Hi Pierre,
I think I understand now. You are not speaking about OFBiz Entities right ?
Have you had a look at CustRequest... and SalesOpportunity... entities and
their relations ?
Jacques
From: "Pierre Smits" <[email protected]>
Hi Jacques,
I guess that I was a bit off....
Like I said, an opportunity and a request (by a customers/account) are two
of the same.That are the entities that I meant. Each request (RFI, RFQ,
RFSup, etc) can be regarded as an opportunity that can be fulfilled by the
company. So, in my opinion these two types of entities could be combined and
both fill the pipeline. Until they result in an order, or are lost, they can
be regarded as one and the same.
Regards,
Pierre
2009/10/24 Jacques Le Roux <[email protected]>
Pierre,
You "stated" below that these two entities should be combined. But which
Entities ? :o)
Jacques
From: "Pierre Smits" <[email protected]>
Hi Jacques,
My apologies, but what are you relating your question to? It's a bit vague
for me at the moment.
Regards,
Pierre
2009/10/23 Jacques Le Roux <[email protected]>
Hi Pierre,
What is the name of "your" Request entity ?
Jacques
From: "Pierre Smits" <[email protected]>
Pondering on opportunities and request I think that any type of request
is
an opportunity. Otherwise they were orders, no? So these two entities
should
be combined.
2009/10/21 Pierre Smits <[email protected]>
Hi Jacques,
You are on the money there. I think that the ecommerce solution in
OfBIZ
can be regarded as Best in Class. And with a little effort the CRM/SFA
module can be the same. Most of the functionalities, as you pointed
out,
are
already in place. It is just bringing it together. Having that it will
drive
the acceptance of a good CRM/SFA solution for customers and can/will
lead
to
having a better acceptance of OfBIZ as a whole (both from customer and
developer (SI) point of view).
Therefore I would also advice to split up the Marketing module in a
MARCOM
application (which is more about marketing and communication - with
their
own business processes) and a CRM application (which is by most
perceived
as
SFA).
In my opinion the CRM/SFA should be the starting point for getting all
the
info of an account/prospect/customer regarding:
Opportunities,
Request
Orders
Contacts
etc.
When the page of an account is shown the focus should also be on how to
contact the account (contact mechs) and the associated contacts
(showing
phone and email contact mechs).
The SFA officials should be able to create, read, update and delete
from
there.
But also security solutions should be up to specs.
I also think that the starterpage of SFA should have some charts
showing
the pipeline of all account opportunities (maybe that is some
BI-functionality). This functionality could then also be shown on the
profile of the account., including showing total value of sales of YtD,
and
last year.
It's the simple things that make it (life also) better to bear.
Regards,
Pierre
PS Could you (and others) also comment on my email regarding Market
Segment
& Sales Segment?
2009/10/20 Jacques Le Roux <[email protected]>
Hi Pierre,
Yes it sounds like a reasonnable requirement to me. Some of the
problems
we get when trying to convince prospects to use OFBiz is
that they want something like SugarCRM. Almost all is there, but not
as
easy as in SugarCRM...
I guess that's why Opentaps was created in the 1st place, because Si
quickly identified the need and filled it. BTW, I think we miss
after sales features in OFBiz (like tokens in SugarCRM). This could
certainly be implemented using what exists already in OFBiz (ie
we don't need much changes in the data model if any, using workeffort
for
instance) but has still to be done at the UI level.
A prospective customer (French international enterprise of middle
size)
told me recently that he would prefer to have an easier to use
SFA/CRM than an accounting module, because he has already his own
accouting system and do not want to change.
Also he wondered how much changes would be implied if ever he would
like
to change, because he think the accouting module is
formated to US practices. I don't think so (I think it's general
enough
and may be quickly adapted) but as I have not worked much
with the OFBiz accouting system yet, I had not much arguments to
expose,
and was not even quite sure of them. So I ask accouting specialists :
what
is your point of view on this aspect ?
My 2cts
Jacques
From: "Pierre Smits" <[email protected]>
Hi All,
Shouldn't requests, quotes and the like be visible from the SFA
Manager?
And
should users be also able to create new requests, quotes e.a. from
there?
Regards,
Pierre
