Duration: 25:11
🧾 Analytical Summary
🚀 Company Overview and Digital Transformation Journey
Yussi Pala, CEO and co-founder of Diagno Finland, shared a compelling real-world implementation story showcasing how Odoo transformed field service operations for a 20-year-old company operating across Finland and Estonia. With over 50 employees organized into three business units, Diagno Finland specializes in workshop equipment sales, installation, service, and technical training for automotive repair facilities.
The company operates in a complex service environment with 24 field service technicians working from 10 different locations across Finland, managing service vehicles that double as mobile warehouses. Their customer base includes both OEM dealerships and independent workshops, requiring them to service all brands and types of workshop equipment—from vehicle lifts to exhaust analyzers, diagnostic testers, and high-voltage battery testing equipment. A typical workshop might contain 250 individual pieces of equipment, each requiring independent maintenance, calibration, and documentation.
💼 The Pre-Odoo Challenge: System Fragmentation
Before implementing Odoo, Diagno Finland struggled with severe system fragmentation that created massive operational inefficiencies. The company operated three separate ERP systems that couldn't communicate with each other. They used Futuresoft for inventory, invoicing, and purchasing; Microsoft AX for accounting; and a separate system for equipment management and field service operations.
This fragmentation forced employees to manually re-enter the same data across multiple systems, creating opportunities for errors and wasting significant time. Calibration certificates—legally required documentation for much of the equipment they service—were created manually in Excel, with no systematic tracking or integration with service records. The lack of system integration meant no single source of truth for customer data, equipment history, or service activities.
⚙️ Phased Implementation Strategy
Diagno Finland took a strategic phased approach to their Odoo implementation, beginning at the end of 2023. Phase One focused on consolidating the three separate ERP systems, implementing core functionality for inventory, invoicing, purchasing, and accounting. The accounting module was customized by implementation partner Sprint IT to comply with Finnish legislation requirements.
Critically, they replaced manual Excel-based calibration certificates with Odoo Spreadsheets integrated directly into the system. Each equipment category received its own tailored calibration certificate template—over 50 different templates in total—with embedded calculations that technicians could complete in the field. This digitization eliminated lost paperwork and created automatic archival of compliance documentation.
Phase Two, implemented after several months of learning and adaptation, added Helpdesk functionality for technical support hotline, Attendance tracking for field technicians, Expenses management for travel costs, and Fleet management for the 24 service vehicles. These modules extended operational visibility and reduced administrative overhead.
Phase Three began in early 2024 when Diagno Finland acquired a small manufacturing company. The flexibility of Odoo allowed them to activate the Manufacturing module with minimal configuration, immediately enabling production tracking through their existing ERP infrastructure. They also launched their Website and E-commerce platform on Odoo, followed by Events and E-learning modules to manage their extensive training operations that serve over 4,000 people per year.
🧠 Custom Equipment Management: The Game Changer
The most significant customization developed by Sprint IT—particularly by lead developer Henry—was the Equipment Management System integrated with field service operations. This custom module addresses the unique challenge of managing thousands of pieces of equipment installed at customer sites, each with different maintenance requirements, calibration schedules, and compliance obligations.
When equipment is sold and installed, it automatically transitions from a product to an equipment record with its own maintenance profile. The system tracks critical information including equipment category, location, installation date, last inspection date, next scheduled maintenance, required calibration tools, maintenance parts, and spare parts inventory. For multi-equipment sites, supervisors can easily generate comprehensive service orders that automatically include all required maintenance parts for the scheduled visit.
The calibration certificate workflow integrates seamlessly with field service tasks. When a technician completes an installation or maintenance visit, they fill out the digital calibration protocol using Odoo Spreadsheets on their mobile device. These spreadsheets contain embedded calculations specific to each equipment type, ensuring accurate compliance documentation. Once completed, the system automatically generates both PDF and XLSX versions of the certificate, stores them in the equipment's permanent record, and makes them accessible to customers through the portal.
Maintenance intervals are defined per equipment category and automatically schedule follow-up service. When annual maintenance comes due, the system prompts service coordinators to contact customers and schedule the next visit, ensuring no equipment falls out of compliance or maintenance cycles.
💬 Field Service Workflow in Practice
The operational workflow demonstrates the power of Odoo's integration. When a sales representative sells a lift to a workshop, the sale order automatically generates a field service task for installation. The field service supervisor schedules this task in a technician's calendar, allocating appropriate time based on the work required.
Technicians primarily use mobile phones rather than laptops, highlighting the importance of Odoo's mobile-responsive interface. At the customer site, they access all necessary information—customer details, equipment specifications, required tools, maintenance protocols—directly from their phones. They complete digital calibration certificates, document work performed, log materials used, and capture any necessary photos or notes.
Upon completion, supervisors review and close tasks, with the system automatically sending inspection reports to customers via Odoo's Chatter functionality. All documentation is permanently stored in the equipment management system and made accessible to customers through the customer portal.
📊 Extended Helpdesk Integration
Originally implemented for their technical hotline supporting workshops with car repair questions, Diagno Finland extended Helpdesk functionality to include workshop equipment service requests. Customers can now submit service tickets through multiple channels, and supervisors can convert these tickets directly into field service tasks scheduled on technician calendars.
This integration creates a seamless flow from customer issue reporting through service delivery and documentation, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks and maintaining complete visibility into service request status.
🌐 Customer Portal and Future Vision
The customer portal represents a strategic initiative to increase customer self-service and engagement. While still under development, the vision includes customers being able to log in to view all their equipment, access calibration protocols and user manuals, review service history, purchase additional equipment and spare parts through the integrated e-commerce platform, and register for training events—all within a single unified experience.
An innovative feature under development is QR code integration. Each piece of equipment will receive a QR code that customers can scan if problems arise. The scan automatically initiates a service request with complete equipment identification and location data pre-populated, streamlining the service request process.
✨ Results and Future Plans
To date, Diagno Finland has consolidated more than 10 separate software systems into Odoo, with plans to implement 5-10 additional functions. The system now provides complete visibility into which equipment is located where, when maintenance is due, and complete service history for each asset. Customers can access their equipment information and service records through the portal, and eventually order repairs and spare parts directly.
Future plans include implementing Payroll (localized for Finland by Sprint IT), CRM for enhanced sales pipeline management, and Marketing Automation for customer communications. The team is also considering upgrading to Odoo 19 to access the latest features and improvements.
🔧 Technical Implementation Notes
Most customizations were implemented through code development rather than Odoo Studio, ensuring robust functionality and performance. Equipment records are managed separately from inventory once installed at customer sites, preventing confusion between stock items and deployed assets. All field service tasks are connected to sales orders, ensuring proper financial tracking and invoicing.
Customer access is managed through portal users rather than internal licenses, keeping costs manageable while providing appropriate access levels. Training participants also receive portal accounts, creating a unified user database across all business functions.
🧠 Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
Diagno Finland's implementation perfectly illustrates why we built Odoo as a modular, integrated platform rather than a collection of disconnected applications. The story Yussi shared—starting with three separate systems that couldn't talk to each other and evolving to a unified platform that now handles everything from equipment tracking to e-learning—this is exactly the transformation we envision for businesses everywhere. What's particularly impressive is their phased approach. They didn't try to implement everything at once. They started with the core pain points, learned the system, and then progressively added functionality as their confidence and needs grew. This is the right way to adopt a comprehensive ERP system. The custom equipment management system they built shows another key strength of Odoo: when standard functionality covers 90% of your needs, you can build targeted customizations for that last 10% without needing to customize everything. Their use of Odoo Spreadsheets for calibration certificates is brilliant—combining the calculation power users are familiar with from Excel while keeping everything integrated and auditable within the ERP. And the mobile-first approach with technicians working primarily from phones? That's where field service is heading. We've invested heavily in ensuring Odoo works seamlessly on mobile devices because that's where real work happens in field service environments.
🏢 Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Diagno Finland's success with Odoo highlights both the appeal and potential limitations of this approach for field service organizations. For a 50-person company managing 24 technicians, Odoo's integrated platform clearly provided excellent value, particularly when compared to the costs of enterprise alternatives. The phased implementation strategy was smart, and the ability to activate new modules as needs emerged demonstrates good platform flexibility. However, several aspects of the implementation warrant consideration for larger organizations evaluating similar paths. The reliance on Odoo Spreadsheets for calibration certificates, while functional, represents a somewhat unconventional approach when purpose-built forms and quality checkpoint systems exist within modern field service platforms. Organizations with more complex compliance requirements or regulatory scrutiny might find native structured data capture more maintainable and auditable than spreadsheet-based workflows. The custom equipment management development, while solving their specific needs, required significant partner customization—something that may create future upgrade challenges and increase total cost of ownership compared to platforms with asset management built into their core field service offerings. For organizations managing more complex service operations—predictive maintenance, IoT sensor integration, advanced scheduling optimization, or enterprise-scale asset hierarchies—purpose-built field service management platforms may offer deeper native functionality. That said, for companies willing to embrace Odoo's architectural patterns and invest in the right implementation partnership, as Diagno Finland clearly did, the platform can deliver impressive results with excellent cost-effectiveness.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.