CRM and plugins needed to do this

[Vole]

Hi Wise ones.

I was looking today for a CRM and all roads seemed to lead here. I have read quite a bit on the forums and looked at the add ons but would like some expert opinions if Sugarcrm would be good for us.

Steps are:

1) order stuff in China, need inventory management of all sizes, styles, etc basically every component we order. Would like nice print out for Chinese manufacturer with tracking so they can update when they have completed products.

2) Would like it all barcoded as well for ease as well as top stop blunders or if we do make mistakes at least we can track who did it and where it is.

3) Container tracking. By scraping container tracking numbers from the web we know how long it will be until the good arrive and can keep our customers informed

4) Sales management from our sales that would link into the Chinese guys. When we get an order all the components get logged so they Chinese make it asap. I guess the easiest would be by one customer # all the way through.

5) Accountancy modules to track all the above. With daily sales reports, cash flow etc emailed to bosses on a cron job.

There are plenty of other features I would like but is there stuff out there that would suit our needs already?

[salesagility]

Short answer is no ... there are bits and pieces but you're into a fairly extensive customisation ... but the good news is that sugar is a great base to start from

[Vole]

Short answer is no ... there are bits and pieces but you're into a fairly extensive customisation ... but the good news is that sugar is a great base to start from

Thanks salesagility. I have been doing some more research and now am even more confused

I was looking at drupal as the web based component. Site, customers, ubercart for online purchases etc
Then I was looking at Sugar for the backend. Sales, inventory mangement, staff mangement, ordering on so on.

Then I saw that Drupal has an e-commerce module that I can plugin. Admin is downloading it and I will have a look later.

New questions are.

Drupal e-commerce module how does it compare to Sugar if anyone has used it?

Secondly, am I playing with fire trying to use drupal and Sugar? I know there is an API. Do they work well together?

Would it be better and less frustrating just to get my programmers to write the web application for the site and database, then plug it in to Sugar. OR should I start with Sugar for my inventory database, then plug it into the web elements later.

Anyone with similar experience your views very welcome as I am really not sure which way to tackle it.

[salesagility]

FWIW:

SugarCRM is for Customer Relationship Management ... for seeing the complete interaction with your customers. It does not have ecommerce capabilties.

There are many ecommerce suites that will manage stock & online purchasing ... to get a complete picture, you should look at integrating your ecommerce and CRM at a couple of vital points, particularly:

Customer name and address, orders placed, balances outstanding from ecommerce to sugarcrm.

But that's by no means an exhaustive list.

My preferred ecommerce platform is Joomla + VirtueMart ... and it plays nice with sugar