FR: Chamber of Commerce selects open source for craftsmen
A DVD with a selection of free and open source software applications tailored to very small businesses (VSBs), was published by the Chamber of Commerce for Crafts and Trades of the French Somme Department, earlier this year.
"Our goal is to assist VSBs in their use of office productivity tools and business applications", writes Alain Bethfort, president of the organisation, in his introduction.
The DVD contains several standard open source tools, like web browser Firefox and email client Thunderbird. Included are also enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, such as Doolibar and "Lundi Matin Business". For bookkeeping, the chamber of commerce include the open source tool TerCompta.
Several of the tool have been pre-configured to help users adapt the application to their kind of business. To OpenOffice, for instance, were added templates for making invoices, offers and other types of business letters.
The chamber of commerce also offers trainings on these applications.
The selection of tools and applications was made possible with financial assistance of the Regional Council of Picardy and the European Regional Development Fund.
The DVD, titled 'Créateur Repreneur d'Entreprise Artisanale' is available for downloaded at the website of the chamber of commerce.
It is one of the results of the conference 'Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre' that took place in the city of Amiens in 2007.
"Once we started looking in to free software, the idea became obvious", Eric Mellier, one of the chamber of commerce's directors is quoted by Comment Ca Marche, a French IT news site, earlier this week. "Open source software offers efficient and reliable solutions and since it is free, it is good for the company's bottom line."
More information:
Chamber of Trades and Crafts of the Somme (in French)
Free and open source software pack
Comment Ca Marche news item (in French)
Netpublic news item (in French)
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