The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Stirling software firm in landmark Stanford deal
A TINY Stirling software f irm is celebrating joining the Ivy League after picking up new business with Californian education giant Stanford.
Open source specialist SalesAgility says it hopes to do more work for the worldleading university after being picked to develop a new customer relationship management system for use in the seat of learning’s new distance learning arm.
The deal will allow Stanford to access all its records through one portal, by aggregating all the data the university holds about its corporate customers and individual students in one program.
The system is a newly-tailored version of SalesAgility’s open source SuiteCRM programme, as developed and extended by the Stirling firm’s 11-strong team.
Managing director Greg Soper, who launched the company in 2009 following a 40-year career in IT, software development and sales, said the agreement was a prestigious one which helped validate his firm’s already strong position in the global market.
“It is a major coup for a Scottish consultancy to be approached by one of the world’s leading teaching and research universities,” he said.
SalesAgility’s system is based on the once-popular but now discontinued SugarCRM. Now greatly extended, SuiteCRM continues to attract worldwide attention and draws around 1,000 new registrations per month.
“We’re world-renowned in our field as being a source of very high quality engineers and knowledge on the platform we build,” Mr Soper said.
“We took that platform and have massively extended it.
“This is about prestige for us — we are working with one of the world’s largest organisations and it shows we are at the top of the tree in terms of quality assurance.”
A SalesAgility engineer has already been to Stanford’s Palo Alto campus, which is dominated by the 87-metre Hoover Tower, to complete additional bespoke engineering of the SuiteCRM package.
And Mr Soper hopes there will be more good news to come from Stanford, with the prospect of web-based purchasing being tied into the new system.
SalesAgility does around 95% of its business outside of Scotland.
Turnover hit £500,000 last year, with a pattern of 50% year-on-year growth expected to continue.
The managing director reckons Stirling city centre is a “great place” for his company to be based — with access to good travel connections, and a stream of high-quality graduates.
“Our headquarters are in Stirling but we have virtual offices in Manchester and London, and spend a great deal of time flying to clients in China, Australia, Germany, France and the USA,” Mr Soper said.
He is passionate about the potential for free-to-use and customisable open source programmes, declaring the sector “the future of software”.
“Open Source offers a different way of functioning and on a hugely collaborative scale,” he added.
“You can have thousands of developers cooperating on a single software project.”
Business Gateway Stirling adviser Dorothy Henke said the support agency had been delighted to include SalesAgility in its high-growth programme following its success.
“It’s fantastic that a Stirling-based business has secured a contract of this scale and only five years after setting up,” she said.
“It underlines the expertise and experience Greg and his team have and how sought after they are.”
“It is a major coup for a Scottish
consultancy.”
Greg Soper