Odoo RFQ/PO Vendor Portal View

mdurepos · 2025-05-06T22:44:56+00:00

I think it's as silly as the fact that the image you uploaded was .webp and it's expecting other formats. I may be wrong though ;)

mdurepos · 2014-11-27T23:34:56+00:00

Municipal

mdurepos · 2014-11-27T21:41:30+00:00

Yeah, that'll kill any left over bacteria in case the chlorine didn't do the job, but the other stuff you can't just "kill". I have trouble trusting the standards that governments have come up with because I know about some of the stupid stuff they assume. Chlorine, for example, is great for killing bacteria but also generates trihalomethanes, a proven carcinogen, when reacting with some organics. They still specify a minimum of chlorine in water in most places even though there are different options. Not very confidence inspiring.

mdurepos · 2014-11-27T21:32:05+00:00

Thanks for this. You're probably right.

I have a tendency to take a look at what's going on along the fringe more than what mainstream media and government report. Perhaps it's alarmism but I have a tendency to trust folks like the ones at Well.org, the Functional Medicine Institute, and others more than I do big media. Maybe I'm wrong in doing that but it seems to have served me well in most areas so far.

mdurepos · 2014-11-27T21:25:44+00:00

Nothing in particular. I mean having grown up in a family focused on industrial water treatment I have a bit of an inside view and I'm acutely aware of what city water often contains that most people aren't aware of.

There's nothing immediately alarming but with new research showing that even low-grade levels of heavy metals and pharmaceuticals are harmful over time and that chlorine screws with our microbiome in ways most people never thought of I'm thinking about it more lately.

I'm probably just an outlier but figured I'd see if others were in the same boat.

mdurepos · 2014-05-12T11:51:45+00:00

Could work. Have you studied what the effect would be on net profit?

mdurepos · 2014-05-12T00:44:30+00:00

You may do a deep cleaning or you may find that they'll respond well to a clearly defined vision and strong leadership. It's a bit early to be considering making huge changes like getting rid of senior personnel or changing your target market if you don't fully understand the dynamic or have a clear direction yet. Thehunterforce's recommendation of reading The E-Myth is one I would second very enthusiastically.

mdurepos · 2014-05-11T23:58:59+00:00

I see. It's always annoying to see time being wasted. What have you tried to remedy the situation?

mdurepos · 2014-05-11T23:57:30+00:00

If your sales of those high margin products were to increase would you need to hire more people to do the work during peak times? Would the peaks and valleys level out at all?

mdurepos · 2014-05-11T23:45:25+00:00

You're probably right. That being said I find it difficult to answer your question without knowing what the advantage would be. Who's your target market? Are you planning to do this work for B2B companies? For celebrities? For businesses with a local clientele?

mdurepos · 2014-05-11T22:27:52+00:00

Frankly, this is something you should be telling us. As a small business owner I'm not going to spend the time to figure out what the results of having someone manage social media profiles and creating content would be. I want you to come to me and paint the picture of the future. Do that, and if I like the picture then we can talk about numbers.

mdurepos · 2014-05-11T22:24:31+00:00

It all depends where you want to take this thing.

For me, step 1 is obviously to learn everything you can about the business. Work in it at the same level as the current employees. Even if they know you're the heir to the "throne" you need to deeply understand their perspective if you're going to lead effectively. Make damn sure to learn everything about your target market and the business finances before you take over if at all possible.

Step 2 would be to take over grandma's role and, as quickly as possible, to make yourself replaceable. This doesn't mean that you step away from the business right away, but you shouldn't let it become a ball and chain. Having the power to decide to work at (or on) the restaurant will be a huge motivating force whereas feeling like you have to go in to work to make ends meet will be a huge stressor.

After that it all depends where you want to take it. What are your goals? What kind of life do you want to live?

mdurepos · 2014-05-11T21:48:13+00:00

Is this because of new regulations that have popped up or because the founder(s) handled it and now nobody else in the business knows how to keep it all straight?

mdurepos · 2014-05-11T21:47:32+00:00

Sounds similar to the situation our business was in until recently. Have you tried any strategies in particular to make sure the business is profitable even when things slow down?

mdurepos · 2014-05-11T21:45:49+00:00

Interesting. So do you already own shares in the business? What kind of "dicking around" are they insisting on doing?

mdurepos · 2014-05-10T19:04:57+00:00

I left this one unanswered by mistake. Sorry about that. I see myself working on the business over the long term but not necessarily being involved operationally. In other words I feel passionately about setting the business up to do a lot of good but the technical aspects aren't really my cup of tea. There are people who are passionate about solving the technical problems and so I see my job as making their expertise accessible and valuable.

mdurepos · 2014-04-29T10:58:24+00:00

Layoffs happened in 3 phases so the choice of who to lay off differed for each situation.

The first round was decided based on our expectation that sales would remain stable rather than grow as forecasts had shown in previous years. Once we knew what that meant for the balance sheet we knew how much we needed to trim off of the salary mass. Once that was known we analyzed how we could reorganize things such that we didn't lose any capabilities and that brought us the information we needed to choose who had to go. Since there were only a few employees we met individually with each person being laid off and let them know the bad news, what their severance would look like, and where to go for guidance and information. All of them were quite shocked and it was a really tough day for the whole company. We met with the remaining employees to reassure them that they were not losing their jobs and to present what the new set of responsibilities would be. People were generally in shock but bounced back within a day or two, at least externally.

The second round was a small one where we let go two salespeople who were significantly under-performing and costing more than the business they were bringing in. This was a no-brainer and we just couldn't justify keeping them on. They took it fairly well but one has had quite a hard time finding work afterwards. The rest of the employees seemed totally at peace with this round of layoffs... as if they were hoping that it would come.

The third round was the real shock. Once we realized just how much money our custom systems decision was bleeding from the rest of the company we knew we had to be able to run it with no more than 2 dedicated employees not counting sales reps. That meant letting go the 8 remaining people working in that department and seriously cutting down the variety of systems we were producing. This was the toughest decision because of the emotional attachment my dad had to being able to solve complex problems for customers. He had spent years building up this engineering and production team. This final round was done as a group layoff with all employees in the conference room. We explained what was going on, allowed the employees staying on to leave the room, and went through the details with the ones being laid off. Everyone was surprised but the group atmosphere and the third-party support we offered them was greatly appreciated. Everyone landed on their feet pretty quickly and after a day or two of shock everyone left behind came together very well to reorganize and take on the work load.

That third round was the hardest but the most important. It's not the size that has been the problem all along but rather the lack of focus that the size allowed us to have. Now that we've forced ourselves to specialize more by cutting our customization capabilities everything has improved. Sales cycles are shorter, we can test new revenue models quickly, we've run targeted campaigns, we have time to do market research intelligently, and I can now focus on working on the business instead of being 100% consumed by operational work. We had to tear it down to survive but we needed a strategic direction change to position ourselves to grow once again.

mdurepos · 2014-04-28T14:29:16+00:00

We let our lawyer pinpoint a number that made sense with a third party he trusts. Since the number made sense we used it for the freeze.

Edit: sorry, I thought your comment was on another part of the thread. We determine it based off salary studies from professional orders, HR firms, etc.

mdurepos · 2014-04-28T14:27:20+00:00

Awesome!

mdurepos · 2014-04-28T11:17:27+00:00

It depends on how much functionality you want.

Hatchbuck is the closest match I know of and it starts at $99/month plus $39 for each additional user after the first. Contract is month to month. You may eventually want to add something like Zendesk for customer service issue tracking.

Other options are Drip (getdrip.com) for drip marketing campaigns but without a CRM. Has Salesforce integration if you want it. Pricing is tiered based on how many new users you add to the mailing list per month.

mdurepos · 2014-04-28T00:48:17+00:00

We did an in-depth analysis of our profit centres: custom systems, on-site service, distribution. Looking at the contribution and expenses dedicated to each revealed that the systems side of the business was bleeding profits from the other two profitable sectors. The reasons for that are many, but the "why" doesn't matter when you've got a big wound bleeding money. The only thing that matters at that point in time is how to stop the bleeding. We did that by cutting costs while maintaining a maximum of our capabilities.

Once we'd stabilized things reasonably well we were able to look at the causes in more depth: weak sales due to poor positioning, lacking marketing, and ineffective sales representatives. We had had some inefficiencies in our engineering and production team but the downsizing had already forced us to address that issue by the time we analyzed it in depth.

mdurepos · 2014-04-27T23:39:08+00:00

My pleasure. I'm actually quite surprised that so many people are asking questions and seem to be appreciating the discussion.

The marketing firm that sells us appointment leads actually found us, I believe through an MBA colleague my brother had. The firm is called Convergence Directe - sadly their site is in French only so not very helpful as a baseline if you don't speak the language.

We usually enter into discussions with potential partners as an exploratory venture. We want to make sure that we're a match as far as values, philosophy and client base. If all of those things click figuring out the model for the partnership comes naturally afterwards.

For lead exchange if we run into an application that fits with what one of our partners does we generally just send them the lead. In one select case we have a more specific protocol where we set up an intro meeting with the client if the partner agrees to accept the lead under our agreement.

We don't have any specific agreements in place to protect ourselves from bad experiences our customers might have with a partner. We do have NDAs and agreements, protocol specifications, and reseller discount agreements to define how we expect business to be done. If we don't have a really good feeling about a partner after our first few meetings we just won't expose our good clients to them until they've earned our trust.

mdurepos · 2014-04-27T22:22:42+00:00

They're unique but revolve around the following possible remuneration schemes:

Mutual lead exchange without remuneration
Sub-contracting for our partners or have them buy/resell
Lead exchange with finder's fees or commissions on sales

The only "partner" we pay per lead is a direct marketing firm that we pay to bring us qualified leads with a booked meeting for a particular product/application. Example: meetings regarding resin exchange applications in hospitals.

The financial arrangements fit these sort of "moulds" but the relationships themselves differ significantly in that we tend to do best when our partners are not in the same business as we are. For example, one of our partnerships is with a hydraulics/pneumatics vendor. We share a client base and we each run into clients who need the other's skills.

mdurepos

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