Enterprise Resource Planning
From MissionTechWiki
The Wikipedia's article on Enterprise Resource Planning is a good introduction to the subject.
As a form of non-profits, Missions have a number of business processes that are similar to a commercial organisation, eg financials, HR, possibly sales and distribution, depending on the purpose of the organisation. However there can be significant differences. Eg, missions need to process donations rather than sales (in general). Finances are distributed to workers on a different basis.
Requirements
Some of the main areas that are required for a missions ERP are:
- Donor management
- Contact Management
- HR
- Training
ERP systems in use or development
The PETRA system developed by OM would be classed as a ERP system. PETRA is a closed-source, in-house application.
OpenPetra by OM is an open source effort to re-write PETRA and in doing so making it available to other mission groups and non-profit organisations of various sizes. The vision of OpenPetra is to be an established administration software solution, offered without a licence fee. It offers an integrated solution for contact management, personnel, accounting, donor services, conference organisation and more.
As of May 2011, OpenPetra is in an 'Alpha version' stage of software development and therefore it is not yet ready for production use. That said, you are very welcome to give it a try, feedback would be very welcome at mailto:info@openpetra.org.
Centrallix is being developed to be an ERP for missions.
Compiere is an open source ERP that is being used by at least one mission. Being a widely used open source system, it benefits from a larger pool of technology news developers than just missions.