Leads (to be like Accounts)

[WDrostJr]

My company has "leads" that are primarily other companies in which we do not know the proper contact person yet. However, the "Leads" tab rquires a last name. I could set up the name as "Needs Contact" if there is no way to chage the focus.

Also, when we have a "lead" company, there are multiple contacts that we may be in contact with inside the prospect company during the sales process and afterwards when it becomes an account. Ideally, I would like a "leads" tab that is just like the "accounts" tab. That way I can have mulitple contacts on a sinlge company file and I can see all the contacts in the "contacts" tab.

How can I go about paying for having this done? We are using Sugar Professional online.

Thanks

[sugarcane]

Hello,

you might want to consider not using the leads module and instead just use accounts and contacts modules. There is a type field in the account record which you can use to denote if the account is a customer, vendor, prospect etc. This would give you what you want without having to restructure the application.

If you want to keep the leads module separate but have a similar account/contact structure, then this would require customization

[christianknoll]

(1) change the name field and make it a not mandaytory field but make the account feld mandatory instead.
(2) link contacts to leads and thus have a contacts subpanel on the lead where you can create multiple contacts per lead and show them just like you would do with accounts.

Can all be done without any modification of the core ensuring upgradablity but I dobt that it can be done on Sugar OnDemand. If you are interested we can host your SugarCRM and also allow you and even suport you with these customizations.

regards, christian.

My company has "leads" that are primarily other companies in which we do not know the proper contact person yet. However, the "Leads" tab rquires a last name. I could set up the name as "Needs Contact" if there is no way to chage the focus.

Also, when we have a "lead" company, there are multiple contacts that we may be in contact with inside the prospect company during the sales process and afterwards when it becomes an account. Ideally, I would like a "leads" tab that is just like the "accounts" tab. That way I can have mulitple contacts on a sinlge company file and I can see all the contacts in the "contacts" tab.

How can I go about paying for having this done? We are using Sugar Professional online.

Thanks

[WDrostJr]

Thank you for the excellent suggestions! I had already thought about loading everything into "accounts" and then filtering by account, lead, prospect, etc.

christianknoll, we just signed up for the ondemand version. I would be interested after we have made it throught the first year. Send me information on your company.