[consulting] Customer Relationship Management software

[Darrel O'Pry]

On Wed, 2006-04-12 at 11:31 -0600, Laura Scott wrote:
> On Apr 12, 2006, at 11:14 AM, Jason Flatt wrote:
> 
> > On Wednesday 12 April 2006 10:05 am, Harry Slaughter wrote:
> >>> I'm wondering what other folks are using, if anything. If you  
> >>> don't use
> >>> CRM, what do you use?
> >>
> >> I appreciate the various efforts to create ERP/CRM/IMS type  
> >> modules for
> >> Drupal. However, I have a need for a solution now. And I'm  
> >> assuming that
> >> I'm not the only consultant who has trouble juggling clients, tasks,
> >> billing, etc...
> >>
> >> So far, nobody has mentioned how they're dealing with this problem  
> >> *today*.
> >
> > I'm mostly using bits of paper in heaps, misplaced documents on my  
> > hard drive
> > and dropping the ball all over the place.
> >
> >> Isn't anyone using CRM software? How do you organize people/tasks?
> >
> > No, and in fact, I'm waiting for other people to respond so that I  
> > can gleam
> > wisdom myself.
> 
> A few months ago, I installed and configured CiviCRM for a client.  
> That was only version 1.2 ... now I think CiviCRM is going on 1.5.  
> Very fast development.
> 
> It integrates with Drupal, and has fairly robust database  
> functionality. It's designed primarily for campaigns -- they call it  
> a Constituent Relationship Manager -- but can be adapted.
> 
> We're still doing manual files and such, and we're really pushing it  
> here, so we're looking at options, too. CiviCRM might be the  
> solution. One downside is that, while it's being rapidly developed,  
> it's a bit tricky to install manually. (CivicSpace includes it in its  
> installer, though.) And upgrading looks to be tricky as well. The  
> upside is that the developers are very active, and very responsive on  
> their mailing list.
> 
> The downside is that it's still  very new, and could use some UI work  
> to help streamline workflow and lower the learning curve. If I  
> weren't so slammed right now, that's one area I'd be working on in  
> the project, because this promises to be a very useful tool for all  
> kinds of web applications.
> 
> Laura

I like civiCRM it does its job, but it just doesn't feel like drupal
code. It feels like someone took a separate CRM and gave it a menu
callback. Can you really take advantage of nodeapi and hooks to interact
with contacts in civiCRM?