Duration: 17:06
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This live demo introduces Odoo’s revamped Membership capability—now reworked from the old standalone app into a deeply integrated flow across CRM, Sales, Subscriptions, Contacts, Website/eCommerce, Marketing Email, and Events. The presenter focuses on how clubs and associations can streamline member acquisition, renewals, payments, and community engagement. The motivation is clear: clubs often struggle with tracking signups, renewals and expirations, chasing recurring payments, knowing who’s active or at risk, and communicating consistently with their community.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
Instead of a separate app, the new Membership feature is activated directly in CRM > Settings via a “membership partnership” option, where you can also rename the notion of “members” to match your organization’s vocabulary. From there, you define Member Levels and attach Price Lists to those levels to grant benefits—such as free or discounted event access. In the demo, a “VIP Members” level is linked to a price list that sets event prices to zero, granting automatic perks.
Selling membership is fully integrated. In Sales/Subscriptions, you create a service product, flag it as a “membership partnership,” assign the relevant level, and choose renewal logic via Subscriptions (monthly, yearly, etc.). This makes recurring invoicing and payments native and automated. On the front end, the same membership product can be published on eCommerce, allowing prospective members to join and pay online with a standard checkout—no custom flows required.
Member management happens naturally in Contacts using a new “Level” filter, including a Kanban view that visually groups members by level and supports quick changes. For engagement, Marketing Email offers pre-loaded filters to target specific member types and send rich, block-based communications. The approach generalizes well beyond clubs: Odoo has already packaged this Membership flow across 11 industry solutions (e.g., team sports clubs), each with a built-in Knowledge guide to recommended processes and configuration. For websites, a “website members” (or “partnership website”) module can display a directory of members, as seen in certain industry samples.
Impact & takeaways ⚙️
The new approach modernizes and simplifies membership operations by unifying them around Odoo’s core objects—Partners, Sales Orders, and Subscriptions. Clubs gain automated renewals, unified pricing via Price Lists, improved acquisition workflows through CRM, and self-service signup in eCommerce. Administrators get clearer visibility with level-based filtering and straightforward segmentation for targeted communications.
Practical notes from the Q&A keep expectations grounded. Migration from Odoo 18 to 19 is handled: the architecture shifts away from a separate app to Partners + Sales Orders, but upgrades manage this transition. Some features are intentionally minimal for now: event attendee lists aren’t visible to members on the website, members-only directories are not fully gated out of the box, and there’s no dedicated accounting module for associations (though industry packs—like NGOs—add specialized features such as fiscal attestations). Portal UX improvements are likely in future versions. Overall, the revamp prioritizes simplicity, reuse of existing capabilities, and consistency across the stack—reducing silos while expanding real-world applicability. 💬
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
We’ve always believed the best software removes complexity by reusing the simplest building blocks. By folding membership into Partners, Sales, and Subscriptions, we avoid yet another siloed app and give clubs a solution that is powerful by design: recurring billing, pricing logic, CRM flows, eCommerce checkout—already there, just connected.
What excites me most is how this empowers communities. A small club can start with a few clicks, and a larger association can scale without rethinking its stack. The industry packs and knowledge articles reflect our community’s diversity: one concept, many realities. Simplicity first, integration always, and continuous improvement together with our ecosystem.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo’s decision to embed membership into core objects (customers, orders, subscriptions) is strategically sound. It leverages existing billing, pricing, and CRM engines to deliver immediate value and a clean user experience—especially for mid-market clubs and associations. The integrated eCommerce flow and price-list-driven benefits are strong differentiators in usability and time-to-value.
For larger enterprises and regulated associations, questions remain around multi-entity scale, advanced compliance (privacy/consent controls, auditability), and specialized accounting (e.g., fund accounting, grant tracking). Portal UX differentiation and fine-grained access control for member-only directories will matter as organizations professionalize. Still, the direction is compelling: Odoo lowers complexity and accelerates rollout, and that puts healthy pressure on the market to improve UX without sacrificing depth.
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.