Location/Region: Oceanside, CA
Industry: Environmental measurement systems
Apps implemented: Accounting, Purchase, Manufacturing, Subscriptions, Invoicing, Sales, CRM, Website
Software
Replaced: QuickBooks and Fishbowl
Number of users: 10
Hosting type: Odoo Online
In the niche world of environmental measurement systems, precision and integration are everything. For Pacific Gyre, an impactful California-based company designing advanced geophysical platforms for oceans, rivers, and Arctic ice, managing complex operations across product lines required more than just spreadsheets and disconnected tools. That’s where Odoo stepped in, transforming their workflow and their confidence in scaling with ease.
Founded over 30 years ago, Pacific Gyre specializes in building drifting and ice-based platforms equipped with high-tech sensors that measure water movement and environmental variables such as salinity, temperature, and even biological growth. These autonomous systems, often deployed in extreme conditions like hurricanes or polar expeditions, transmit data via satellite back to Pacific Gyre’s servers, where it’s shared with customers through browsers or APIs. Their work supports marine and weather forecasting, satellite calibration, climate change research, naval operations, and even oil exploration.
Andy Sybrandy, co-founder and owner of Pacific Gyre, began this journey during his engineering studies at the University of California in San Diego. A student internship at the renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography sparked his passion for ocean science. Collaborating with a scientist on drifting buoys led to the development of a now widely used air pressure sensor. With encouragement, Andy commercialized the technology, founding Pacific Gyre in 1994 to lower scientific instrumentation costs while expanding accessibility.
"Our contribution to the world is a pressure sensor on a drifting platform in the ocean that helps improve hurricane tracking, and marine and weather forecasting. That kind of impact makes everything worth it."
Before Odoo: The Struggle of Disconnected Systems
In its early days, Pacific Gyre relied on QuickBooks for financial operations. But as their product catalog and bill of materials (BoMs) became more complex, they added Fishbowl to manage inventory and manufacturing. However, the integration between the two systems proved to be a constant challenge.
For years, Andy searched for a better solution, one that wouldn’t break the bank like big-name alternatives such as Oracle or Microsoft enterprise tools. He had long been aware of OpenERP, the precursor to Odoo, but the open-source approach felt overwhelming. When Odoo evolved into a commercially supported, cloud-based platform, it caught his attention.
"Fishbowl and QuickBooks just didn’t integrate well. Odoo was that perfect sweet spot, not as expensive as Oracle, but far more powerful and scalable for our size."
Odoo Unlocks Full-Stack Integration
After researching options over several years, Pacific Gyre decided to implement Odoo in 2023. Since then, the transformation has been remarkable.
The Manufacturing app has become the cornerstone of their operations, helping manage complex BoMs across multiple product lines. It enabled Pacific Gyre to centralize data, reduce errors, and improve traceability throughout the production cycle.
The Sales, Purchase, and CRM apps allow seamless coordination between departments, making it easier to manage customer relationships and vendor transactions in one ecosystem.
Accounting is now fully integrated with operations, allowing real-time financial insights that were previously disjointed. The platform's comprehensive functionality helps the 10-person team operate with the efficiency of a much larger organization.
Their Website app also plays a key role in modernizing customer interaction. Although implementation is still ongoing, Pacific Gyre is gradually leveraging its features to communicate more effectively with stakeholders and researchers across the globe.
Activity is the main thing they use in Odoo. They’ve built our whole workflow around it. It’s how they track what everyone is doing, what’s been done, what still needs to be done, and how we hand things off from one person to the next. When they onboard new employees, one of the first things they teach them is how to use it.
"When Odoo changed the policy from buying one app at a time to all apps being included, that made all the difference in the world. That’s what makes Odoo incredibly attractive to companies like ours."
What’s on the Horizon?
With two years of experience using Odoo, Pacific Gyre continues to uncover new features and functionalities. The team is steadily expanding its use of the platform, unlocking new efficiencies and exploring automation opportunities.
“We want to expand our telemetry services to customers who use other people's instruments, and to do that effectively, we need the functionality of the Odoo website, especially for subscriptions, accounts, and tight integration with our accounting system.”
Pacific Gyre’s story is a testament to how small, technically complex companies can achieve enterprise-level integration and operational excellence with Odoo. Whether you operate in marine technology, manufacturing, or scientific instrumentation, Odoo’s modular, scalable platform can deliver real transformation, without the price tag of legacy systems. Explore how Odoo can elevate your business today.