Duration: 25:16
🌿 A Family Business Scaling Globally
Daniel Reyes, managing partner at Open Source Integrators Europe, presents a detailed implementation case study of Yon-Ka, a French family-owned cosmetics manufacturer navigating complex multi-country operations. Open Source Integrators, a gold partner in North America, specializes in helping companies "cross the Atlantic"—deploying European businesses in the United States and vice versa. The Yon-Ka project exemplifies this cross-border expertise.
Yon-Ka, a third-generation family business founded 70 years ago in France, built its reputation on botanical aromatherapy with products originally formulated for medical use before evolving into professional skincare. Unlike most modern cosmetics companies that outsource production, Yon-Ka maintains its manufacturing roots—products are still "made with love in Paris" by company employees. This commitment to in-house production brings both quality control advantages and operational complexity.
The company operates a sophisticated distribution model: direct subsidiaries in multiple European countries plus the United States, a network of distributors across Europe and other regions, and e-commerce channels for direct-to-consumer sales. This multi-channel, multi-country structure created the business context driving their ERP transformation.
🚧 Business Challenges: Disconnected Systems and Manual Processes
Yon-Ka's operational challenges typify mid-sized manufacturers scaling internationally while maintaining traditional production practices. Several pain points demanded attention:
Manufacturing complexity stems from cosmetics industry regulations. Products require rigorous traceability of components, lot management, and expiration date tracking throughout production and distribution. Without proper systems, ensuring compliance while maintaining production velocity becomes nearly impossible.
Paper-based record-keeping persisted for audit and compliance purposes. The regulatory burden in cosmetics demands detailed documentation of every production batch—the "dossier de lot" (batch dossier) documents ingredients, quantities, processes, and quality checks. Maintaining these records manually is time-consuming, error-prone, and hinders operational agility.
Multiple disconnected systems forced duplicate data entry across different applications. Information inconsistencies between systems created confusion about inventory levels, production status, and financial positions. Different departments worked with different versions of truth, making cross-functional coordination difficult.
The most urgent technical issue: their aging accounting system running on Windows 98 in a virtual machine. No one knew if the system would successfully restart after the next reboot—a situation creating existential business risk given the system handled general ledger functions for five European countries.
🎯 Business Goals: Integration, Visibility, and Precision
Yon-Ka's transformation objectives organized into three categories addressing immediate needs while positioning for future growth:
Single integrated system: Replacing disconnected applications with one unified platform that could integrate with modern e-commerce channels. Yon-Ka operates a portal for distributors where wholesale customers place orders, plus direct consumer sales channels. Bringing all these revenue streams into one system would eliminate duplicate entry and provide unified visibility.
Better business information: Leadership needed timely sales and financial data that was difficult to gather when scattered across systems. More critically, they required accurate industrial cost calculations—understanding the true cost of producing each product batch was essential for pricing strategy, margin analysis, and overall business viability. Without precise costing, pricing decisions lacked foundation, risking either lost profitability or market uncompetitiveness.
Improved operations and planning: Manufacturing in large batches planned months in advance demands sophisticated forecasting and production scheduling. Procurement of ingredients also requires long lead times. Better planning tools would optimize inventory levels, reduce stockouts, and improve working capital management. The existing spreadsheet-based production planning couldn't scale with business growth.
💡 Why Odoo: Integration as Game-Changer
The decision to select Odoo centered on its integrated nature—all business functions in one system rather than best-of-breed applications requiring complex integrations. For Yon-Ka, this integration provided immediate value even before optimizing individual processes.
Simply having sales, purchases, inventory, manufacturing, and planning in one system where information flows automatically was "game-changing." Knowing when a production batch would complete and become available for distribution, visible across sales and logistics teams simultaneously, eliminated countless status-check emails and coordination meetings.
The multi-company, multi-country, multi-currency, multi-language capabilities were essential, not optional. An anecdote illustrates this: during warehouse training at the U.S. facility in New Jersey, the session had to be conducted in Spanish for warehouse staff. Odoo's easy language installation meant switching the interface to Spanish without technical complexity or delays. This flexibility contrasts sharply with legacy systems where additional languages require expensive customization.
Consolidated reporting across geographies became trivial. Generating a consolidated sales report across all countries and subsidiaries—previously requiring days of spreadsheet work—became a single click in Odoo. This administrative efficiency saving alone justified significant investment.
E-commerce integration brought Magento (for professional customers) and Shopify (for consumers) into one fulfillment workflow. Sales from both channels flow into Odoo, get picked and packed through unified warehouse processes, and generate consistent accounting entries. The previous system lacked this capability, requiring manual bridging between e-commerce and fulfillment.
Warehouse management represented another upgrade. The legacy system had basic MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning) and stock tracking but lacked per-location inventory control and barcode-driven operations. Odoo's warehouse management enables multi-step workflows, location-specific stock management, and mobile barcode scanning—operational capabilities essential for scaling.
Production planning moved from spreadsheets into the system. The ability to manage work centers, track manufacturing operations, record labor time, and calculate actual production costs were all out-of-the-box Odoo features ready to leverage.
📋 Implementation Phases: Incremental Transformation
Open Source Integrators structured the implementation as three-plus-one phases, an approach managing risk while delivering incremental value:
Phase 1 (2024): European Accounting Emergency
The most urgent priority: replacing the failing Windows 98 accounting system before catastrophic failure. This phase implemented Odoo Accounting for five European countries including the UK. While functionally simple—the old system only did general ledger—the multi-country complexity required careful setup of chart of accounts, tax configurations, and reporting for each jurisdiction.
This phase served dual purposes: solving the immediate business risk and providing a controlled introduction to Odoo for staff. Teams learned basic navigation, workflows, and the Odoo philosophy without overwhelming operational changes. This learning investment would pay dividends in subsequent phases.
Interestingly, this simple accounting replacement actually consolidated three separate French applications: the base accounting system, a dedicated asset management application, and bank factoring software that generated files for bank exchanges. All three moved into Odoo, eliminating licensing costs and integration complexity.
Phase 2 (Completed Early 2024): U.S. Operations
The U.S. subsidiary implementation addressed warehouse and distribution from the New Jersey facility. This replaced QuickBooks (accounting) and a dedicated shipping labels application while implementing comprehensive warehouse management.
The warehouse implementation introduced detailed location management, multi-step workflows (pick, pack, ship), and separate flows for B2B versus B2C fulfillment. Business-to-business orders follow a three-step process while direct-to-consumer uses two steps—different workflows optimized for different volume and handling requirements.
Critical for cosmetics: GS1 barcode support and expiration date management. GS1 barcodes encode lot number, expiration date, and product code in a single scan, enabling one-touch data capture during receiving, picking, and shipping. Expiration date tracking ensures first-expired-first-out (FEFO) picking and prevents shipping expired products—regulatory compliance built into operational workflow.
E-commerce connectors for Magento and Shopify were implemented, bringing online orders into the unified fulfillment system. Direct carrier integration with FedEx and USPS meant confirming a shipment automatically generates the shipping label—no separate login to carrier websites or duplicate data entry.
This phase deployed core applications: Sales, Purchase, Inventory, Accounting, and Manufacturing (for assembly operations done in the U.S.).
Phase 3 (In Progress, Launch Early 2025): French Manufacturing Operations
The final major phase replaces the legacy ERP in France with Odoo, addressing the manufacturing heart of the business. Daniel conceptualizes this as two sub-phases:
Phase 3A: System Replacement focuses on decommissioning the "park of heavy servers with Oracle databases" currently running operations. Moving sales, purchasing, inventory, and financial transactions to Odoo eliminates infrastructure costs and technical debt while providing the integrated platform benefits already experienced in the U.S.
Phase 3B: Operations Excellence implements genuine manufacturing operations management with shop floor tracking, time recording, and detailed cost collection. This granular data enables calculating the real cost of production for each lot and product—the CEO's ultimate goal enabling data-driven pricing decisions across multiple price lists (distributor pricing, subsidiary pricing, and consumer pricing).
Critically, Phase 3B includes digitizing the production record (dossier de lot). Currently, paper documents accompany each batch through production, with operators manually recording actions, measurements, and inspections. Digitization means data captured electronically during production automatically populates compliance records. This eliminates transcription errors, reduces administrative burden, and lets production staff focus on manufacturing rather than record-keeping.
⚙️ Technical Implementation: Configuration Over Customization
Open Source Integrators follows the principle that projects should emphasize configuration over customization, minimizing technical debt and maintaining upgrade paths. The Yon-Ka implementation statistics demonstrate this philosophy in action:
Third-party modules: Used App Store modules for Shopify, Magento, and advanced FedEx options. These connectors were readily available, well-maintained, and more cost-effective than custom development.
OCA (Odoo Community Association) modules: The project incorporated 23 modules from 10 different OCA repositories. These community-developed extensions provide additional functionality while maintaining Odoo compatibility and benefiting from community support. One example: adding a fax field to partner records for old-school suppliers still using fax communications (yes, fax still exists).
Custom development focused on three areas:
Legacy ERP connectors: Interim integrations import sales from the old French ERP into Odoo and connect with the existing warehouse management system. These connectors are explicitly temporary—they'll be decommissioned as phases complete. Building custom connectors for interim needs is pragmatic when alternative approaches would delay go-live or create operational risks.
Reporting data points: Additional fields and views to support specific reporting requirements Yon-Ka needed. These don't change workflows but enhance data capture and presentation.
UX/UI refinements: Interface modifications making frequently repeated operations more efficient for Yon-Ka's specific processes. Reducing clicks or optimizing screen layouts for daily workflows significantly impacts user productivity and satisfaction.
One interesting technical challenge: multi-due-date invoices where 50% payment is via direct debit and 50% via bank transfer on different dates. This was "almost out of the box" but required customization because Odoo's payment modules default to paying full open amounts. The team extended the functionality to handle split payments with different due dates and methods.
📊 Lessons Learned: Lows and Highs
Daniel candidly shares challenges encountered and successes celebrated—valuable lessons for practitioners:
Lows: Challenges and Pitfalls
Multi-due-date invoicing: Already mentioned, this required more work than anticipated. Future projects should validate payment term complexity early in the discovery phase.
E-commerce payment reconciliation: Matching payments from multiple channels (Authorize.net, PayPal, Shopify Payments) to invoices proved "quite a bit of work." Different payment processors provide transaction data in varying formats with differing levels of detail. The lesson: review reconciliation processes carefully during pre-go-live stages rather than discovering issues after launch.
IoT Box limitations: Odoo's IoT Box for connecting printers and scanners "came short to our expectations." The team is exploring more robust alternatives. This honest feedback helps the community understand where official Odoo offerings need improvement.
Kit product accounting complexity: Using kit products to explode promotional items into storable components worked beautifully functionally but complicated interim stock account reconciliation. When warehouse movements don't automatically match financial entries, manual reconciliation becomes necessary. The solution works but requires understanding the accounting implications.
Highs: Success Stories
Pivot tables in accounting: French accounting staff loved Odoo's dynamic pivot tables over journal items. The ability to slice, dice, and analyze accounting data interactively exceeded their previous capabilities and empowered self-service reporting.
Multi-channel sales consolidation: Having all sales channels visible in one application was transformative. Seeing Shopify, Magento, distributor portal, and direct sales orders in a unified view eliminated the previous fractured perspective.
Inter-company transactions: Automatic inter-company transaction posting is powerful. The U.S. orders a full container monthly from France—a massive order creating transactions in both companies. Automating this posting eliminates hours of duplicate data entry and potential errors.
Configurable warehouse flows: Different fulfillment workflows for different order types—two-step for B2C, three-step (pick-pack-ship) for B2B, plus specialized receiving workflows for container unloading—all configured without custom code. This flexibility demonstrates Odoo's warehouse module sophistication.
Direct carrier integration: Clicking "confirm" on a delivery and having the shipping label automatically print from FedEx or USPS eliminates a significant operational bottleneck and potential error source.
Physical inventory speed: They allocated three days for full inventory count using the barcode app. After one and a half days, the count was essentially complete. The mobile barcode scanning efficiency exceeded expectations significantly.
Multi-language flexibility: Spanish interface installation in the U.S. was instant and seamless. This capability would require significant effort in most legacy systems but is trivial in Odoo.
👥 Project Structure and Resources
The implementation team structure reflects Open Source Integrators' methodology of paired leadership:
Core team: Two people drive the project: - Lead consultant (functional focus): Business process expertise, requirements gathering, configuration design - Tech lead (technical focus): Custom development, integrations, technical architecture
This pair structure ensures both business and technical perspectives inform decisions while maintaining clear accountability. Additional consultants and developers join when needed for specific expertise or accelerating timelines, but the core pair maintains continuity throughout.
For a project spanning three phases over multiple years across two continents and multiple countries, this lean core team demonstrates efficiency in project management and delivery.
🔮 Technology Choices and Editions
Odoo 17 Enterprise Edition served as the foundation, deployed in 2024. The choice of Enterprise over Community Edition reflects several considerations:
Vendor support: Running business-critical systems on supported software provides security when issues arise. Official Odoo support channels ensure problems get addressed.
Feature completeness: Enterprise includes extensive functionality that would require finding community alternatives or custom development. The time and cost savings of "batteries included" functionality often exceed the license cost difference.
Professional accountability: When implementing for clients, recommending unsupported software creates risk for both the customer and the implementation partner.
The team is reconsidering migration timing for future versions. Initially, they migrated to current versions before completing full implementation, which created "mixed feelings." The revised strategy: complete Phase 3 on Odoo 17, then migrate to Odoo 18 or 19. This avoids mid-project version changes that can introduce unexpected issues.
🎓 Change Management and Training Insights
Successful technical implementation means little without successful user adoption. Daniel shares change management lessons:
Mock go-live: Simulate operations before the actual go-live week. This practice run identifies issues, builds user confidence, and validates that configurations support real work. The lesson: involve actual end users in mock go-live, not just supervisors or managers. Direct workers often discover practical issues that managers miss. Training frontline staff during mock go-live makes the real go-live week much smoother.
On-site during go-live: Physical presence during launch week is essential. Remote support cannot substitute for being in the room when production staff encounter their first real situations. Quick problem resolution and hands-on guidance prevent frustration and build confidence.
Hyper-care period: "The project does not end with go-live. It actually starts with go-live, especially from the customer point of view." Planning a second on-site visit a few weeks post-launch, ideally aligned with month-close, ensures support during the first full accounting cycle. This sustained engagement signals commitment and smooths the transition.
Language and localization: Training materials and interface language matching staff native language significantly impacts adoption. The Spanish-speaking warehouse staff in New Jersey needed Spanish training and interface—accommodating this seems obvious in retrospect but requires proactive planning.
🧠 Viewpoint: Odoo Integration Philosophy
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
This case demonstrates why we built Odoo as an integrated suite rather than specialized tools. Yon-Ka's challenges weren't exotic—multi-country operations, manufacturing complexity, e-commerce, compliance requirements. These are normal modern business realities. Yet their previous architecture of disconnected systems turned routine operations into coordination nightmares. The insight: most business problems aren't solved by optimizing individual functions but by enabling information flow between functions. When production knows sales commitments, when sales sees manufacturing capacity, when accounting reflects real operational activity automatically—that's when businesses become truly efficient. The alternative—specialized best-of-breed systems with integration middleware—theoretically works but practically creates brittle architectures that break when business needs change. We've seen countless examples where the cost of maintaining integrations exceeds the cost of the systems being integrated. Yon-Ka's transformation wasn't about revolutionary new capabilities. It was about making obvious things easy: knowing what inventory you have, what's selling, what's being produced, and what everything costs. These shouldn't require heroic IT efforts—they should be default reality.
🏢 Viewpoint: Implementation Partner Perspective
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary from systems integration perspective.
Multi-year, multi-country ERP implementations represent significant professional and business risk for implementation partners. Technical complexity is manageable—technical problems have technical solutions. The real challenges are organizational: managing changing requirements, maintaining momentum through business disruptions, and ensuring user adoption across different cultures and languages. Open Source Integrators' phased approach demonstrates mature methodology: solve the most urgent problem first (the Windows 98 disaster), deliver value incrementally, and learn from each phase to inform subsequent work. The honest discussion of lows—IoT Box shortcomings, payment reconciliation complexity, kit product accounting challenges—reflects professional maturity. Vendors promising "it's all standard functionality" without acknowledging real-world friction points do clients disservice. The configuration-over-customization philosophy is sound but requires discipline. Every custom development creates maintenance burden and potential upgrade complications. Using OCA modules balances this by leveraging community-maintained extensions rather than fully bespoke code. For mid-market manufacturers like Yon-Ka, this approach provides the customization needed for competitive differentiation while maintaining sustainable long-term costs. The emphasis on change management—mock go-lives, on-site presence, hyper-care—separates successful implementations from technical deployments that never achieve business value. Software installation is straightforward; organizational transformation is hard. Recognizing this distinction and planning accordingly is what differentiates experienced partners from those learning expensive lessons on client projects.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Integration Philosophy" or "Implementation Partner Perspective" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.