Duration: 27:25
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This talk, delivered by Selinda Mata, QuickStart Manager at Odoo Belgium, takes place during Odoo Experience. She leads more than 80 business analysts (BAs) within a broader Belgian services team of about 230 BAs. Her central claim: Odoo’s business analysts implement Odoo using… Odoo itself. The session mixes methodology, day-in-the-life practices, and a live demo that showcases how Odoo is used end-to-end to manage implementations with transparency and discipline.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
The implementation engine at Odoo is a tight collaboration between the Business Analyst and a customer-side SPARK (single point of contact). This duo is positioned as the decisive factor for momentum: the BA orchestrates scope, planning, and delivery; the SPARK brings business knowledge, decision-making authority, and continuity. Crucially, both parties work inside the same system—Odoo Project, Timesheets, Sales, and the Customer Portal—so documentation, budgets, decisions, and to‑dos are centralized.
Odoo “dogfoods” its product: there’s no internal tool for consultants and a different one for customers. Sales confirmation automatically creates a project from a template (templates are BA-built to ensure proper qualification data). A project only moves to “Ready to Go” when two conditions are met: the customer has paid and the sales description is complete. BAs then self-assign projects from the pipeline, kick off internally with the Account Manager, and follow with a customer kickoff to calibrate roles, risks (e.g., if more than one stakeholder wants to act as SPARK), and next steps—documented inside the project.
Project execution is tailored to size and complexity. A 4-hour “express” project is documented pragmatically (a concise to-do list and timesheets), while a 50-hour engagement is phased by scope with planned hours, deadlines, and a clear cadence of tasks. Large, development-heavy programs (e.g., ~500 hours) use tasks with subtasks so time is tracked granularly on subtasks while still rolling up to phases for budget visibility. For these, stages may be shared with developers to coordinate deliverables. Customers see everything in real time via the Portal—meeting notes, decisions, time entries, budgets, and remaining hours—so the project stays on-time and on-budget with fewer surprises.
Documentation is treated as an operational discipline—est. ~20% of effort on small projects and up to 30–35% on larger mid-market projects. It begins in the sales phase and is sustained through delivery to help Support, Upgrades, Maintenance, and even future BAs who might inherit the account. Beyond project records, BAs encourage clients to build their own process documentation in Odoo Knowledge within their database, so users can learn in context (“how to configure a pricelist,” etc.). On tooling, Selinda notes new v19 features for project templates are coming, though the internal teams had not yet switched at the time of the talk. Tasks are generally not auto-generated; they’re created from the project’s jointly defined phasing or imported from discovery spreadsheets for large analyses. AI is not a core implementation tool today, though teams may use general AI to improve written communication.
Impact & takeaways ⚙️💬
By running implementations in Odoo—and exposing the source of truth through the Portal—Odoo drives radical transparency. Decisions, risks, scope, and time are visible to both sides, accelerating trust and alignment. Documentation serves as a backbone: it streamlines handovers, reduces project drift, and provides an auditable trail for dispute resolution. The methodology scales down for 4-hour express packs and up for multi-hundred-hour projects with phasing, developer collaboration, and granular time tracking. Most importantly, customers start using Odoo from day one, experiencing the value of “one platform, one place” while the project is underway. It’s a practical demonstration of Odoo’s philosophy: integration, simplicity, and ownership—by both the delivery team and the client.
Notable Q&A insights: - Convincing clients to fund documentation is less about selling and more about ownership; show value by seeding a Knowledge article, then invite the SPARK to continue. - The right level of documentation varies by customer; it can range from annotated screenshots to training videos. - Large projects may use Gantt or task-based planning depending on the Project Director’s approach; there’s no one-size-fits-all. - Team size: ~230 BAs in Belgium services; ~80 focused on QuickStart. Bill rates were not disclosed.
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
When we say “Odoo does Odoo with Odoo,” it’s not a slogan—it’s how we learn fast. By living in the same product we deliver, the feedback loop between reality and R&D is immediate. That’s how simplicity wins: one platform, one team, one source of truth.
The BA–SPARK duo is the essence of our approach. Documentation, portal transparency, and shared planning reduce noise and empower decisions. If customers start using Knowledge and Project during implementation, they don’t just go live—they build capability. That’s the kind of independence we want for every organization.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Dogfooding is a strength here. Odoo’s unified UX and portal transparency are compelling for SMBs and lower mid-market customers that value speed and visibility. Their BA–SPARK discipline and documentation culture are practical levers to reduce time-to-value and keep teams aligned.
For larger enterprises, the questions are about governance at scale: formal change control, advanced resource planning, segregation of duties, multi-entity consolidation, and regulatory compliance. Odoo’s approach can address many scenarios, but complex industries often require prescriptive program structures, integrated risk/compliance workflows, and standardized Gantt/portfolio management. The momentum is real—continued depth in these areas will define how far Odoo climbs in upper mid-market and enterprise segments.
PART 4 — Blog Footer Disclaimer
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.