Evaluating the SugarCRM product - Newbie Question

[ksherry]

I'm currently evaluating several on-demand and on-premise CRM solutions. One area I've noticed lacking in vendors is service contract management and RMA management. I realize SugarCRM does not have this out-of-the-box, but I'm wondering if this can or has been done. Here is just a flavor of what I'm looking for:

Service Contract:
Create a contract that can support 1 to N products covered by service coverage (same day, next day, etc)
Ability to assign a service coverage to a customer's product
Ability to co-terminate Items on a contract
Each contract must has a unique ID
Ability to have multiple parties on the same contract
Ability to generate the renewal quote/contract in PDF/Email format. The party information (reseller, end customer, disti, etc), product information, pricing, and other contract details will be contained in this document.

RMA:

Automatically update customer install base when defective parts are exchanged(swapped) with new ones
Ability for Contract Manufactures to input repair analysis data against an RMA
Track RMA history for each part (including original shipment date, manufacture, failures, etc)
Ability to integrate with third-party logistics provider to automate service delivery and inventory movement.


Two other questions 1) has anyone done any integration with external knowledage to link their case to a KB article
2) integrated with an external bug system (e.g. Bugzilla)?


Thanks in advance,
Keith

[longreach]

We have a service contract management module built on top of Sugar Open Source - see the demo at http://thelongreach.com/iah_demo.html.

[scliburn]

We have also revamped our "CASES" module into an RMA module.

This allows us to associate an RMA to an account. Our RMA mod. is not as robust currently as your needs indicate.

I have heard of some integration development on cerberuweb.com (KB & Helpdesk), but nothing evident yet.

[george_bbch]

Scott,

Could you please give some details about how you are using the Cases module for RMA?

Thanks,
George

[scliburn]

Currently:

We capture RMA requests via a form script. from that we in turn populate an RMA/Case for a specific customer.
We've added some custom fields that pertain to our process.
We've also added some custom drop down values for status.

We've also changed all language files to represent RMA instead of Cases.
Cases are always assigned to my tech user. This helps me manage his workload and keep an eye on RMA timelyness.

We are currently programming a custom User interface to view orders & Rma's. Our customers will be able to login to our website (based on custom portal access rights we've already developed via sugar's accounts mod), and place existing orders and or create an RMA request. This helps us keep historical footprints of our customer relations.
Users can/will also be capable of submitting general trouble tickets.

when this function is complete I can provide a demo user/login in PM to see how much you can customize a portal site with Sugar.

We are not using any CMS of anykind. We have custom developed our own product catalog section on our site tha ties directly into the product catalog in sugar. Updates made to sugar are reflected on our site. We are also creating a unique shopping cart feature that is for our existing customers only.

i am currently the lead programmer on this mission with 1 other newbie to PHP.

In addition to the above, we are phasing out our current inventory control and implementing a more robust system. We use Sugar to create invoices, quotes, & sample orders. It would be nice to have a single system to perform many of these tasks.

[bright4242]

We have a service contract management module built on top of Sugar Open Source - see the demo at http://thelongreach.com/iah_demo.html.

Hi checked out your demo, it looks very impressive. Looks like you have made quite a few modifications to the Sugar Open Source application. Where can I download the source code for this? (as provided for under the licence) as I would like to study these mods.

JB

[longreach]

Sned me an email.

[george_bbch]

Thanks, Scott!

Would anybody else like to have the possibility to link a case to one or more products that the customer purchased or is evaluating?