Business Platforms (eCommerce/Finance/ERP)

[mattreba]

Currently my company uses a webcart as our company front-end (X-Cart) and QuickBooks Premier Manufacturing Edition to manage our backend (finance, inventory, builds, etc.). Unfortunately QuickBooks falls short in a few areas. My company is run out of several home offices and multi-warehouse inventory tracking is missing. As business volume increases we are looking for more automation to streamline things like picking and shipping operations. There are plenty of third-party add-on products for QuickBooks that can fill these voids but they come at a cost and in the end you still have a QuickBooks based business. We've also done our share of in-house development but would like to focus our limited energies on our core business.

I would think that most kitbiz/maker companies share many requirements. I would love to see a 'business platform stack' that could be shared and improved upon within the community. I did some research and found the Apache Open for Business project (http://ofbiz.apache.org/) and OpenTaps (http://opentaps.org/). Both hold the promise of providing an integrated platform that covers both front-end and back-end systems. Has anyone had experience with either? Are there other platforms or online services that can fit the bill?

[adafruit]

we keep inventory out of quickbooks and do it al in the shopping cart which makes sense for us since we have a lotof small orders
we will eventuslly be documenting the entire system but its very complex and ther is o ETA