EK management tools

In 2014, this project started to migrate an in-house back office management application for SME to Drupal 8.

This back-office system, was initiated in 2006 for internal needs of newly created company. It was developed in PHP with mysql data storage. The initial idea was to have a tool that could help this new company to run its business as efficiently as possible with few constraints that are always critical in a good organization: central and unique data references (share unique information across offices remotely); simple to use with minimum training or learning curve (no resource for that!); flexible and cost effective; access control and security.

This system was used later in different business environments: trading, distribution and services, by other companies. Along the way it was extended to new functions and capabilities based on the requirements of the users including multilingual needs as it was used in various countries with different working languages. Thus from simple invoicing and projects follow-up tool it soon covered various back-office and collaborative modules like documents management, accounting journal, cash management, internal claims and invoices, budget and reporting, duty roster to name only a few.

There are obvious reasons why Drupal 8 was chosen:

1) when migration was started, Drupal 8 was still at beta stage but it was already set to make a major move into professional platform to develop application "for small businesses, global enterprises, and everything in between"; its structure make it also easy to extend and maintain;

2) the modular structure of Drupal was already matching the existing structure of the original PHP application; it allows flexibility in the solutions offered to companies;

3) business we encountered is mostly running in multilingual environment and this has always been a solid criterion of the application. Creating an easy-to-use back-office solution means that everyday users need to feel comfortable with a tool that uses their language;

4) Drupal community is active. Besides our custom modules, we can integrate other very useful modules in our solution;

EK management tools suite is currently running live with few SME that manage their daily business operations. We provide SaaS solution for our customers integrated with cloud services.

However, if this application was migrated to Drupal 8, it is also because we would like to extend it as a full distribution project.

There are various modules already written for Drupal 8 which are:
- addresses book
- products and services
- assets
- documents management
- sales (purchases, quotations, invoices)
- human resources
- logistics (delivery orders, stock list)
- project management
- report drafting
- finance (accounts, reporting, journal)

To install open source profile version use composer :

Prerequisites:

• PHP 7.1 or higher
• Composer
• Drupal installation requirements

composer create-project arreasystems/ek_template:dev-master DIR --no-interaction

Watch this video for installation demo:

And installation profile with basic settings:

Next to the free distribution, you can use EK management tools as a software-as-a-service. You also get support and frequent feature updates.