| | March 202119CIOReviewsolution in record time on top of Odoo, the open source ERP solution. Our ideas resonated well. We had immediate support from an entire community of developers and field service companies across the world.Today, the Open FSM software is available as a free download and used by a growing number of service companies with fleet sizes from five to 500 vehicles. The standard Open FSM solution provides integration with sales, inventory, and accounting processes and can be used either with the free Odoo community ERP or the licensed Odoo Enterprise edition. It includes the typical scheduling, routing, and dispatching functions and adds parts, labor cost tracking, as well as recurring services. "Providing the tools and technology was only the first step to make the small and mid-tier service companies successful, " states Hall. "The ability to customize all workflows is necessary but also provides a challenge to get it right the first time. Managers cannot afford to experiment with critical business processes." To address the proper conversion of business needs into technology, Hall and the OSI team focus on thoroughly understanding a company's business processes before making any technology recommendations. "Even though most field service processes look similar from the outside, once we dig in, we see a surprising number of individual differences that are important to the organization," adds Hall. With Open FSM, small and mid-tier field service organizations now have affordable technology to compete with the large organizations. Teaming up with seasoned experts like Hall and the OSI team allows even small organizations to leverage the broad IT and business acumen needed for successful implementations. Open FSM also enables service companies to stay competitive: as in many other technology areas, open source FSM is evolving faster than traditional proprietary solutions. "What makes the Open FSM solution valuable is the level of innovation based on input from so many organizations. It shows us what to do and where it needs to evolve so we can continue to guide the open-source community," concludes Hall. We translate needs into solutions
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