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When businesses start their search for ERP software that can help them run their business smarter and more efficiently, they have many options. It’s also a high-stakes decision, because selecting an ERP system is a big investment that can have a direct impact on your company’s growth and the ease of managing that growth. Organizations ready to move past entry-level systems may consider offerings from Odoo and SAP. SAP has several midmarket ERPs that often compete with one another and are of varying strategic importance to the software provider. Odoo, on the other hand, is fully dedicated to one product offering proven to scale with midsize businesses. To give you a better sense of what these systems offer and how they compare with Odoo, we’ll break down three systems in detail: SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition; SAP Business One; and SAP Business ByDesign.

What Is ERP?

An ERP system is like the central nervous system of a business’s technology stack. It uses a central database to put information from across your business — including financials, inventory, orders, customers, and employees — in one place. Many employees use the system every day to complete essential work. An ERP system can connect data and processes that touch multiple departments to automate and simplify key tasks while delivering reports and insights on fundamental aspects of your business.

Odoo vs. SAP: An Overview

Odoo and SAP have both developed widely used midmarket ERP systems. While Odoo offers a single cloud-based ERP product, SAP has three distinct systems.

Odoo

Odoo is an open-source business management platform with a wide range of integrated applications that help businesses manage their financials and operations while increasing automation across the organization. The resulting improvements help companies deliver better customer experiences and boost employee productivity. Although accounting and financial reporting are at the core of Odoo, it also includes powerful capabilities for inventory and warehouse management, order management, project management, CRM, analytics, planning and budgeting, HR, ecommerce, and manufacturing. Odoo centralizes critical business data from all these functions in one place, using customizable dashboards and reporting tools to generate the insights companies need.

Unlike many ERP systems, Odoo offers both a free Community edition and a commercial Enterprise edition. Companies can start with the Community version at no licensing cost and add functionality as they grow, or opt for Enterprise for advanced features, cloud hosting, and official support. Odoo Online (multi-tenant SaaS) and Odoo.sh (platform-as-a-service) provide automatic annual upgrades, patches, and security updates, keeping customers on the latest version of the software. 

Thanks to its modular, app-based design, businesses can select only the applications they need and expand seamlessly over time, tailoring the system through no-code tools like Odoo Studio or deeper customizations using Python.

SAP 

SAP’s three systems for small and midmarket companies have each found traction with businesses in certain verticals or of a particular size. SAP S/4HANA and Business One can be deployed on-premises or via the cloud, while Business ByDesign is a cloud-only SaaS product. 

All three ERP systems come with accounting and finance features and support inventory management, manufacturing, professional services, and human resources to varying degrees. Customers can connect these ERP platforms to other SAP solutions for expanded capabilities like analytics, human capital management (HCM), CRM, procurement, expense management, or ecommerce, but these are not akin to Odoo modules because many are built on different codebases and require often-complex integrations. In some cases, businesses are forced to use complementary SAP software designed for larger businesses because there are no good alternatives. 

Construction machinery manufacturer XCMG found the rigid design of its SAP system slowed the business. When XCMG entered new markets, it took several months to set those up in the system. It moved to a two-tier approach with Odoo, speeding up setup and reports on various entities. 

Product Maturity and History 

Odoo was founded in 2005 by Belgian entrepreneur Fabien Pinckaers as an open-source ERP project originally called TinyERP (later renamed OpenERP). From the very beginning, Odoo was designed as a modular platform where businesses could add applications as their needs grew. In 2014, the company rebranded to Odoo to reflect its expansion beyond ERP into a full suite of integrated business applications, covering finance, sales, CRM, inventory, HR, ecommerce, manufacturing, and more. 

Unlike many ERP vendors, Odoo has always pursued an open-source and community-driven development model, enabling rapid innovation through contributions from a global developer and partner ecosystem. Today, Odoo counts more than 12 million users across 175+ countries, making it one of the most widely adopted business management platforms in the world. 

Sage Intacct, by contrast, was founded in 1999 as a suite of accounting applications for small and midsize businesses. It grew primarily as a financial management tool rather than a full ERP system. In 2017, Sage Group plc acquired Intacct to strengthen its cloud offerings. Intacct remains focused primarily on accounting and finance, with limited functionality outside its core domain and less emphasis on an open, community-driven ecosystem.

Odoo vs. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition

SAP released S/4HANA in 2015 as its next-generation ERP system for enterprises but has since launched an effort to get more midmarket organizations to use the solution through its “Grow With SAP” initiative. There are four versions of S/4HANA, with two on-premises and two cloud options, after it cut a fifth cloud “extended edition.”(opens in a new tab) Midsize companies are most likely to look at S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, so we’ll focus on that specific version. Note that the public cloud edition has also had four different names in five years.

It's critical to note that S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition has limitations in both overall capabilities and customization options compared to the on-premises versions of the software, but some sales reps are not always transparent about the specific version they’re selling, simply calling it “S/4HANA Cloud” when it could be the cloud private edition, which is a hosted cloud rather than SaaS offering. The numerous versions of S/4HANA also pose the risk that you will select the wrong one and have to reimplement — consider the extended edition that is no longer available. Moving from one edition of S/4HANA to another is a major project akin to replacing it with any other new system.

Despite being on the market for several years, the public cloud edition of S/4HANA still has limited adoption and only a fraction of Odoo’s more than 12 million users worldwide.

Functional Considerations

S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition comes with a solid set of native capabilities for finance and other departments. However, S/4HANA public edition’s Group Reporting tool for financial consolidations and intercompany netting of transactions between subsidiaries may not fully satisfy your needs on its own. Group Reporting is based on legacy technology, and you may need additional applications to handle all of your use cases. Unlike Odoo, SAP’s system does not come standard with CRM and analytics applications, either.

Odoo has robust financial features and comes standard with financial consolidation and intercompany netting functionality. Nontechnical users can easily learn how to pull reports on data from across the business and customize dashboards with SuiteAnalytics. Odoo also includes inventory management, order management, CRM, procurement, and expense management capabilities out of the box in most editions. It has optional modules for HCM, financial planning and budgeting, PSA, advanced analytics, ecommerce, and more.

Database and Architecture Considerations

S/4HANA’s heritage is in SAP’s ECC (20 years old) and R/3 (30-plus years old) ERP solutions, with the newest system using a similar codebase but hosted on SAP’s HANA database. The public cloud edition has less functionality and customizability than other versions because it utilizes only a subset of the total S/4HANA codebase.

S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition is a multi-tenant solution that runs in SAP’s own data centers. Beyond critical patches and fixes, the public cloud version of S/4HANA receives continuous features updates throughout the year in addition to two annual updates. While this sounds beneficial, it can mean your IT team spends a lot of time understanding and testing these updates to see how they impact your instance and what adjustments it needs to make.

Odoo also offers cloud deployment options, including Odoo Online (multi-tenant SaaS) and Odoo.sh (platform-as-a-service), in addition to on-premise installations for businesses that prefer full control of their infrastructure. Odoo Online provides automatic annual upgrades, patches, and security updates, ensuring that all SaaS customers are always on the latest version. 

With Odoo.sh, customers have a dedicated environment where they can test new versions before going live, giving them the flexibility to validate changes and customizations. All Odoo customizations and configurations are designed to carry forward with upgrades, whether they are created through Odoo Studio or developed in Python.

Platform and Integration Capabilities

In contrast with S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition—which often requires connecting separate SAP products like Ariba for procurement, SuccessFactors for HR, and SAP Analytics Cloud for reporting—Odoo was designed from the ground up as a single, fully integrated platform. All Odoo applications run on the same codebase and database, so modules like Accounting, CRM, Inventory, HR, and Ecommerce work seamlessly together without the need for middleware. Users benefit from a single sign-on and a consistent interface as they move between apps. 

Customers can also extend Odoo with thousands of community and partner-developed apps available through the Odoo App Store, covering vertical industries, localization needs, and niche use cases. Many of these apps are officially certified or maintained by Odoo S.A. or trusted partners, and thanks to Odoo’s open-source foundation, businesses can also build and customize their own applications to fit unique requirements.

Configurations and Customizations 

SAP partners play a primary role in configuring business processes and making other customizations in S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, which can quickly get expensive. But there’s an even bigger problem: Processes and features are highly standardized, and the system lacks the flexibility of Odoo. 

With S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, developers must use what SAP calls the Self-Service Configuration User Interface (SSCUI) to configure the software. SAP highlights its Business Technology Platform (BTP) as a way to extend the solution, but a partner must develop the application and integrate it with the system. Even then, there are limitations. Customers can use only SAP-approved APIs for integration with the public cloud version of S/4HANA. Additionally, existing SAP customers cannot apply any customizations from their previous system to this software.

Odoo, by contrast, is built for flexibility. It offers thousands of industry-specific apps and vertical solutions developed by Odoo and its global community, reducing the need for heavy custom development. For unique requirements, business users and administrators can configure and customize the platform themselves—Odoo Studio provides a drag-and-drop, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interface where users can add custom fields, design workflows, and build automation around record types, events, and rules without coding.