Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium
Partnership year: 2014
Number of employees: 25
Services offered: Advice, training and ERP implementations
Number of Odoo implementations: 35
Niboo’s Roots
Niboo was founded in 2014 by Gaël Rabier and Sam Lefever; they both wanted to create a workplace where people could feel respected and listened to as well as a place where honesty and transparency would prevail. Through their past experiences, they both realised their ideal workplace wasn’t so common in the market. They desired to do more for both their colleagues and their clients.
Sam studied Business IT and has been working with Odoo since its creation. He worked as a team leader for two other Odoo partners when Odoo was previously known as OpenERP. Today, he manages everything related to Odoo’s infrastructure in clients’ projects as well as the team of developers at Niboo. Gaël studied Business Engineering and brought his knowledge of business consultancy with him. He formerly worked as an IT advisor for big companies such as Ernst & Young and Capgemini. Today, Gaël manages everything related to functional support and sales. In 2019, Quentin Verboomen joined Sam and Gaël as Managing Director and oversees Niboo’s team of analysts.
With Sam’s extensive experience in Odoo, it wasn’t difficult for him to convince his business partner Gaël to join him on this formidable journey. They both felt that this new challenger in the ERP market would someday become something huge; and it seems they weren’t mistaken.
What made Odoo stand out to Niboo’s founders was that Odoo finally represented a product in the ERP market that allowed companies to handle everything in one software. The capability to centralise everything, pay less in licenses and the endless customization and creation possibilities were a part of the many reasons that led Niboo to start their Odoo Partnership journey.
Niboo has strong expertise within Accounting and Manufacturing/FMCG, however the company has worked for clients in almost every industry. Clients range from the financial sector (HomeSend), to brick and mortar sales, e-commerce & wholesalers (Coffizz.be, Amnesty International Belgique Francophone, Maison Dandoy, Bell Helmets, Pizza Hut Luxembourg) and car sharing (Zen Car). The range of clients in sector and size has allowed Niboo to build an extensive range of knowledge on all industries. A feature of the Odoo Partnership programme that Niboo has really valued is the support they have received. When facing major bugs or migrating clients’ databases from one version to another, the Odoo team has been of great value. There is a relationship based on trust and transparent communication between both companies. This is greatly helped by the dedicated Account Manager who is tasked with regularly checking in on Niboo and ensuring all is well and that all needs and questions are answered.
The Niboo methodology
Niboo’s methodology generally works as follows: first, a meeting is organized to get acquainted with the overall situation of the company. In this meeting Niboo discovers the existing processes and the current programs used in the potential client’s company. Once the initial mapping has been done and questions raised, Niboo arranges a second and longer meeting in a workshop style. Different services and departments will attend the workshop and Niboo will carefully observe and give a lot of attention to user-stories. These stories allow Niboo to fully understand where redundancies and time-consuming activities are within the company, allowing Niboo to estimate the overall project with more efficiency.
When a customer agrees to Niboo’s offer, a Project Manager is assigned. Their first responsibility is to determine if the sales team has everything covered in their estimates by going through a pre-analysis of the project. After that comes the prioritization where, in collaboration with the customer, both parties will determine which modules will be implemented in priority of the first phases of the project.
From there, everything follows logically while the overall project’s advancement is carefully reviewed every few weeks during meetings based on the Agile methodology. On average, an Odoo implementation for a mid-sized company can range from 3 months to an entire year. All projects are unique, each with its own specifics pushing Niboo to its limits and that is exactly what the partner enjoys: new challenges, pushing them to gain more knowledge and expertise over the years.
A few projects that stand out include HomeSend, a subsidiary of MasterCard that manages monetary transactions between financial institutions all over the world. For this client, a fully customized solution was built allowing HomeSend to create monetary corridors directly in Odoo. Another exciting project was Zen Car, a car-sharing platform for which Niboo had to create brand-new iPhone and Android apps linked to Odoo, from which users could unlock their car, without a key.
Projects such as Maison Dandoy and Happy Pizza (Pizza Hut’s main Luxembourg franchise) were a big step forward for Niboo as it led to the partner creating their very own POS system Hophophop on top of Odoo’s hardware and software. Implementing not only Odoo, but also Hophophop in those companies showed how far Niboo can go for the retail industry. Niboo is able to provide companies from this sector with a fully scalable package permitting anyone to open a restaurant, bar, café or shop within weeks with a system that centralizes their expenses and data.
The joys of working with Odoo
As an ERP suitable for most - if not all - sectors, Odoo has enabled Niboo to discover companies from all types of sectors and meet people with all kinds of professional backgrounds. This has made Niboo’s job even more interesting! Another feature of Odoo’s that the implementation partner has really enjoyed is Odoo’s Open Source. This has enabled the company to be creative on some projects. They have thoroughly enjoyed pushing the limits in Odoo and discovering what’s possible. Even though Niboo’s aim is to remain as close to standard, they still enjoy a technical challenge every now and then.
The relationship Odoo builds with its Partners and the continuous improvements made over the years has really eased Niboo’s work in comparison to other editors in the market that provide little to no support to their resellers. Despite the competition in the market, Niboo has found all Odoo actors (from Odoo employees to Odoo Partners) create a gigantic network of people wanting to push the limits of digitalization together.
Niboo’s advice to businesses that are thinking about partnering with Odoo is “Go on! Try it, build your business, start with small clients and stay as close to the standard as possible. Know the standard inside out, and push your technical knowledge to the max to make sure you make the right decisions when customizing. Talk a lot with your Odoo Account Manager and call us whenever you want to discuss.”
About Niboo
Niboo is a company providing two kinds of services: Mostly, we intervene in the implementation and customization of the ODOO solution within companies of all sizes and sectors. Then, we will also help you identify and tackle the key factors responsible for your loss of time and productivity. We are more than Odoo developers: we also love to help businesses get stronger and more organized by providing them with impacting contacts and ideas of improvement. By working with customers in all kinds of sectors, both our knowledge and network have grown bigger; there is little hesitation that we will be able to help you find the right solution to your challenge. Learn more about Niboo at: https://www.niboo.com/
