We fix how your business works
Operational clarity for growing organisations, delivered through open source business systems - Odoo, ecommerce, and the applications and infrastructure around them.
We fix how your business works. The software comes with it.
Most system projects start with software and work backwards to the business. We work in the other direction: understand what the business is trying to achieve, engineer the processes, then put systems under them that fit. Everything we implement is open source, owned by you, and free of per-seat lock-in. The result is the same one we work towards in every practice: a de-risked business, better performance, and lower cost.
The problems we solve
Growing organisations tend to share the same frustrations: information scattered across disconnected tools, processes that depend on re-keying and memory, simple questions - real stock levels, customer profitability, where the bottlenecks are - that take days to answer. The systems that got the business here cannot take it further, and the internal disorder is starting to show externally.
The first need is almost never growth. It is structural clarity. We stabilise the operation so that growth becomes possible and controlled.
What we do
Business coaching
Working directly with owners and directors on how the business runs: what it sells, how work flows through it, where margin is made and lost, and what to change first.
Business engineering
Turning that understanding into designed processes: roles, workflows, measures and controls the business can actually operate - the blueprint the systems then serve.
Odoo: installed, configured, implemented
The open source ERP, delivered properly: installation and hosting, configuration to your processes, and implementation into the business - training, data migration, and the working habits that make it stick.
Ecommerce
Online selling wired into the same system as stock, invoicing and accounts, rather than bolted on beside them.
Project recovery
Rescuing stalled or failing system projects. We assess the situation, stabilise what can be saved, and chart a practical path forward.
Business applications and infrastructure
The supporting estate a modern business needs: Nextcloud for files and collaboration, open applications that fit around the core, and hardware sized for the business rather than the brochure.
The technologies we work with
The platforms are chosen for the same reason the practice exists: capable, open, and owned by the client.
Odoo (Community Edition)
The open source ERP at the core of most implementations: sales, stock, manufacturing, invoicing and accounts in one system, configured to your processes.
Nextcloud
Files, collaboration and communication under your own control - the working environment around the core system.
lazysite
Our own Markdown-driven publishing engine for websites that stay fast, portable and maintainable - the content outlives any renderer.
ctrl-exec
Our remote execution framework: controlled, auditable operational automation across the infrastructure your systems run on.
Where an engagement calls for other open platforms, we integrate them on the same terms: open source, your data, no lock-in.
Who we work with
Founders, managing directors and boards at turning points: organisations that have outgrown informal processes, businesses cleaning up inherited complexity or a failed implementation, and operations where systems create friction rather than removing it. We also work with foundations and not-for-profits needing sustainable platforms on realistic budgets.
The strongest engagements are with leaders looking for a thinking partner who can also execute - not a vendor delivering a software package.
How engagements run
Coaching and engineering first where the business needs it; systems where the design calls for them. Some clients come for Odoo and discover the process work is what unlocks it; some come for coaching and leave with a system doing the heavy lifting.
Most engagements start with a fixed-cost analysis workshop - two hours, £615 / €615 - to crystallise what the business needs and identify priorities. It stands alone as a decision-making tool or leads into a full engagement. From there, work is priced per project with clear deliverables, ranging from a single workshop to multi-year partnerships through implementation, bedding in, and ongoing evolution.
A typical engagement unfolds in stages:
- An initial conversation, at no cost, to establish whether we can help
- The analysis workshop: needs crystallised, priorities identified
- Process design: the blueprint the systems will serve
- Implementation: systems configured, data migrated, people trained
- Bedding in: working habits established, early friction resolved
- Review and evolution: the system grows as the business does
Not every engagement needs every stage, and the sequence flexes to the situation - but you will always know which stage you are in and what comes next.
Every engagement leaves you owning the result: open source software, your data, your infrastructure. Clients who prefer to host themselves or with a third party are fully supported - the platform is not tied to any hosting arrangement.
Why us
The team behind Open Digital has led hundreds of successful open source business system projects since the mid 1990's, across the UK and EU - from the NHS, DVLA and Ministry of Justice to many small and medium businesses. Open Digital is a member and sponsor of the Odoo Community Association, anchoring the practice in the community edition ecosystem rather than the proprietary one.
Where implementations need infrastructure - hosting, security, email, telecoms, emergency response - our sister organisation Cloudient provides it. One team, responsible for the full stack, with no finger-pointing between disconnected suppliers when something needs fixing.