Being free to use, tweak, and distribute, open source software has its share of loyal supporters who swear it’s the way to go.
However, consider an expense-heavy front like procurement management. Your business is better served if you skip past free open-source solutions, and pick a solution whose developers know has actual monetary value.
Before we start breaking down why exactly open-source shouldn’t be your first choice, let’s take a look at the common reasons why people get into open-source software solutions for purchase orders.
Why organisations are tempted to pick open-source purchase order solutions
The price is right
The primary reason teams go for open source PO solutions is the notion that they are free to use. While not always true, most offer significant savings at the very least. You can, in theory, pick up an unlimited number of copies too, without having to pay premium enterprise charges.
Flexibility through customizability
Since you are free to modify open-source software, there is a school of thought that suggests you can get higher levels of customizability here. The thinking is that proprietary software is ‘too rigid’ to accommodate changes that cater to your organization’s unique style of executing a purchase order process.
Some products are high quality
Not all open source products are simple and bare-bones. Some of them are even on par with their proprietary counterparts. This leads to the belief that, with a bit of luck and a ton of research, you can find an open-source PO tool at an absolute bargain.
Support from the developer community
Even if developers stop working on a piece of open-source software, it might keep living and breathing through a community of loyal developers. The same goes for fixes for bugs and other flaws in the software.
