Compiere Blog

Compiere Expansion

Compiere announced today our expansion into Europe in addition to expanding Compiere's executive team.  Having an office in Germany will allow us to better serve the Europe, Middle East, and African markets with a local presence to focus on sales, support and solution delivery for our channel partners and customers throughout the EMEA region. As general manager of Compiere EMEA, Yves Sandfort will lead efforts to further increase our reach and the productivity of our partner network to our 20+ authorized partners within the EMEA region. With our expansion into Europe, we will also begin holding training classes in Europe again with the first class tentatively scheduled for the June / July timeframe.  We will post more details about the training class on our website in the next few weeks after we have finalized the dates and logistics for the training session.

We also announced the addition of three people joining our executive team in our U.S. corporate office:

• Kyle Rosier, director of sales for the Americas, will oversee channel activities and lead direct sales in the Americas.
• Sunny Gosain, vice president of development and customer support, has global responsibility for product development, customer support and information technology.
• Bill Freedman, director of marketing, will lead outbound marketing efforts globally.

When Compiere had only a few people employees, the number of initiatives we could focus on was very limited. This expansion gives us the ability to focus on a larger number of initiatives including more focus on product development, support, global sales programs, and marketing.

We welcome Yves, Kyle, Sunny, and Bill to the Compiere team!

 

"I'm evaluating Compiere. Should I attend training?"

This is one of the most frequent questions we get from potential Compiere customers. The answer is: yes!  Compiere training classes are a fast and efficient way to grasp the the capabilities of the system, and to learn how to effectively deploy the software to meet your business needs.

Compiere founders Jorg Janke and Kathy Pink lead the professionally designed training classes. Their product knowledge, business perspective and passion are refreshing advantages that you can put to immediate use in your evaluation and deployment of Compiere. First, you know that your questions can be answered immediately and accurately by individuals who are intimately familiar with the software. Second, because of Jorg and Kathy's intimate product knowledge, they have a unique ability to convey the richness of Compiere's model-driven architecture. Third, the dynamic of hands-on use of the software while interacting with other classmates and the founder/instructors spurs a faster and deeper learning than you can achieve on your own.

The Compiere Intensive Training class has no formal prerequisites and covers the functional elements of Compiere. The Compiere Technical Training class picks up where Intensive Training leaves off, providing a deeper exploration of Compiere customization techniques. To learn more about the classes and to register for the upcoming April/May training classes in the San Francisco Bay Area, click here.

For those of you who can't wait until the next training class to begin your evaluation, I want to let you know about a few of the useful resources at www.compiere.com. Introductory feature tours provide a view into using Compiere for some very common business activities such as receiving materials and matching receipts to purchase orders. The functionality section of the web site provides an overview of Compiere business processes orientation that enables organizations to define and automate processes across people, departments and divisions within a business. And the Installation section provides step-by-step instructions for installing Compiere.

Training and Open Source Business Models

With our February training classes just around the corner, I have been thinking about how training fits into the overall business model of an open source company.  We tend to think about providing support, maintenance, and consulting services to generate revenue for open source companies.  I usually lump training into the broader category of services when I think about open source business models without giving it much thought; however, training can play a significant role for some open source companies.

From a business standpoint, training is a more scalable service than some of the others. The materials can be developed and used several times with only minor modifications and delivered by one of the many experts within the open source company. By contrast, support and consulting services are usually tailored to the unique needs of an individual customer requiring a slightly different approach to each problem.  I always try to look for ways to improve scalability allowing our work to be leveraged multiple times. Training seems like a relatively scalable service that can be delivered to many people in a cost effective manner.

*Caution: Shameless Self Promotion Plug Below*

We still have a few seats left in our February training classes.  The next training class is three months away, so now would be a great time to attend training!

Installation Workshop: February 11, 2007
Intensive Training: February 12-16, 2007
Collaboration Mgmt: February 17, 2007
Technical Training: February 19-21, 2007