Your company has identified a clear business need for application software–perhaps related to ERP, CRM, Document Management, etc.–and has a budget. You’ve sat through a few vendor demos, and have also selected a popular commercial open source project for consideration.  So far so good.

You now have a decent sense of the total project cost from the traditional vendors, but you don’t have a clear sense of the costs (or potential extra benefits) of implementing the open source option. Your users may be impressed by its simplicity and core functionality, but there appear to be a few functional gaps that will need to be filled. You need to determine if the open source option is truly viable and what it will really cost.

So you go to the open source vendor’s partner page to find a partner in your country to engage with. Your time is valuable, and you would prefer to spend it with the open source provider that will be the best fit for you.

But how to decide?

One obvious filter is to start with “Gold Partners” who have been servicing the software in question for at least 5 years. Those are the solid businesses with a proven track record that you can count on to be around for you.

As you review partner web sites, the key to finding the best match is to first think hard about your own company: it’s goals, capabilities, and culture. In that context, to be successful with an open source application, you need to get clear answers to these questions:

1. Does the provider serve companies like mine, with the critical services I need?
2. Is the provider’s engagement model aligned with how my company operates? 
3. Does the provider have a strong relationship with the open source vendor who develops and maintains the core platform code?

Depending on the software category, your choice of partner may have as much to do with the success of your implementation as the choice of software. So let’s consider each point in more detail.

1. Markets Served & Services Rendered

Many open source service providers gear their messaging and services to small companies with little to no IT staff who are looking to open source to save money on up front software licenses. If you are in this category, then make sure that the software itself is a good fit (to minimize custom software development), and that the provider is able to train your team on how to actually use the software in operating the business.

Important Note: Open source providers have a tendency to focus on the technical / development side of delivery, so don’t assume they can “speak your language” on the business / user side. Successful implementation of enterprise applications requires both business and technical expertise on the part of the service provider, as well as the willingness and ability to effectively transition control to your people.  Although commercial open source software has generally come a long way on usability, technically sophisticated solutions that suffer from low adoption rates due to lack of focus on the business users during implementation are still all too common with enterprise open source software like ERP.

Agility ERP focuses on serving companies with IT and development staff (who may or may not have experience with other open source software), and who seek one or more of these strategic benefits of deploying functionality on a standards-based open source platform:

• Adaptability – to easily implement specific functionality in cases where no appropriate packaged solution exists
• Control – to take ownership of the maintenance and ongoing development going forward
• Agility – to seamlessly interoperate with other systems, quickly implement new functionality, or roll out to additional business units or even external business partners
• TCO – the cost reduction strategy is a long term one, with the lack of high up front license fees “icing on the cake” (not the primary driver of looking at open source)

Since these larger companies seek to eventually take ownership of the software, it is important for us to provide custom training (for both IT and end users), mentoring (including at the IT management / executive level), and quality documentation to ensure initial adoption, efficient use, and effective transition to customer staff.  Ongoing support services after go live can also be important–something that open source providers who focus on the development aspect may or may not offer.

Alignment at this fundamental level is critically important. If you can’t tell what kind of customers a candidate partner is structured to serve, or if they even provide the set of services or experience that you require, fill out a contact form and most will get back to you within a day. A brief conversation with a founder or a principal to get your key questions answered will indicate whether or not to invest more time with a particular provider.

But before making that call, be sure to review the next key thing to learn about your potential open source service provider, in Part 2 of this 3-part series.