Nathan it sounds to me like in your case you might be better off taking
a tool like Sugar and doing some integration with the product if you're
going to hook it into a Portal.
If you have no plans to sell or market the solution you will be mostly
doing it for your own self-satisfaction, however sometimes that's a good
reason because it's a great way to learn new technology.
In our case we polled our customer base and they were interested in CRM
as an application. I'm amazed how many companies still don't do basic
contact management.
Best of luck if you decide to pursue the development effort and don't
let anyone's opinions hold you back if you have a dream :-)
Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
"Get the information you need. Now!"
Document Management, Workflow, Report Delivery, Forms and Business
Intelligence
Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site:
http://www.rjssoftware.com
Tel: (952) 736-5800
Fax: (952) 736-5801
Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT
------------------------------
message: 9
date: Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:48:06 -0700
from: Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: [WEB400] CRM on Demand
OK Nathan, I gotta ask ...
why are you still planning on reinventing the wheel?
My wife asked me that, and I fumbled through an answer. I was tempted
to ask Richard Schoen the same question.
I guess I'm still in the thinking stage. That's better than dwelling on
yet another 5250 client, written in JavaScript, that we were discussing
before Christmas. Or yet another 5250 bridge. I'd better leave that to
Niels, Aaron, Pete, Zend, the open-source community, IBM, etc. ;-)
To make matters worse, I don't have any marketing plans for a CRM
solution. I'm mostly interested in offering better service to
customers, and better integration with internal accounting records.
CRM is kind of likely addition to a portal, which I'm very deep into.
Every application in a portal shares a common infrastructure
(authentication, authorization, availability, access, navigation,
utilities, etc.), and there's virtually no limit to the number or type
of applications that one can deploy under a portal context. I think
there's a practical limit to the number of applications one can deploy
under Outlook, in contrast.
I'm now in the mode of cranking out new applications, as opposed to
working on frameworks. So what's the next application?
Nathan.
midrange.com
