The Blue Robotics™ Story
It all started as a fun side project. In 2014, Rusty Jehangir, Joe Spadola & Josh Villbrandt set out to do something that had never been done before: build a small, autonomous, solar-powered surfboard and send it from Los Angeles to Hawaii. However, the trio of engineers quickly realized that a key part they needed did not exist at a reasonable cost. So, they designed and prototyped an affordable, reliable and more capable thruster now known as the T100.
One-Stop Online Store for Unmanned Marine Exploration
Through a Proto Labs Cool Idea! Financial Award and a Kickstarter campaign, Rusty raised the funds to create Blue Robotics, with the goal of making marine robotics and ocean exploration accessible to a lowercost audience of students, hobbyists and professionals who could not afford the expensive products on the market in 2015. Blue Robotics is now a one-stop online store for all the parts needed for marine robotics projects and they recently launched the BlueROV2 underwater robot.
Manually Managing Unexpected and Rapid Growth
From the beginning, Blue Robotics utilized several different systems to manage their business: Odoo for purchasing and manufacturing, QuickBooks for financial data, and WooCommerce for the online store. These disjointed systems worked for a while, but as demand for their products grew, they started to encounter scalability problems.
Blue Robotics was manually entering orders from WooCommerce into the other systems, requiring a laborious monthly reconciliation process. Their inventory wasn’t tied to their financials and they were unaware when they were running out of parts for customers. Blue Robotics could not analyze their financials, cash flow, and profitability. They realized they were not able to use all of the functionality of Odoo as an ERP without a lot of knowledge.
Searching for an Open Source ERP Solution
Rusty and his team considered several possible solutions to their pressing needs. They did research into EZ-MRP, NetSuite, Odoo and cloud-based, online ERP solutions.
v BLUE ROBOTICS TEAM TESTING NEW PRODUCTS
"An ERP developed to handle a manufacturing environment was a key factor in our decision. Odoo was designed to handle processing, routes, bills of material, and reordering rules. Web-based solutions focused more on ecommerce."
After Selecting Odoo, Who is the Right Partner for Integration?
Blue Robotics spoke with several U.S.-based Odoo Gold Partners and found that most of them send their software development overseas. They also did not seem to understand Blue Robotics’ business.
"When I contacted Open Source Integrators and spoke with Greg, I could sense that we were on the same page from a cultural and communication perspective."
Implementing Odoo With Open Source Integrators
During an initial requirements workshop led by OSI’s business consultants, Blue Robotics’ highest priority items were identified: accounting, inventory, manufacturing, and a WooCommerce connector. Blue Robotics received a comprehensive workshop report detailing the steps and costs to configure Odoo to match their specific processes and needs.
- Clean up inventory and warehouse configurations
- Standardize Odoo and WooCommerce to match SKU’s and Kits across platforms
- Finalize product definitions
- Simplify manufacturing with product costing
“The workshop week we spent with OSI’s business consultant went very smoothly. We enjoyed working with him.”
- Test and enable the WooCommerce connector
- Integrate accounting by creating opening balances in AR and AP
- Configure fixed asset tracking and machine depreciation
- Implement simple RMA (Return Material Authorization) capabilities
“OSI’s customization, plug ins, and apps developed for Blue Robotics specific needs were very valuable. Our direct interactions with OSI programmers was key.”
- SOX compliance and GAAP accounting
- Standardized operational procedures in accounting
- Enhanced software security
“We were manually entering orders from WooCommerce into the other systems, requiring a laborious monthly reconciliation process. Our inventory wasn’t tied to our financials and we were unaware when we were running out of parts for customers.”
- Accurate and timely financial reports
- Net cash flow reports including pending purchases and the sales pipeline as of a given date
- Quality control and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management)
“The go-live week was a big help. Nobody has expressed major frustrations that haven’t been fixed by OSI right away.”
The at-the-elbow support provided throughout the go-live week was instrumental in user acceptability, adoption, and the leveraging of Odoo for the Blue Robotics team.
The Results
With their WooCommerce site now fully integrated with all the ERP benefits of Odoo, Blue Robotics eliminated the need for monthly manual reconciliations and saved the team hours per week. Thanks to OSI’s customization, Wordpress ERP plugins, and apps developed for their specific needs, Blue Robotics now has the capability to expand faster without hiring and training more people. Customer service has improved significantly and reduced churn.
Overall, we’ve had a fantastic experience. The OSI team is responsive, understands our problems, and attacks them. Bugs are fixed within hours. Our direct interactions with OSI programmers was key - we’ve had good people dedicated to our project all along.
