Financial--Loan modification module

[Floomer76]

I am a software developer and my assignment is to build a CRM that handles Loan Modifications. My idea is to use Sugar CRM as a template to craft such a program.

What I want to do is

Link a web-based questionaire and debt calculator to the CRM's customer database and automate updates whenever someone uses the questionaire and calculator.

Set an automatic e-mail system that e-mails people informing them that they will be contacted within 24 hours

Basically, my partner wants to replicate another CRM, CaptaLoans

is this doable?

[robertbmirth]

Yes, this is doable. If you can generate the external questionnaire, you can interface it with SugarCRM via SOAP or REST, or (non-preferably) through direct database access. SugarCRM also comes with a WebToLead form generator that might work for this, but I doubt it (worth looking into depending on your criteria though).

Sugar also comes with a rather robust emailing feature and workflow management system that should be able to handle your emails.

[Floomer76]

Thanks. What would you say is better; Going from scratch or using sugar as a template? Can I do this with the free download? In addition, where can I find the source code?

What would you say a reasonable timeline for this is?

[robertbmirth]

It really depends on your background/if you're planning on expanding this system at all, but I would suggest going with Sugar. You can do all this with the Community Edition but it'll be a little different than if you're doing it with Pro as CE doesn't have the workflow feature, but you should be able to get around this by writing a scheduler job instead of a workflow (a little more gritty but the functionality will be the same).

As this is a PHP/JS project, the source code essentially comes with the community edition that you download.

I'm absolutely horrible with time lines, just as a warning, and again it really depends on your background, but if you've worked with web services before, then I would say you could get this done in about a two or three weeks of solid work. If you haven't, then probably a week more to understand them.

[Floomer76]

Okay, We just clarified the project a little, and I'm putting it into three modules

Employee module: is what the employees see and interact with--essentially the backend--this is basically the captaloans system.

customer module: they interact with the website for the most part. they need a status bar and they need to know who their representative is.

accountant module: they need to know all the monetary information- when money was paid, when payments are due, that sort of thing.

Is all of this doable with sugar?

I am relatively new with PHP programming, so what is a reasonable timeline?