Hot Take: Frappe should never release apps without documented, day-one intergrations to ERPNext

ERPNext
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Sales team(that emails me once a month), take note.

Here in America, and specifically in the circles I’m in, frappe means very little. What little it pops up is when discussing erpnext.

And do you know the most common complaint? Why everyone is still with Akaunting, Dynamics 365, Oracle, Zoho?

Your non-existent integration policy between apps. ERPNext is what made frappe what it is today, and we all sit around just flabbergasted you release official apps like frappe drive, hrms, crm, helpdesk, etc without explicit, day-one intergration with your most popular, most lucrative reason why frappe and frappe cloud is successful.

ERPNext.

Look, I know I’m just an armchair dev. Yelling into the void of space. But I see companies who pay hundreds of thousands of USD/year to MD365 when ERPNext could save them half of their money. And then, YOU would get that money!
But none of them want to switch. Why? Because your frappe-drive takes custom scripting to intergrate with ERPnext. Because CRM doesn’t treat ERPNext doctypes as single source truth.
Because making dynamic customer reports with frappe-builder linked to customer billing doctypes in erpnext isn’t so easy.

So alas. I think you will never be bigtime in my circles. But I freaking love your products and your mission. I just can’t, for the life of me, understand why you break apart the monolith but yet dont offer easy integrations on the OFFICIAL APPS you release.

It seems so backwards to me.

Love you guys and gals. Bear with me as I come home from a frustrating day of stuggles both in frappe and other erp/business solutions. :slight_smile:

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I don’t think any ERP product comes with out of the box “day-one” integrations. It is always an ecosystem play. Most people use an ERP system for the GL + advanced accounting (budgets, assets etc), workflows, order management + inventory etc, not for CRM integration.

The new Frappe products are not split from the monolith, they are independent app categories (domain extensions have been split). The CRM / Helpdesk / CMS modules inside ERPNext stay as it is.

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Yet, ERPNext remains the single most downloaded app on your Frappe Cloud—by a factor of 10x compared to other apps, except for Payments and HRMS, which, by the way, offer ERPNext integration.

And while you might be more in the loop than I am, I recall videos from a year or two ago discussing plans to split up the monolith. CRM was introduced as part of that initiative—or at least that’s what was mentioned in the videos. Could be wrong on this.

So, the monolith is being broken down, or scaled back, but instead of providing a series of apps that at least somewhat integrate with the ERP, we’re getting apps that require heavy editing, linking of doctypes, and server-side scripting to connect to ERPNext.

We’re being left to fend for ourselves by the official Frappe—not just some independent developer making a cool random app on frappe cloud.

That’s what I’m saying. Frappe built an amazing ERP(on top of frappe) that seems to be the cornerstone of their business model. Yet, other apps officially released lack ERPNext integration, and it takes serious effort—or waiting—to either link the doctypes and scripts or to have the developer(s) in charge of these apps supported by frappe to release a straightforward method of integration.

Again, love frappe. I’m just saying it doesn’t make sense.

Frappe Drive should have been released with at least one straightforward feature, such as integrating with project management in ERPNext.

The CRM should have been released with an optional way to sync with a specific ERPNext doctype to keep contact information updated between apps.

But they didn’t, and that’s okay. It’s Frappe’s choice.

BUT creating these apps the way they did has made all the sysadmins I know scratch their heads and avoid investing in Frappe Cloud. What is Frappe doing creating apps that don’t have built-in functionality with each other? Or at least providing a guide on how to achieve that integration.

Without official guidance or built-in interoperability, we’re left to reverse-engineer solutions, which is time-consuming and frustrating. And back to my point, ultimately, keeps us from investing in the platform.

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hey @Jake, we have recently released an integration of sorts between ERPNext and Frappe CRM. Please check: ERPNext integration with Frappe CRM - #15 by michelle

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I find it so interesting that people assume this is the project’s goal…

Edited to add: I don’t mean that to sound snarky, sincerely. I just don’t know where this idea comes from. In the 7-8 years I’ve been using Frappe/ERPNext, I’ve never seen a single thing to suggest that competing with Dynamics/Zoho/Odoo/whatever has ever been the goal.

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Very interesting chat. I am from similar circles and believe that ERPNext and the Frappe Apps have huge potential to take on existing large ERP/crms like SF or D365 even SAP for manufacturing and logistics.

My thoughts (which are the heart of this conversation) are about the future frappe business model and technical roadmap.

Business Model

  1. Assumption - Frappe will make it’s money through frappe cloud that has both apps and ERP
  2. Frappe has made a decision based on customer feedback and/or sales forecasts that breaking some of or all of ERPNext next into separate apps?

Technical Roadmap

  1. It would be great to see what the future of monolith versus apps looks like for frappe and their architecture

  2. You need to have platform and apps on top which can also be separate (Microsoft is doing the same with D365. One platform with apps on top).

My experience to date is erpnext’s roadmap is not consistently aligned with the app module. Apps are moving forward and then erpnext is consider.

One good example is HR. It can be both an app and the same app can be added as a module in eprnext15. This is the right architecture

A bad example is CRM. The new app is it’s own stand alone app with features but the erpnext Crm is basic. This is the wrong architecture or at least one the roadmap and not yet implemented? And if it is then integration is not needed.

rappe has separate product managers for frappe apps but there their apps should also be considered as a complete eco system, be that ERPNext or any platform a business wants to use with apps.

My biggest issue to date is not really considering world markets across apps. For example: LMS only allows razor play and doesn’t even read from the payment app (payment gateway). This is an example of a product manager for an app not embracing a competent enterprise architecture across the platform.

Anyway that is my insights

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It’s their goal on their website.
It’s their goal if you talk to sales.
It’s their goal in the few convention excerpts I watched.

It’s their goal, because erpnext and intergrated applications(hrms, marley) absolutely dwarfs any and all other activity on frappe cloud(their business model).

Seems pretty obvious to me it’s A goal. Among many, granted. But connected to their largest customer base.

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I don’t believe it’s india vs the world. If anything, It feels like these devs are given incredible freedom to release projects under frappe’s banner. I would assume enpart to give further value to frappe cloud.

It feels almost mercenary or “commissioned” in a way. My understanding is that it’s a product of there very free-forming values.

If anything, it’s frappe vs themselves. Or at least, That’s how I view it.

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You’ll have to be more specific about where you’re seeing this. I’m looking at the webpage right now, and I don’t see anything about wanting to be “bigtime”. Rushabh’s blog post about Odoo a few months back is pretty explicit that scale is not a goal.

Of course. This is no secret. There is relatively little top-down decision making or planning at Frappe, and this is by design. Rushabh is very explicit about that in these forums, and he writes about it a lot in more public contexts as well. Two examples: one about what it’s like to be an engineer at Frappe and one about leadership more generally.

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Hear me out here. Because the article you linked for Odoo seems it mirror my thoughts for erpnext exactly.

I’m not asking for exponential growth. I’m asking that the company, “as a tortoise” as they say, give meaningful, deep thought to integrations with their first, most successful app on frappe.

ERPNext

I’m not asking for a boom in the US. I’m sharing a hot take saying the sales people(from frappe) that talk to me and my sys admin friends are spinning their wheels.
Why?

Because integration between apps is inconsistent, inconvenient, undocumented, and not required as a milestone for official frappe company MVPs.

Getting our business would be as simple as slowing down, and showing us we dont have to get 2000 hours into an install, to then hire a specialist to help us link doctypes, to then have that feature come out and break our system 4 months later.

Now, I understand to a degree that this cycle is part of any platform and Dynamic software. But it is especially egregious here.

Would CRM ever intergrate with ERPNext? As a module per hrms?
Who’s to say?

“So will the crm be flushed out eventually in ErpNext then?”

I’ve asked that question, and got “our company is focused on breaking up the monolith with apps like CRM.”

And that app was released… with no immediate erpnext intergration.

The assumption we are prone to come up with is that ERPnext is getting decentralized to smaller, siloed apps that can have “best in class” focus, but seemingly at the expense of “best overall” which makes Erpnext so valuable.

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You’re welcome to think it’s a mistake. It seems pretty evident, though, that your goals for Frappe are different from the goals of the people who build it (and then give it away for free).

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I’m happy to agree to disagree.

However, I started this discussion by mentioning frappe cloud from the get-go. That, and the hundreds if not thousands(+100 for custom doctypes, +100 for custom app) to implement ERPNext. Or, any of these apps, leaves your “free” remark feeling tone-deaf.

“Free” was never in the picture. I’m not asking for better “free” guides to install the erp on my 2cpu 2012 old laptop.

I’m asking for LMS to use the same payment functionality erpnext does, and for basic integrations like that to be a part of app mvps moving forward.

OR, barring that, to at least have a bare-bones guide to best practicing linking doctypes from other apps to the ERP.

Because checks notes, %90+ of the activity and funding from frappe cloud comes from erpnext users.

Feel free to fact-check me on this.

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I’m not trying to pick a fight here, and I’m sorry if it seems like I am. I hear you saying that Frappe is almost-but-not-quite what you need, and I am sympathetic to why that’s frustrating.

That said, wishing that Frappe’s design approach would change to better suit your needs is a recipe for making yourself even more frustrated. If Frappe-as-it-is does not suit your needs, the proactive options available to you are:

  1. Find another platform that does
  2. Learn how to build the integrations you want yourself
  3. Pay somebody (possibly Frappe Inc) to add those features for you

The barebones guide you mention already exists, and it’s actually pretty thorough. CRM is just another app, and Frappe has a range of low-code and no-code ways to link different doctypes across apps. The integrations you want will be built from these components.

Rushabh has said that hooks linking CRM to the sales cycle will come at some point, but it’s not a top priority. I can definitely understand why that choice was made. That said, while testing CRM, I wanted a connection to feed CRM Deals into Quotes/Sales Orders. It took a couple of hours to get everything I wanted up and running, exactly as I wanted it. That flexibility has always been the greatest strength of the Frappe framework.

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They’ve been claiming this for years. Whether hyperbole or in seriousness, I don’t know.

A SAP Alternative at a fraction of the price

A Microsoft Dynamics Alternative with low TCO

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Right, ERPNext is positioning itself as an alternative to those things. I don’t know why that would be hyperbole, since that’s the job the software was designed to do. That’s not what we were talking about, though. We were talking about whether Frappe Inc’s goal was to become “bigtime”.

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Even more than the lack of integration, I think the greater downside of standalone apps like the new CRM product is that it pulls Frappe (company) resources away from ongoing development and improvement of the core ERPNext product.

There’s been some discussion of the UI improvements trickling down to the ERPNext framework, but the latest posts seem to indicate that will be at least several years away.

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Indeed, this will be discussed publicly in a few days. See the schedule for October 4th

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The only product that might have a deeper integration with ERPNext is CRM - and we have already started that integration. I don’t think this generic assumption (that integrations are crucial) should apply universally.

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I do agree here but I think the underlying question is about product vision for erpnext, frappe apps and frappe / community investment.

I hope this is publicly covered at Frappeverse and streamed for those of us promoting erpnext and frappe around the world.

Either way a clearer roadmap (including any ootb integration points and consistent core functions like payments) would be useful.

Finally to the original poster I would suggest n8n to integrate your apps and other architecture components if you need a middleware data movement layer.

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Interesting feedback. I read it as well intentioned.
From a business development perspective, I sort of agree. Having stronger integrations between the different apps introduces stronger network effects. This will result in a true Frappe “ecosystem”, where different modules can be integrated with each other and together be stronger than if standing alone. In the end, it is as rightly pointed out Frappe’s call. But from the outside, I think @Jake has a good point.

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