Link information - account

[The goose]

Hi,

I got one question. What are the reasons for SugarCRM to say that information about campaigns etc. should be saved in a way so it can be linked to an account only from the stage when the account has been labeled "opportunity"? Why can't you save information from a campaign and link it to various accounts (so you can see per account in which campaigns they are included) in earlier stages?

Thanks in advance,
The goose

[salesagility]

Sorry, I read that half a dozen times and it still didn't make sense. It may be better to say what you're trying to do rather than saying what you think Sugar won't do.

[roblaus]

Accounts can be linked to campaigns (i.e. target lists). It needs a small fix that you can find on SugarForge. Interestingly enough the code to display accounts as subpanel under target lists (together with targets/leads/contacts) is already in the original version.

[The goose]

Thank you for your comments and the solution.

Do you have any idea why SugarCRM doesn't include this in the basic version? I am writing an essay about SugarCRM for college, and I am trying to find reasons why they think it is not important.

Thanks in advance,
The Goose

[roblaus]

No idea about Sugar's motivation but usually one wouldn't want to communicate with a company/account simply because marketing mails to info@ or similar will probably never reach anybody.

The second reason I can think of is probably more of a technical one: Email addresses are fairly uinique and thus Sugar does (technically) guarantee that one person doesn't get the same email twice. With companies it's almost impossible (sales@, info@, support@ etc.).

Once you move from marketing/sales emails to information/support the situation changes though. And this is why tools exist in order to overcome this problem.

But generally: Sugar is standard software with many features. What might be very important for one is totally insignificant for somebody else. The art is to find the right balance and by and large Sugar is doing well in this area.

[The goose]

Thanks for that input!

Why not link a specific contact of a company (CIO, database manager, ...) to a campaign? That doesn't give any problems with sales@, info@, support@ etc. As far as I know this isn't possible in SugarCRM, or am I wrong?

Thanks in advance,
The goose

[roblaus]

No, Sugar doesn't do that.

And again - it's an interesting thought but there are others too. I guess first there need to be a proper role based multi-company/person relation before one should start thinking about some peripheral stuff (no offense).

To make the connection campaign - person - company it needs about 3 lines SQL code. This is why OSS is so cool.

[The goose]

Thanks for those usefull answers roblaus!