Our company, erpDevelopers, signed on as an xTuple Gold Partner on March 15, 2014. It has been a whirlwind ride since then — including closing our first project just yesterday!
Since originally signing up, we’ve worked a trade show jointly with xTuple, attended the 101 "Setup, Configuration & Operation" training class (in Vegas), the Project Management & Implementation Methodology class (via the Web), are scheduled for the upcoming 202 "Power User Training" class, done some paid scripting training with "xTupleVangelist" Mike Atherton and have spent, literally, hundreds (yes, that is 100s!) of hours of self-training with xTuple and all of it’s working pieces. We have been on approximately a dozen sales calls so far and handled the demos ON OUR OWN (which, in and of itself, is quite a testimonial on how one can teach themselves xTuple, if they avail themselves of all the material that is available).
Due to such a high investment of our time since signing on — basically "eating, breathing and sleeping" xTuple for months now — we have had the ability to interface with almost every single aspect of the company possible.
The short version of our "take" on this deep interfacing with xTuple staff...simply phenomenal.
We have been selling, modifying, installing and long-term supporting ERP systems for almost 30 years now and have not had the reseller/publisher relationship that we’ve been experiencing with xTuple since the 80s and early 90s before then State-of-the-Art (Sage Software) grew so big and were bought out by Sage. Back then, in the "State of the Art" days, they knew each of their resellers personally and were involved in their day-to-day lives as those lives related to the MAS90/MAS200 software. As they grew HUGE...this personal care totally disappeared.
Not so with xTuple. I can’t even think of somebody from xTuple that HASN’T been in touch with us for one thing or another; sales support, product training, bug reporting/fixing, marketing issues, etc. In three (3) short months, xTuple has managed to twine themselves into our lives...making themselves indispensable in whatever area we needed them (on that particular day, at that particular moment) in order to be successful.
Today...most of the key xTuple staff know who we are...BY NAME...just like State of the Art did, in the "good old days." I’m actually surprised our company email domain hasn’t been marked as "SPAM" at xTuple. We trade emails with them, or so it seems, every few seconds. Here is the best part...THEY CONTINUE TO RESPOND IN QUICK FASHION. WITHOUT FAIL! In short...they have demonstrated that OUR success is IMPORTANT TO THEM! Once again..."ahhhhh, the good old days”.
I was almost afraid when I opened up my first support incident thinking “this is an open source company...NOBODY is going to respond to this." Was I ever shocked. Their support staff responds ALMOST INSTANTLY to you...and no issue seems to be too trivial, or unimportant, to them. I’ve even had the support "head honcho" respond to some of my cases. BEST OF ALL: They have ALWAYS resolved EVERY SINGLE ISSUE. Never a "hmmmm, well we’ll have to work on that one." They dig in and get you the answer. Here I go again..."ahhhh, just like the good old days."
The xTuple product is phenomenal both in feature set and overall capability. It’s extensibility is continuing to amaze us...daily. What a developer can do with xTuple is, well, limitless. Join that up with prices that SIMPLY CANNOT BE BEAT and you have a winning product...for both the reseller AND the end-user.
We’re still learning, and THAT is an understatement. However, if I look into my crystal ball, I can see that the next few years with xTuple are going to be SO MUCH FUN!
Photo credit: Missy Schmidt, xTuple VP Marketing; that's me, top left (dark blue xTuple-logo shirt) click for larger image