Given ongoing global economic turmoil, many businesses are looking for new ways to effectively serve their clients - because in this market every dollar counts in trying to build a healthy business.

Many large corporations and small businesses have turned to CRM solutions to ensure that on an enterprise-wide level business associates are familiar with client relationships and can effectively serve them in many capacities.

Research from IDC shows that CRM applications are most definitely on the radar screens of enterprises with 7 percent of Western European survey respondents currently using an open source CRM application.

"In an enterprise applications market in which large vendors boast a 10 percent market share, adoption rates of 9 percent and 7 percent appear very high," said Bo Lykkegaard, the research director for European Enterprise Applications and Services at IDC.

Lykkegaard explains that usage could mean many things from enterprise-wide to just niche use, but that open source adoption in ERP and CRM has reached a "critical threshold" and may be poised to take-off further.

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