Free ‘open source’ software sounds attractive but can be ‘buggy’ and tricky to implement – generally speaking there is a trade-off between the cost of polished, proprietory software and the cost of a ‘techie’ implementing an open source solution. Having said that, there are plenty of proprietory packages that are buggy and need a techie to implement – and some open source solutions are well developed and documented – and because they are open source you are not tied to one particular techie.
So how do you tell the difference? Whichever solution you choose, popularity should be a good indicator – and the open source development community sites are very upfront about what is popular and works. The most popular open source package of all at Sorceforge at the moment is Postbooks which is a full, free, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer/corporate relationship management (CRM) etc. package. There are half-a-dozen screen shots whch will give you a flavour of what the package can do – it’s a bit American in its terminology but usually the look and feel can be customised relatively easily – although it might take a techie to set it up.
Whatever solution you go for, one thing to check is that it is compatible with legacy systems that you might have, or systems that your suppliers and customers use. Most solutions can import and export data in standard ways – but again you may need a techie to do it for you in the first instance.