Yes, OFBiz supports your business needs. This means, OFBiz data model and
business services can be used to _build_ a solution for business described
below.
There are many ways to design solution for your requirements, Based on limited
information I will trying to help. Please see my comments inline.
Thanks and Regards
Anil Patel
COO
Hotwax Media Inc
http://www.hotwaxmedia.com/
ApacheCon US 2014 Silver Sponsor
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On Jun 18, 2014, at 10:10 AM, Ron Wheeler rwhee...@artifact-software.com
wrote:
To take a break from moaning/ranting about documentation, I would like to
discuss my actual business case that I am trying to solve.
Artifact resells and supports the best LMSs ever built - Saba SEC and Saba
Cloud.
You sell Digital (refer to productId=GZ-NEWS-1MO” in DemoProduct.xml) and
Professional Services (refer productId=SV-1000” in DemoProduct.xml) product.
These are typically sold as a 3 year deal with annual payments based on
number of users.
This requirement can be handled in many ways. One simple design will be to
Model it as one order that will remain open for 3 years and will have multiple
shipments/fulfillments.
Next line item on your requirement will help us better understand the
fulfillment process.
This means that we have to track license renewals, ask for the cash, get
paid, and remit some of it to Saba.
Do one Order item with 1 year license” Digital product on it. Move item to
completed status. Order Item status change will trigger Invoicing and Payment
collection.
Setup Agreement between your company and Saba for Commission/Royalty for all
sales. Commission run process can be used to calculate commission and expense
it to your GL and then issue Payment.
All this is supported at Data Model and Services level. Even though UI exists,
I recommend you build custom UI.
You may have to do some workflow adjustments. OFBiz uses built in trigger
mechanism aka SECA, ECA.
Automating the tracking and creation of sales tasks (could be an integration
to Sugar CRM) would be nice.
“Automating” is subjective term.
OFBiz has ootb services for creating tasks for sales team. I don’t know of any
integration with Sugar CRM. You may have to develop it.
Each year the fee can change based on revised number of users so there is
some manual work to be done before an invoice can be generated.
If we maintain one orderItem for one year license fee, then at time of billing
you can adjust qty and price on order item and then complete the order item.
The bigger problem is administering the training and support services that we
sell.
In addition to the support that we provide for free as part of the licenses,
our clients purchase blocks of time that we use up on their behalf as they
require training or consulting services which are not part of the license.
OFBiz has good project management capabilities. It includes tasks management,
time logging, Invoicing etc.
As we use the time, I would like to automatically e-mail them a statement of
what we used, what we did for them and how many hours are left in their bank.
OFBiz has email notification system. Again, you will have to setup right hooks
to trigger email on certain events. I know this is not much helpful if you are
looking for something Pre-Build exactly for your vertical market.
I would like to be able to do this for each transaction - e-mail is cheap and
I want the clients to know where they stand at all times. Would be nice to
turn this on and off on a per client basis. Each bank of hours needs a party
associated with it for administration in addition to the company party used
for billing and finding the bank of hours in the UI for timekeeping,
reporting, etc..
My staff needs to know whether the client has any time left as well before
doing the work.
We have an obligation to warn the client when their bank runs low so they can
work their magic with purchasing to send us more cash.
Each day, the support staff should be able to enter time spent on both paid
and unpaid (license support) work.
OFBiz data model and service have all you need. UI/UX and workflow will be
custom implementation.
I would like to be able to report the cost of the free license support for
each client as well as the revenue by client for the consulting.
This should be easy, You will run report on Invoice/Invoice items and use
Product/InvoiceItemType filters.
I am sure that many of the people in this forum understand this sort of
business but if I have been unclear about my need, please feel free to ask
questions.
Is this something that OfBiz can do OOB? Where should I look for
discussions/documentation that relates to this?
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=gid=165695type=memberitem=5885029179249950724
is a link to the same question on LinkedIn, if you prefer to join the
discussion there.
In short, OFBiz as Platform for
