Open Mercato Vision: A New Era of Enterprise Software

Mission: The end of the era of adapting to systems

In a world driven by AI, traditional "out-of-the-box" SaaS solutions are no longer enough, and classic custom development is too slow and expensive. Clients no longer want to pay for developer "billable hours"—they want immediate results and software that perfectly adapts to their unique business processes.

Open Mercato is an AI-native CRM/ERP foundation framework that combines the speed of SaaS with the infinite flexibility of tailor-made solutions.

Built for AI: Open Mercato was built using AI Assisted Engineering techniques and is designed so that its users can leverage these techniques optimally to create new dedicated functions and modify existing ones.
Ready-to-use Context: Contexts, documentation, guardrails, specifications, and prompts—everything is prepared and available in the package, ready to start your work with Claude, Codex, or GitHub Copilot (or any other agent).

Our USP: Why do we win?

Flexibility: Open Mercato can address processes unique to every company—that is our focus. We provide flexibility without the need to rewrite "commodity" features. We take responsibility for their maintenance and security, freeing the client's developers from creating and maintaining them.
Speed: We deliver unique business functions faster than anyone on the market by utilizing ready-made, maintained core components.
Open-Closed (OCP): The system is delivered as npm packages, and a dedicated implementation is created as an app that can overwrite and change all components, pages, and modules.
Extensibility: A very extensive event system is available, and most elements, such as the queue system, cache, and others, are replaceable based on Strategy and Dependency Injection (DI) patterns. This allows you to build a 100% dedicated application using, for example, 80% of Open Mercato's functionality without modifying the core system, maintaining the ability for very fast updates.
Modern Tech Stack: Few systems of this class are built on Next/React and TypeScript, which is currently the most popular tech stack for applications. Consequently, AI coding agents perform best on it (as React/shadcn and next.js apps form the largest codebase for their training). We also utilize functional programming and modern React design patterns.
Enterprise-Grade Security: Unlike many systems on the market, we offer SOTA (state-of-the-art) data encryption, where you can configure which database fields are encrypted with an individual key. Every data access is monitored (logs), and operations can be reversed from within the application (undo/redo). This opens doors to demanding sectors like HealthTech or Finance. Our standard security gives developers and agents freedom to create and administrators peace of mind.
Enterprise Design Patterns: AI is good at fast coding but often takes shortcuts. Not in Open Mercato—we ensured the use of enterprise-class design patterns, including replaceable strategies, SAGA, SOLID principles, and sensitive data storage rules. This provides a solid framework for AI agents to create dedicated functions while maintaining the quality expected by business and security departments.

Scalability and Value

We are moving away from selling people's time and toward selling ready-made business solutions based on our proprietary framework. This allows us to drastically increase margins and business scalability. We deliver immense value to clients, priced—where it makes sense—in a fixed price model.

AI-Native from the Foundations: Open Mercato doesn't just "bolt on" AI. Data, workflows, and the permission system are designed from the start for AI agents. When adding new functionalities with AI agents, you use the exact same context and tools we used to create Open Mercato.
Spec-Driven Development: We encourage this approach to improve team communication and ensure the logging of design decisions (ADR - Architecture Decision Records).

ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

Our ideal clients are large companies launching new projects, testing new business processes, or introducing innovations that need a secure backend/framework. They don't want to rely on old, slow-to-develop systems. They want a project delivered on time and within budget, with the option to pay for additional feature requests at high hourly rates. Former ReTool users are also potential clients—they get similar base functionality but with AI-powered function creation and full ownership of data and code (IP).

Business Model: A Hybrid of Product and Expertise

Open Mercato is more than a tool - it is infrastructure for a new generation of applications built directly for real problems. From 2026, we are committing to this direction fully, creating an organization that defines modern corporate software: as secure as enterprise, as flexible as custom dev. Our structure is based on a model where a proprietary product serves as the backbone for high-specialty implementation services.

Product (Core): The foundation that handles the heavy lifting of infrastructure (login, billing, permissions, security). Thanks to the Open-Closed (OCP) principle, the system is open for extensions but closed for core modifications, eliminating technical debt.
Consulting (Delivery): We are moving from a classic software house to a "McKinsey with code" model. Our team consists of elite, highly technical consultants who can enter an organization, understand its unique business value, and deliver a finished application in a week—not months.

Future: The New Era of Enterprise Software - Manifesto

AI is killing the logic behind rigid, "one-size-fits-all" SaaS. Today, thanks to AI, software perfectly matched to a specific company can be built in a short time. Clients no longer want to pay for "man-hours"; they want results. Fast.

Software will be manufactured completely differently. That is why we are creating Open Mercato.

Companies want four things simultaneously:

SaaS-like speed of launch.
Custom dev-like flexibility.
Enterprise-grade security.
Reasonable costs.

The Problem: This cannot be delivered with classic tools. It can only be achieved by leveraging AI rather than fighting it. One must lead this wave by developing AI Assisted Engineering capabilities that can increase team productivity by 3x to 10x.

The Solution: Open Mercato is an AI-supportive CRM/ERP foundation framework for building proprietary corporate software.

Why this changes the game for software-creating firms?

Build the product, not the infrastructure: Login, roles, permissions, design system, multi-tenancy, billing, audit, security, encryption, and GDPR compliance are all ready. The team focuses only on what generates value.
Open-source "SaaS" with no ceiling: Following OCP principles, you can create extensions without forking or messing with the core. No maintenance nightmare.
AI-native from the foundations: Everything is designed for AI agents. Your team will learn new skills that increase efficiency tenfold without raising costs.
Enterprise-grade security out of the box: SOTA encryption with individual keys per field and tenant-scoped encryption. You can sell to HealthTech, Finance, and large corporations without fear of security audits.

Open Mercato is the infrastructure for the next wave of applications built directly for real business problems.