Camptocamp and Odoo: twenty years of partnership

Odoo's first Gold Partner, Camptocamp has since delivered more than 250 Odoo projects across 16 industries, contributed to the core of the product and co-founded the Odoo Community Association (OCA).

Two decades, told by the people who lived them

An encounter, a very concrete need, and a shared wish to build a better product.

2006

Two booths and a roll of tape

At a trade show in Geneva, Camptocamp has a booth next to a young Belgian software vendor. Its founder, Fabien Pinckaers, has forgotten his panels and comes over every three minutes to borrow supplies. Between two trips, the conversation starts. Camptocamp happens to be looking for a tool to organise its own business: we install TinyERP 4.3, the ancestor of Odoo, for ourselves before offering it to our clients.

"We didn't have a penny, we were at a trade show, each with our own table. You came over every three minutes to borrow stuff."

Luc Maurer and Fabien Pinckaers, in the 20-year film

2007

The software's first localisation

With support from the Canton of Vaud, Camptocamp builds the software's first localisation, across all versions and all countries: Swiss chart of accounts, VAT, local specifics. It is the foundation on which hundreds of companies in French- and German-speaking Switzerland have since started with Odoo, and the model for the localisations that followed.

The early years: courage, and hours of bug fixing

"It was the first time I had a partner who was finance-minded. The clients we went after together were much bigger than the average of what we were doing with Odoo at the time. For me, it was a real milestone."

Fabien Pinckaers, founder of Odoo

A trade show, a bet: the 24-hour challenge

Between two visitors, a bet: build a fixed-asset management module in 24 hours, with multiple depreciation methods under IFRS. Luc spends the night writing the functional specification, Fabien spends the day developing. The module stayed in the product for a long time. That is how we have always worked with Odoo: the business side on one hand, the code on the other.

From desktop client to web: the bet few people understood

Odoo then runs on a GTK interface installed on every workstation. When Fabien announces the move to the web, few partners believe in it. He holds firm, and convinces. Today, nobody would imagine Odoo any other way. One of the many fundamental debates we have had with him over the versions, and not the last.

2013

The community revolution

The most debated change remains the merger of partners and contacts. Fabien has to fight to get his idea through, we discuss it with him at length, and several partners call Luc to voice their discontent. Out of that debate comes a realisation: the community needs a structure of its own. The Odoo Community Association (OCA) is created in 2013, with Camptocamp as a founding member. Other structuring contributions follow the same path: the overhaul of logistics, aligned between our field deployments and the vendor's R&D, or Swiss payroll.

"You played a major part in creating the OCA. We contributed to the product, you developed bigger and bigger clients. We complemented each other."

Fabien Pinckaers

2026

The same standards, twenty years on

This year we celebrate twenty years of working together, and Odoo 20 is released at the end of the month: twenty versions for twenty years, a happy coincidence. From TinyERP 4.3 to Odoo 20, artificial intelligence built into business processes, open source as a guarantee of sovereignty and independence from the vendor: the stakes have changed in scale, the relationship has not changed in nature. Two companies that have stayed true to what they are, through highs and lows, with a respect that has never wavered.

A word from Luc: "We were right to believe in it"

When I look at what Odoo has become, I tell myself we were visionaries, and that we were right to believe in this solution and in the exceptional entrepreneur that Fabien is. Thank you, Fabien, for everything you have done. I have immense respect for your journey and for you as a person.

I am deeply convinced that Odoo is today the most suitable solution for SMEs. It covers the back office (purchasing, sales, logistics, finance, HR) as well as the front end (website, e-shop, point of sale). What other tool on the market can claim such a broad functional scope?

What concerns me is how easy it has become to be a partner of the solution. To save money, many companies choose the cheapest provider without looking at the team's actual experience. We regularly take over projects in that situation, with disappointed clients. Twenty years of practice cannot be improvised, and it shows in the result.

Odoo is not just a tool we implement for our clients. It is a tool I believe in, and, let's say it, one I am in love with. As I always say:

"Odoo is the best decision I ever made, after my wife!"

Luc Maurer, co-founder of Camptocamp

Our Odoo expertise: experience cannot be improvised

Choosing an Odoo integrator means choosing someone who knows the product from the inside, its strengths as well as its limits. Here is what twenty years of practice let us bring to every project.

01 We have known the product since version 4.3

Odoo's first Gold Partner, we have seen every version arrive, every module change, every migration get harder or easier. That memory saves us from rediscovering problems that have already been solved, and lets us anticipate the ones to come.

02 We contribute to the core of Odoo, not just around it

The software's first localisation, logistics, Swiss payroll: several building blocks of the product bear our mark. As a founding member of the OCA, we know how to bring a need to the vendor, or solve it cleanly in the community, rather than piling up custom developments.

03 We master the Swiss and French contexts, in three languages

The software's first localisation in 2007 for Switzerland, French regulatory expertise (e-invoicing, VAT, payroll): our teams deploy Odoo with each country's legal constraints, and work in French, German and English, with your teams as with your subsidiaries.

04 We work for the long term, on projects of every size

Becoming an Odoo partner is easy; staying one for twenty years, with satisfied clients, is not. We support our clients well beyond go-live, over the long term: version upgrades, new needs, new entities. And we adapt our approach to the size of the project, from a fast, standard deployment for a small organisation to a tailor-made project for more complex and specific needs.

Contact us to discuss your Odoo project

Twenty years of experience, more than 250 projects, in Switzerland and France: the Camptocamp team is ready for what comes next. Whether you are starting with Odoo, preparing a migration or looking for a partner to evolve an existing instance, we answer from experience.