As business needs continue to evolve, IT departments are finding it more difficult to meet the diverse demands of their companies. As leading business journalist Heather Clancy noted in a TechTarget article, this trend has shifted business focus to custom application development. According to Clancy, “The days of standalone customer relationship management application implementations appear to be numbered.”

There are several trends driving the need for custom CRM applications. Clancy discussed social media, big data and mobility specifically, as these have become uniquely disrupting forces in CRM technology. What may be even more telling is that all of those initiatives are connected to each other. Many analytics initiatives now rely heavily on data drawn from any number of sources, including social media. Meanwhile, employees throughout the business need access to applications in a number of settings outside the office, giving rise to mobile CRM software that offers comparative functionality to that of desktop-based programs.

Despite these increasingly diverse demands, businesses face a significant challenge. An organization’s complex needs demand robust software custom-tailored for the company. Clancy noted this has led many businesses to turn to managed software services providers; however, this can be a costly approach and still requires a significant time investment. Instead, many organizations are turning to custom application development as a way to affordably deploy technology tailored for their needs.

This trend has been confirmed by the growing use of open source technology. As ITWeb writer Suzanne Franco noted, the news source’s recent technology survey revealed 31.55 percent of respondents rated open source software better than traditional applications.