case of ERPnext, the primary users almost exclusively need to be other developers just because of the complexity of setting it up and keeping it going. Even just making a new kind of printed document template requires extensive knowledge of HTML. Yet, the consumer following is constantly trying very hard to adopt ERPNext as a viable business program. This is where the ERPNext team is approaching the “knee of the curve”. This is where the users/customer are beginning to split and the team needs to be able to recognize the splinter groups and find the one it wants to keep for its own. If the team keeps on the same path as before, they will always be the “developer” favorite. The real question becomes “Is there enough skilled developers out there to sustain product growth?” Or would a path to something a bit more consumer friendly be a better path to financing the growth of the product?
No longer can the team keep their engineering mindset and still sustain the project. It is time for the team to adopt some business minded individuals in their leadership in order to start exploring ways to make ERPNext the default Enterprise Resource Planning instrument that it really could become. The ERPNext did rightfully pick the small to medium business market to be it’s battleground, but the big players are taking notice. I have been contacted by the SAP sales reps 6 or 7 times over the past 2 months just because I spent time online looking for such a system for a small business. This means they are looking for their footing and they want to outpace you.
All of this points to the truth behind the very first sentence of this post. If the ERPNext does nothing outside of their comfort zone to identify the coming split in their users/customers, they will be run over by other well financed players. The key is to figure out the differences in the users and pick a group that you believe will best sustain the project.
If you choose to stay with the “developer” type customer as your primary target, then you will need to find small ways to keep “consumers” interested until your product is mature. If you choose the “consumer” type customer as your primary target, then you need to develop an new way to keep the developers coming back and working on the “consumers” concerns until the project reaches maturinty.
The ERPNExt team needs to look inward and decide if it has all of the right members to continue to grow. Does it include business minded leaders? Does it include strategic project managers? Do they all talk to each other and really put the project ahead of their own interests? How many of the team members are only wanting to sharpen their coding skills? How many want to be part of business that could one day launch a for profit corporation with this? Has anyone aver looked at how RedHat managed to keep its developer community and still sell a great operating system?
I may be wrong, but I have seen this path many time before and it is not easy to accept change. However, change is coming and if the team is not prepared for it, they will get left behind. The team does not get to control the change. That control was lost when the product took on a life of its own. The team now only has the chance (very much like a parent) to help guide their creation to success. As a parent you watch for changing environments in order to guide your kids to the right paths. It is no different in the life of a product. It is just time to start identifying the changing environment and figure out how to keep their creation relevant. That begins with knowing how your users will divide themselves into tribes and then deciding which tribe will become dominate. Which path will the project team see as the best for their future.
Open source and successful projects are NOT mutually exclusive. It just requires balancing the team with different perspectives that are not normally comfortable to engineers. Business, Sales, Accounting, and Project Management are all uncomfortable things for the average engineer. Finding that balance of knowing how to bring in money while still keeping developers interested are the keys to success for this project. The path to the money is the most difficult to grasp and that all comes down to your customers. The ERPNext cloud platform is already a great start toward financing the future. Even packaging stable releases for download for a small fee would be a benefit as long as it was sure to work for the user.
If you decide to target “Consumers,” user experience needs to change. Frustrated consumers tend to spread the bad news far more than they do good news. It must be easy for them to adopt the program into their businesses or else all of your work will be for nothing. There needs to be a backup method that inspires confidence. There needs to be a way to edit document templates without being a HTML
programmer. There needs to be single reference or document containing the logical path of data so that users can easily figure out how things are connected. These are some of the things that need to be in place if you target “consumers” as a way to finance the project.
This quote was worth repeating, because it gets at the heart of how a project will survive. The result really depends on how well rounded your team can become, and if you can identify the market environment changes that matter to your project. Are you going to be a developer project or a consumer project?
BKM