Warehouse Management Software Development Using Open-Source Technologies

An increasing number of businesses in the manufacturing and production sector rely on a plethora of software modules and applications for their routine operations. As a business grows and its operations become more cluttered and convoluted, it requires several software automation tools to sail through the complexities. A majority of enterprises in the production sector have to deal with the growing influx of stock across different warehouse locations. The warehouses must keep track of every single inventory movement and warehouse managers are accountable for errors due to mishandling. Thus, running warehouse operations could be a back-breaking task in the absence of software automation tools.

Warehouse management software development enables enterprises to gain better control over their inventory and stock movement. It strengthens and streamlines a variety of warehouse management activities including picking, packaging, shipping, reporting, and procurement of raw materials. Nevertheless, the requirements for warehouse management could vary considerably for different enterprises. Therefore, the ideal approach to get off the ground here is to develop custom software for warehouse management.

In this blog post, we shall discuss the significance of warehouse management software development using open-source technologies and its benefits for small-to-medium businesses. Subsequently, we shall explore the most popular open-source software platforms that offer promising solutions for warehouse management software development.

What Is An Open-Source Software?

The open-source license permits the general-purpose use of the given software codebase to develop custom applications by modifying it as per the requirements. The open-source software version is free to use under a license that permits public use of the underlying code. Open-source application development is, therefore, a cost-effective way to build a software product and customize it as per business needs. Several organizations use open-source tools to build high-quality ERP applications to solve their complex business problems. Some popular examples of open-source ERP application development tools are Odoo, OFBiz, Opentaps, and ERPNext. Here, we shall explore these tools in the following section from the warehouse management perspective.

Open-Source Tools For Warehouse Management Software Development

Below are the most popular open-source software tools for building custom warehouse management solutions using their underlying source code.

Odoo

Odoo is a software platform that provides a complete suite of business process automation tools to build custom applications from scratch. It offers a free community version with basic functionalities as well as an enterprise version with more advanced features. Odoo has a dedicated inventory management suite that is best suited for building complex software applications to streamline warehouse operations. Odoo inventory module brings in more flexibility and improved traceability to proactively track inventory movements, in-transit shipments, and sales orders. Besides, it generates insightful reports to evaluate software performance and pin down the potential bottlenecks to prevent productivity pitfalls.

Apache OFBiz

Developed and maintained by Apache software foundation, OFBiz is a standalone ERP software suite that provides complete enterprise solutions for diverse business use cases. Apache software foundation is known for its wide range of industry-specific software tools that are conducive to increasing business productivity. Apache OFBiz is a comprehensive suite of software tools that enable organizations to custom ERP and CRM applications for all major business use cases. Similar to other Apache tools, OFBiz is open-source as it permits the use of its source code for building custom applications.

ERPNext

ERPNext is a similar software platform that is gaining popularity in the market for custom ERP software development. It is an open-source platform that offers complete enterprise solutions for inventory/warehouse management in addition to CRM, HRM, accounting, and supply chain management. As compared to its peers, ERPNext is relatively new to the market as it was first introduced in 2008. However, it has garnered significant traction over recent years, becoming a trusted vendor for ERP software development services.

Opentaps

Opentaps is an ERP+CRM software suite that has been empowering businesses with its fully customizable enterprise modules for several years. It remained under the hood for many years and continued to support small-to-medium enterprises with their software ventures. Being in the industry for a little over a decade, Opentaps currently has a fair share of customers, mostly amongst small-to-medium enterprises.

Conclusion

Several small businesses refrain from investing in warehouse management software solutions due to financial constraints. There is a common misconception that ERP systems are expensive while the fact is that they bring significant cost savings and increase profitability. ERP software development using open-source software platforms goes easy on the pocket since it does not incur additional license purchases. Therefore, warehouse software development using open-source technologies is best suited for small-to-medium enterprises that cannot afford to overspend money on exorbitant software ventures.

Why Choose Oodles ERP For Warehouse Management Software Development?

At Oodles ERP, we provide complete enterprise software solutions to address the diverse business needs of our customers. Our development team specializes in using all the aforementioned open-source ERP platforms as well as other tools like OptaPlanner and jBPM. Our warehouse management software development services enable organizations to efficiently manage their complex warehouse operations and inventory management tasks. We have successfully completed several WMS software projects for startups, SMBs, and large-scale enterprises. To learn more about our warehouse management software solutions, contact us at erp@oodles.io.