Duration: 23:45
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This session, “Growing together: Best practices to successfully scale as an Odoo Partner,” is led by Roman, a Key Partner Manager at Odoo with five years in partnerships and prior experience in direct sales. He addresses a recurring question from the partner ecosystem: how to scale, become a top performer, and achieve Gold status. The ecosystem is expanding fast, but not all partners grow at the same pace. Roman’s thesis is clear: success isn’t about size, seniority, or being “the best”; it comes from smart choices and using the right tools.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
Roman frames the talk around three principles: Build a strong foundation, Elevate your expertise, and Scale with intention.
First, building a strong foundation means not going alone. Partners should actively collaborate with their Partner Manager and Account Manager for qualification, demos, negotiation, and strategy. Roman shares a telling anecdote: three partners competed for a large European deal; only one brought their Partner Manager to the meeting. That partner won—purely because the customer’s trust increased seeing Odoo involved, even though the PM only gave a short intro. The takeaway: co-selling with Odoo materially improves win rates. Foundational focus also means picking a vertical, customer segment, or geography and committing. With Odoo 19’s standard capabilities being “more powerful than ever,” partners should resist reinventing the wheel and instead bring consulting value that guides customers through change.
Second, elevating expertise starts by truly knowing Odoo. Roman cautions against the common pitfall of assuming mastery and then custom-developing features already available in standard. He urges partners to use Odoo internally, leverage the Odoo Academy, regional learning options, and Partner Pack services to upskill teams quickly (Odoo’s own onboarding gets consultants project-ready within weeks). He advocates internal peer checks on scoping and developments: before budgeting custom work, have a colleague validate whether standard can solve the need. Roman gives a strong example: for a manufacturer of bespoke electrical boxes, using Project with a touch of Studio beat a heavy MRP approach—delivering a near-standard solution with minimal dev, while a competing proposal ballooned to a ~400k budget. Finally, he advises embracing AI as a working assistant (e.g., triaging requirements into “standard/config/dev”), freeing consultants to focus on higher-value work. AI won’t replace partners—but partners who use AI can outpace those who don’t. ⚙️
Third, scaling with intention requires turning one-off customizations into market solutions. If you’ve built a “killer” customization, co-create with your customer, package it, and take it to the broader market (industry, country, or multi-country). Productized verticals become easier to maintain and implement as feedback compounds. Equally critical is growing “on purpose”: have a written strategy. Roman notes that most partners who say they “have a strategy” can’t produce a document. Top partners can. That strategy should cover sales and marketing, and your Partner Manager can help shape it with market data and Odoo’s internal tools.
Impact & takeaways 💬
Roman’s guidance translates into practical advantages for partners:
- Co-selling with Odoo increases credibility and improves deal conversion; PMs can join qualification, demos, Q&A, and even review proposals to calibrate pricing and scope.
- Mastering standard Odoo reduces unnecessary development, accelerates delivery, and lowers risk; internal peer reviews prevent avoidable custom work.
- Using AI streamlines scoping and analysis, freeing time for value-added consulting.
- Productizing vertical solutions compounds feedback and revenue, making maintenance and rollout easier as you scale across markets.
- Documented growth strategies drive alignment and focus; Odoo can help with cross-border expansion (start small, then add local visibility), partner-to-partner introductions, event support (onsite or remote), and engineering capacity via Develop on Demand (India-based development, with IP kept by the partner).
On leads, allocation depends on expertise fit and collaboration: Partner Managers prioritize partners who actively engage and co-sell. Fees exist to become a partner, and more details are available directly from Odoo.
Bottom line: success comes from smart choices—collaborate with Odoo, truly master the product, leverage AI, productize your niche, and scale with a clear, written plan.
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo’s vision.
What I appreciate in Roman’s message is the insistence on simplicity and collaboration. Partners win when they use standard, focus on a clear vertical, and invite us into the sales process. That’s how trust is built—by showing customers a united team and a solution that works out-of-the-box.
Our goal with releases like Odoo 19 is to keep expanding what “standard” can do so partners spend less time on plumbing and more time on business outcomes. When partners productize their know-how and share feedback, the whole community benefits—and we move closer to our vision: powerful software that remains simple, integrated, and accessible to all.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo’s partner guidance is disciplined: lead with standard, verticalize, and co-sell. That resonates with SMBs and midmarket firms that want speed, value, and a clean UX. The emphasis on AI as an assistant and on productizing custom work is smart—those are proven levers for partner productivity.
The challenge will be sustaining this approach in complex, regulated, multi-entity scenarios. Enterprise buyers will look for deep compliance, robust governance, SLAs, multi-country localizations, and long-term extensibility at scale. Odoo’s ecosystem will need continued investment in certifications, quality assurance, and repeatable delivery playbooks. If they keep the UX advantage while maturing controls and scalability, their partners will be formidable in more segments.
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.