Richard founded a manufacturing company in 1985 that grew to 90 employees by 2006. However, the company's overhead from disparate IT systems caused orders per employee to decrease by 45% over 6 years. Richard implemented Open ERP, an open-source ERP system, which integrated the company's various business processes and reduced annual licensing and maintenance costs from $84,000 to under $10,000. This allowed the company to grow efficiently while improving visibility, control and employees' productivity.