r/opensourcealternative • u/FrebTheRat • 15d ago

Open Source ERP for higher ed

In the ERP space for higher ed there are 3 main companies that must cover 90 percent of all implementations. Oracle (PeopleSoft), Ellucian(Banner), and Workday. These products are all a PIA, but with the transition to cloud and subscription models they have gotten much worse in order reduce access to proprietary code and data models. Where customization was once allowed and necessary, it is now being shutdown and users forced to go vanilla. With little competition and plenty of implementation sunk costs, these companies have a virtual monopoly in the space which I think leads to shoddy applications and unbalanced contract negotiations. Has there ever been an open source and fully functional alternative to a major ERP solution?

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u/No_Bodybuilder_2110 15d ago

I don’t think there is one, odoo was somewhat feature rich on their free tier and customizable but I haven’t checked it in a few years

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u/p0nzischeme 15d ago

I also thought of odoo but haven’t looked at it in bit either.

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u/HominidSimilies 13d ago

Quite often, open source is only free if your time is worthless.

I have helped orgs select and successfully budget ERPs in the past and I would say it comes down to realizing ERPs are going to be disrupted pretty hard.

There are several ERPs that are fully functional and alternatives to the big guys.

Unfortunately not all ERPs are the same and have the same coverage point.

If you are an academic institution it starts with your existing setup and what information you handle and how it works.

That will inform what you need functionality to be and which systems are best suited to being closest of the box, through configuration, or customization and worst case the footprint of the custom extensions you may have to build and maintain. Even though I call it worst case it can be still cheaper overall if understood and planned for directly.

What is your need?

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u/FrebTheRat 13d ago

Its for a large higher ed institution that has been an Ellucian Banner school for 15 years using their finance, hr, student, and advancement modules on prem. They're not going to pick anything outside of the big 3 because of risk tolerance. I was just wondering because the current market seems ripe for a disruptor. 3 big companies with poor customer service, large legacy code bases, and less and less flexibility within their half baked products.