CRM Website Integration! HELP

[ArielAdams]

Hello SugarCRM community,

I am new to all this, but I know that I need a CRM for my business. I am starting a website business that needs to acquire customers, get information from them, bill them, and then put all the info into a CRM. The CRM then needs to use the information properly, allow me to make updates, see task lists for each customer (the product is a legal service), send e-mail when necessary, and other things that I am sure will be necessary.

My experience in making websites it with WordPress, but I don't know if that is best for what I need, or if it integrates with SugarCRM, or any CRM. The other options are Joomla or Drupal.

What I need to know is how to put it all together, how does SugarCRM, or any other CRM work with a website, collect info, and manage the customer account?

Your thoughts, advice, opinions, etc,, will be most appreciated. If anyone wants to specifically help me with this project, I will be happy to exchange legal services for your help on the project. Thanks everyone!

-A. Adams-

[susiewilliams]

Hi there,

One way to easily capture customer/lead information into your CRM system is with a "Web to Lead" form. Sugar Professional offers this capability; you can use the system to build a web to lead form for you, then post that on your website. When someone fills in the fields and submits the form, a lead is automatically created in Sugar.

You can learn more about this feature by visiting this link.

[AntSmith]

Hello SugarCRM community,

I am new to all this, but I know that I need a CRM for my business. I am starting a website business that needs to acquire customers, get information from them, bill them, and then put all the info into a CRM. The CRM then needs to use the information properly, allow me to make updates, see task lists for each customer (the product is a legal service), send e-mail when necessary, and other things that I am sure will be necessary.

My experience in making websites it with WordPress, but I don't know if that is best for what I need, or if it integrates with SugarCRM, or any CRM. The other options are Joomla or Drupal.

What I need to know is how to put it all together, how does SugarCRM, or any other CRM work with a website, collect info, and manage the customer account?

Your thoughts, advice, opinions, etc,, will be most appreciated. If anyone wants to specifically help me with this project, I will be happy to exchange legal services for your help on the project. Thanks everyone!

-A. Adams-

Hello Ariel, Don't be concerned about being confused. When I am certain about something then I am generally wrong.

I think first you should consider exactly what you want to happen. Think about storyboarding your interactions with your clients and potential clients. You should be clear about which is which. Too many people confuse themselves over the difference between a contact, a lead, a potential, an opportunity. SugarCRM has a specific terminology about such things which I have found confuses folks who are new to it and might be aiding your confustion.

If it turns out that a major requirement is for YOU to keep information about leads, accounts and contacts including documentation then a combination of SugarCRM (for the client record keeping and tasks to be done), a document management solution (knowledgetree) and zuckerdocs to glue the bits together may work well for you. This is all an open source package. You can, within the open source package, also capture leads from websites, although the default facilities in SugarCRM only capture some trivial data (but might be enough). This should not involve too much techie type programming.

If you want to extend the interaction model and really involve your stakeholders with the data you are holding about your joint projects, then you need to consider an extranet portal of some sort. If you wish to base this solely on SugarCRM then you will need to use one of the paid for options which has an additional component supplying the ability to share some information with your clients. Other portals are available and there are a variety of glue products for sticking the component parts together. The amount of techie stuff you have to do will vary with these solutions.

Hope this helps.