# Systems that hold your business together. Odoo systems for companies that outgrew Excel but do not need SAP. I am a systems architect: I ask why before I ask how. You speak with the engineer who builds your system. Source: https://devarc.ch/ | DevArc GmbH, Pratteln, Basel-Landschaft, CH | juraj@devarc.ch ## Four companies I keep meeting. If you recognise yourself in one of them, we both already know the first three questions. ### Wholesale and distribution - Orders, stock and accounting run in separate programs, and nobody trusts the inventory figures. - One system from the order to the invoice, with stock figures you can believe again. - Typical: 30-150 employees, 6-12 weeks to the first stage ### Make-to-order manufacturing - Costing lives in spreadsheets, and when you recalculate, the margin is gone. - Bill of material, work order and costing in one place, traceable down to a single line. - Typical: 20-100 employees, 8-16 weeks ### Stores and retail - Every store has its own register, and the monthly close is done by hand. - Central products and prices, a register per store, a fiscal regime per country. - Typical: 5-50 locations, 4-8 weeks per country ### E-commerce with its own warehouse - The shop sells faster than the warehouse can follow, and paper slips run the shipping. - Scanners instead of slips, live stock, picking along clear routes. - Typical: 20-200 employees, 8-16 weeks ## Five systems that do not talk to each other. Orders sit in the web shop. Stock lives in a spreadsheet. Accounting runs in a program nobody opens except the bookkeeper. In between, people retype numbers by hand. - Numbers that contradict each other depending on the source - Processes that live in one person's head - Decisions made on instinct because the data arrives too late This is where my work begins. ## Why first, then how. ### Why before how Before the first line of code, I work out how your company makes money. Software that models the wrong process is more expensive than no software at all. ### Architecture before implementation A system only holds as much as its foundation allows. I design the structure first and build on it, instead of bolting on features until nothing fits together. ### You speak with the engineer No account manager, no ticket system as a buffer. You talk to the person who builds your system and who explains it to you afterwards. > Technology is a tool. The thinking is the solution. ## Put your system together. Tap the blocks that belong to your operation - the estimate recalculates with every choice. - Sales - Purchasing - Warehouse - Scanner app - Manufacturing - Costing - Point of sale - Web shop - B2B portal - Accounting - HR and payroll - Integrations ## Six areas I know from the inside. The images show real Odoo screens, not drawn mockups. This is what your day-to-day work will look like. ### Migration and modernisation Old ERP systems, in-house software that outgrew its author, Odoo versions 13 through 19. Migration is a core discipline here, not a by-product. ### Point of sale and fiscal compliance Checkout systems that satisfy the rules of several countries, with receipt signing, fiscal storage and payment terminals. In production, not on paper. ### Integration of scattered systems Web shop, warehouse, accounting and CRM speaking one language. Interfaces with a log, so you can see what happened when something fails. ### Warehouse and logistics Receiving, put-away and picking with scanners instead of paper slips. Processes that hold up on a Monday morning in December. ### Manufacturing and costing Bills of material, work orders, subcontracted parts and the question what a product really costs, traceable down to a single line. ### HR and payroll People, contracts, time tracking and a clean handover into payroll, instead of lists in a mail attachment. ## Three cases, no names. No names, no logos, no numbers that would identify anyone. What counts is the trigger and what changed afterwards. ### Wholesale across several countries - Trigger: A new country, another tax regime and a legacy system that knew neither of them. - Built: A complete system for sales, purchasing, warehouse and accounting, including excise duty and the papers required at the border. - What changed: Filings come straight out of the accounts instead of spreadsheets, and a new product is ready to sell the same day. ### Make-to-order manufacturing with a dealer network - Trigger: Costing lived in spreadsheets, dealers ordered by email, and production heard about it last. - Built: Manufacturing, costing and a B2B portal where dealers enter their own orders and see their status. - What changed: Quotes are built on real cost, and the way from order into production is one click instead of a phone call. ### A store network in several countries - Trigger: Registers from different generations, fiscal regimes of five countries and an in-house team with no spare capacity. - Built: A single point of sale layer on the existing system, the country regimes as separate modules, plus the migration across several Odoo versions. - What changed: A new country goes live in weeks instead of months, and fiscal reporting runs without manual work. ## Why the open edition is the cheaper and safer choice for you. Odoo comes in two editions. I build on the open one, and from an owner's point of view there are solid reasons for that. ### No fee per user You never have to weigh up whether the colleague in the warehouse gets an account too. You pay for engineering, not for seats. ### The code is yours Everything built for you sits in your repository, documented. Nobody can take it away from you. ### No vendor lock-in Odoo Community is open source and widely used. If you want to change partner, you can do it without starting over. ### It grows with your company A new warehouse, a new channel, a new country. The system gets extended, not replaced. To be blunt: Community does not cover everything, and if you genuinely need an Enterprise feature I will tell you in the first call instead of building a detour. ## Is DevArc right for you? ### We are a good fit if - you have between 10 and 150 employees - you move something physical: goods, production, stores - more than one system holds the same data - decisions are made by you, not by a committee ### Talk to me if - Excel is reaching its limits - a deadline is approaching, a new country or an audit - your current system is reaching the end of its support - the person who knew all the tricks is leaving ### Probably not a fit if - you only need accounting and invoices (Have a look at Bexio: https://www.bexio.com) - you are looking for something under a hundred francs a month (Odoo Online Standard will do the job: https://www.odoo.com/pricing) - you are a pure services firm with no stock and no production (Bexio and Google Workspace go a long way: https://workspace.google.com) - you are rolling out five hundred users or more (Go with a large Odoo partner: https://www.odoo.com/partners) I am happy to point you elsewhere. Write to me anyway, the advice costs nothing. ## Three steps, in this order. 01. Conversation and process map: We walk through your workflows as they really are today, not as the manual describes them. The result is a map of your processes and a clear view of what is worth doing and what is not. 02. Delivery in stages: I build in sections, and each section is usable on its own. You work with something running early, instead of unwrapping a large surprise after months. 03. Handover, documentation, operation: Your team gets trained, the architecture is written down, the code sits with you. After that I stay available for operations and further work, without you being tied to me. ## What owners ask first. ### What does it cost? There is no price list, because there is no standard company. The price rests on three things: how many workflows move into the system, how much old data has to come along, and how many external systems get connected. After the first call you get a range, after the process mapping a fixed number. ### How long does it take? A clearly bounded module takes weeks. A full system for a company with a warehouse and production takes several months, delivered in usable stages. The first stage usually runs long before the whole thing is finished. ### Where does the system run? On a server in Switzerland or in the EU, or on your own infrastructure if you prefer. Backups, updates and monitoring are part of it. Your data does not leave the agreed location. ### You are one person. What if you drop out? That is why the code sits documented in your repository, and why I build nothing that only I understand. Odoo Community is common enough for another team to take over. For longer absences I have a network of engineers I have worked with for years. ### What does the first step look like? A thirty-minute conversation, no sales deck. You tell me where it hurts, I tell you straight whether I am the right person. If I am not, I say that too. ## Tell me where it hurts. Thirty minutes, a conversation, no slide deck. If I am not the right person for your plan, I tell you inside that same call. - Pratteln, Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland - juraj@devarc.ch - https://devarc.ch/#contact ## Behind DevArc there is a person, not an agency. My name is Juraj Kicko Horbaľ and I have spent about ten years building the systems that keep companies running: first in Java and C#, in fintech and ERP, today with Odoo. DevArc is my company in Pratteln near Basel. I work alone and I use AI as a daily tool, among others Claude Code for tests, code review and documentation. It gives me the pace of a small team without its friction. AI does not replace engineering judgment. It accelerates it. In my free time I ride a bike and go into the mountains. It is the same idea as at work: the fastest attack does not count, getting to the top does. - About 10 years of Java, C#, fintech, ERP - Odoo 13 to 19, Community and Enterprise - Projects in CH, DE, AT, SK, CZ and PL - Pratteln, Basel-Landschaft ## From Pratteln, across six countries. The focus is Switzerland, Germany and Austria. I also work in Czechia, Slovakia and Poland, usually when a system has to connect several countries. - [Imprint](https://devarc.ch/impressum) - [Privacy](https://devarc.ch/datenschutz)