At 10:30 on Saturday, 26 September 2026, at Odoo Experience 2026 in Brussels Expo, Belgium, the Partner Awards ceremony named Enersys Co., Ltd. the winner of Best Starter APAC. Supaket Wongkampoo, CEO of Enersys, walked up to receive the trophy in person, in front of a main auditorium full of partners and Odoo staff.
This year's Odoo Experience ran from 24 to 26 September, drew more than 45,000 attendees from over 150 countries, and was the launch stage for Odoo 20. Supaket was there for all three days. The award was the reason for the trip, but we brought back more than a trophy, so this post covers both: the award, and what we will do with what we learned to serve customers better.
Image: Odoo official Facebook page
The Enersys trophy was also the first image in the post Odoo used to announce the winners on its official page.
How Odoo selected the 2026 nominees
Odoo’s announcement of the Odoo Awards 2026 nominees lists Enersys in the Best Starter APAC category and identifies three areas used to select this year’s nominees.
- Customer retention: whether customers remain within the Odoo ecosystem.
- New Odoo Enterprise user growth: growth in the number of new Enterprise users associated with the partner.
- Number of experts and team experience: progress in current Odoo certifications across the partner team.
The one we are proudest of is the first. An ERP project does not end on go-live day. Customers who stay on Odoo are still closing their books, producing reports and adjusting their processes on the system we built with them, month after month.
Where Odoo is heading
Odoo launched Odoo 20 in the event's opening keynote and summarized the new capabilities in Meet Odoo 20. Read together with what we saw at the event, four directions stand out.
AI that does the work, not just answers questions
Odoo 20 lets users automate a process with a plain-language instruction, with AI agents explaining what they will do before they act. Accounting gets an assistant that answers receivables and cash-flow questions from reports and flags reconciliation errors with recommendations. Inventory can calculate minimum and maximum stock levels from the last 30 days of sales.
Faster storefronts and prospecting
Users describe the web page they want and Odoo builds it. CRM adds a directory of more than 580 million companies to search by industry and location, and routes each new lead to the right pipeline automatically.
Smoother work on the floor and in the field
Factories can register continuous production and release the next work order automatically. Field service teams can view and edit records offline and sync when they reconnect. Purchasing matches vendor bills to purchase orders automatically and flags discrepancies.
Connecting outside AI without losing permissions
Odoo 20 documents how to connect external AI agents through an MCP server, where the tools an AI can call depend on the permissions of the user who owns the API key. We have already written up how to approach this in our guide to Odoo 20 MCP permissions.
All of this is what Odoo announced. Each capability still depends on the plan, version and configuration of each database, so we always test with Thai business data and processes before recommending anything to a customer.
A raised hand in the AMA with Odoo's founder
On 25 September, the day before the ceremony, Supaket met and took a photo with Fabien Pinckaers, founder and CEO of Odoo, and that afternoon joined Fabien's AMA (Ask Me Anything) session.
The room took questions by show of hands. Supaket raised a hand and asked how Odoo sees Southeast Asia and Thailand. Fabien did not catch the question the first time, so Supaket asked it again in front of the whole room.
Fabien did not answer with a slide. Instead, the Odoo system the company runs on went up on the big screen, showing sales by country, live. Sales were spread across dozens of countries, and Fabien said Odoo does not pick any one country to prioritize.
The answer was clearer than we expected. How far Odoo grows in each country depends mainly on the partners in that country. For Thailand, that job sits with Thai partners, Enersys included.
That one question opened another door. After the session, the Odoo team that looks after partners in Southeast Asia reached out to talk about the Thai market, and we sat down together after the awards ceremony the next day.
Ideas from partners around the world
Three days at the event meant conversations with partners and Odoo staff from many countries. Looking back, we took away three ideas we want to put to work.
First, partners whose customers stay for years do not stop at go-live. They run a clear post-go-live cycle, so customers know what will be reviewed each month and who will answer.
Second, a new version arrives every year. Well-prepared partners know in advance which customers will benefit from new features and which should wait, and they have test cases ready before an upgrade.
Third, Fabien answered a question with Odoo's own live system in front of the whole room. Real numbers on screen carried more weight than any slide. The same approach works with customers: demo with the processes and data closest to their business.
How we will use this to improve our service
From the Odoo 20 direction, Fabien's answer and what we heard from partners in other countries, we have set five directions for our customers in Thailand.
- Assess readiness before upgrading to Odoo 20 by walking through critical flows from sales, inventory and manufacturing to accounting, and testing on a copy of the database before setting an upgrade date. See our Odoo 20 upgrade readiness guide.
- Pick AI that helps real work, and set permissions before switching it on. Start with daily repetitive tasks such as reconciliation, reorder points or lead routing, then decide what data the AI can see and what it is allowed to do.
- Test in the Thai context before recommending. New features must work with Thai tax, Thai-language documents and the approval steps Thai businesses actually use before we recommend them.
- Support customers in regular cycles after go-live. Customer retention is the first criterion for this award and the thing that benefits customers most, so we will review system use with customers regularly rather than waiting for problems.
- Share more Odoo knowledge in Thai. If the Thai market grows through Thai partners, we need to make Odoo easier for Thai businesses to understand, through Enersys Insights articles and demos built on customers' real processes.
Thank you to everyone behind this award
We thank every customer who trusted Enersys to implement Odoo, everyone on our team who built their Odoo expertise and experience on customer projects, and the Odoo team we have worked with throughout the year.
On the evening of the awards, Supaket walked around the Grand-Place and rubbed the statue of Everard 't Serclaes, which local belief says means you will return to Brussels. We intend to be back at Odoo Experience next year, with more stories from Thai customers.
Read the award announcement on Odoo's official Facebook page.
If your organization is planning an Odoo rollout or preparing to upgrade to Odoo 20, contact the Enersys team to talk through which new capabilities fit your business.
