Such a shift toward open-source software for CRM and other business software applications, such as enterprise resource planning, is now beginning at corporations across the globe. Gatewood was on the verge of directing 's in-house software developers to build a unique CRM product, which would integrate Athena Healthcare's customer relationship business tools with its other enterprise software applications, when he learned about an open-source CRM product offered by SugarCRM that might solve his problems.Īfter learning more, Gatewood did what a growing number of CTOs are doing today: He went open source, teaming up with the Cupertino, Calif.-based start-up to design and then graft his own CRM system onto his existing IT infrastructure, helping his company's bottom line and boosting employee efficiency across converging software platforms. "It was not a separate thing," he says of 's CRM applications, some of which are free and others licensed with a support contract, and of his company's other enterprise software applications. "We realized we needed to integrate CRM into our system," Gatewood recalls. The reason: He was adding 10 new employees a month to handle his company's workload, which in turn obliged him to pay for 10 additional CRM licenses under the terms of his contract with the vendor. Paying his existing customer relationship management-or CRM-vendor,, was growing increasingly costly. He wanted to tightly integrate the company's customer data into its Web portal, its financial accounting system and its call center software. The chief technology officer at Athena Healthcare was sick of multiple databases that contained the same customer record.
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