In need of Mortgage Industry specific assistance

[HomeTeam]

I am a partner in a Mortgage company, which is new to SugarCRM, we are currently having a php 'loan tracker' built to track the progress of each of our clients loans in a more efficient manner - the script also communicates between the respective employees during the process.. We just downloaded and setup SugarCRM OpenSource on our server to test it out.. My questions is this: We would like to modify the sales process within SugarCRM to more accurately reflect our process.. We need a 'home' for Lender data, to have employees call for pricing, etc. but we have no need for accounts for clients (unless is could be changed to support client only data).. Our process would be LEADS to LOANS (currently named Opportunities) and ACCOUNTS would be renamed LENDERS.. Is there a better way to modify sugar to accomplish our goal? We basically want three things: 1) A home for our lender data. 2) A home for current customer data and 3) a more intuitive process for our lead process that only involves LEADS and LOANS. Should we leave the ACCOUNTS module alone, using it for the client data and create a new module for the LENDERS? Also, on a side note how can we adjust the titles of data that is being referenced by the pipeline (currently: Prospecting, Qualification, etc.) to other names more conducive to our business? And how is this pipeline data going to be effected by the changes we make to Sugars modules?

Thank you again for all the help,
I look forward to hearing your input and feedback.
Jesse Matlock
Home Team Funding

[andydreisch]

Hi HomeTeam, so Lenders have Loans, like Accounts have Opportunities. This seems quite natural to me. As for Client data, is a Contact a possibility? I'm a little confused by the relationship between Clients and Lenders.

I want to also mention that a Sugar partner, GoCRM.com, has a full-fledged solution built atop Sugar Professional. You may want to consider them as an option or at least to learn from.

Further, if you continue to use Opportunities for Loans, and you track your pipeline by (potential) Loans, then you're all set; only a name change for the pipeline stages is required. You can do that through the Studio in Admin.

Finally, there are many experts on this board who are available for design consultation. It's imperative that the relationships you require are correctly mapped and I'm afraid a few simple posts may not get to the level of detail you may require.

Hope this helps.

Andy

[HomeTeam]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the reply... Let me clarify how workflow a little.. First we start with our customer - either from our database (contacts) or from a lead (leads) and once we gather the needed information we then contact one of over 55 lenders we have access to, based upon our experience and the lenders product line up from the LENDERS tab (changed from ACCOUNTS) So, in this scenario, a lead and/or contact will NOT transition to an Account once complete, they will ultimately live in our contacts database once they are a customer, does that make sense? Once in our Client database, our marketing module with continue to update the client and us to needed actions on the clients loan programs. The LENDERS tab, renamed from ACCOUNTS, is basically another 'client' database, simply storing the numbers and contact person for a respective lender.. they will not transition anywhere, ever..Lenders will only live in one location. In regards to the pipeline, I have 2 questions 1) Will using the accounts tabs as our Lender contact list effect the calculations within the pipeline graphs, etc. 2) I have looked for the way to edit the pipeline categories, where is the function located within the Studio?

Thanks again for all the assistance, you've have been great!
Jesse

[noslzzp]

Jesse,

We are also in the Mortgage business and new to Sugar. I think what you should probably do is setup your lender pool as Accounts but put them in a group of thier own "Lenders". Then you can have contacts for all your lender AE's, etc. We have been using Accounts and then just making a contact underneath with the same name (for our borrowers).

[justinmeyer]

It sounds like a good solution would be:
Leads/Borrowers (Some form of contacts)
Lenders (Accounts)
Under lenders, a Products group which lists each offering for a lender (this wouldn't have to be kept current, but maybe added/subtracted as a loan is processed)
Link each borrower to a product. The best way to do this might be to have two levels of accounts: lenders and products and use them like parent/child accounts. As a contact buys into a certain product you link them under that account. Until they are in a certain account, you can list them as Floating or some other account name.

[HomeTeam]

Hi Andy,
One question.. I have been searching through the Wiki, Support and Documentation to find out how to change the Sales Stages that relate to the Pipeline data.. please advise how to change the sales stage titles.. thanks again!

[bconvis]

Hi Jesse,
SierraCRM took Sugar 3.0 and built a mortgage specific vertical. We added a very powerful workflow engine amd a Marketing Campaigns module. If you email or contact me I will be happy to show you a demo of what we did. Maybe you can get some ideas from us for you own implementation of Sugar. We are currently based on Sugar 4.0.1.

Bill Convis
CTO
SierraCRM, Inc.
bconvis@sierracrm.com
530 277 3769

[andydreisch]

HomeTeam, this section of the Admin Guide covers the dropdown editor, a part of the Studio.

HTH,

Andy

Hi Andy,
One question.. I have been searching through the Wiki, Support and Documentation to find out how to change the Sales Stages that relate to the Pipeline data.. please advise how to change the sales stage titles.. thanks again!