Can Alfresco Community really work for us?

[manufaktur]

We are (barely a) startup looking for one or more open-source and web-based applications for (1) sales and CRM and (2) enterprise content management (ECM) and running web sites. The idea is to have a content system/repository to manage detailed records of products and handle knowledge management, and use this data to power one or many sites or blogs.

[size=150]Sales and CRM[/size]

We operate in a fairly traditional industry where (face-to-face) selling and service is incredibly important. We need a competent tool that supports our sellers and allows them to follow-up on customers, that really streamlines all the work in the business, and that gives management an overview of the on-going current activities and sales. Equally important are workflow, i.e. being able to setup tasks ("step 1.. step 2"), checklists ("Have sent quote to customer… Have called customer regarding quote") and documents (contracts, brochures, diagrams, etc) for a specific sales.

SugarCRM Community Edtition looks like the most promising FOSS alternative right now as it is tailoed for CRM. But having spent the past days reading about Alfresco, it seems to be pretty competent when it comes to workflows, activities, handling documents, etc. So how about it: can Alfresco be customized to handle CRM? Are there any real world examples of this?

[size=150]Enterprise content and web sites[/size]

I've personally used and liked Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and other open source CMSs, but for several reasons they don't seem like a good option for our startup. First of all, they are specifically designed for running web sites whereas we need a more powerful and more back end-y application to handle different types of enterprise content, mainly detailed and complex product data.

Ideally, we would like to use Alfresco to create a web site that re-uses created content, but I've realized that you might indeed have to use a separate CMS (Drupal, Joomla, etc) because the web site module of enterprise content applications are often lacking when it comes to SEO, layout templating, control over HTML code, etc, community features (user accounts, commenting on articles, etc). Alfresco seems very powerful but I am unsure how good it is at creating public web sites: is the SEO good? How much control are you given over the HTML output and/or layout templating? Ideally, Alfresco would be the back-end system to handle the content and to create completely tailored web sites.

[size=150]Connecting CRM and ECM[/size]

Obviously our sales team will require information from the enterprise content system, i.e. Alfresco. The most important feature is to be able to search through the content using custom-built search forms. Directly accessing content from the CRM would be excellent, but I doubt this level of integration between CRM and ECM is available out-of-the box. Of course, the best solution would be if Alfresco could handle all the content and CRM!

So, do you think we should use Alfresco?

[norgan]

Hi,
I am not from the CRM business, but knowing sugarCRM and some others from review, I dont think you want to rebuild your own CRM application with Alfresco. Don't get me wrong, you could definitely do it. But Alfresco is firstmost a repository. Its strength is storing, handling and providing - mainly documentcentric - content. Even more so as you stress the point, that CRM is your core business application. 

On first site, I would recommend following approach
* use Alfresco as smart networkfolder with fulltext search, versioning and process support.
* use Microsoft Office oder OpenOffice to work your documents, stored on alfreso spaces
* setup emailarchive/recordkeeping/auditing processes in due time, using alfresco
* think about scanning all your paperdocuments into alfresco ….
* use Alfresco to publish your finalized documents to specific locations/tagclouds/categories, providing access for "the others".
* look for a CRM tool, that fits your CRM needs best - one of them beeing (a potential) integration with Alfresco, where possible
if Alfresco WCM does not fit your needs
* maybe use Alfresco WCM to deploy your publshed content to a "provider" website, which can be integrated with your real CMS
* or use Joomla/Drupal for your website, there are integration approaches under the way for that.
* Provide a customer community site with liveray or alfresco share

In other words - do not underestimate your documenthandling efforts, keeping all your product data up to date, searchable and coordinated. All around document - Alfresco is perfect for it.

I hope that helpes a bit
Norgan

[manufaktur]

Hi,
I am not from the CRM business, but knowing sugarCRM and some others from review, I dont think you want to rebuild your own CRM application with Alfresco. Don't get me wrong, you could definitely do it. But Alfresco is firstmost a repository. Its strength is storing, handling and providing - mainly documentcentric - content. Even more so as you stress the point, that CRM is your core business application. 

On first site, I would recommend following approach
* use Alfresco as smart networkfolder with fulltext search, versioning and process support.
* use Microsoft Office oder OpenOffice to work your documents, stored on alfreso spaces
* setup emailarchive/recordkeeping/auditing processes in due time, using alfresco
* think about scanning all your paperdocuments into alfresco ….
* use Alfresco to publish your finalized documents to specific locations/tagclouds/categories, providing access for "the others".
* look for a CRM tool, that fits your CRM needs best - one of them beeing (a potential) integration with Alfresco, where possible
if Alfresco WCM does not fit your needs
* maybe use Alfresco WCM to deploy your publshed content to a "provider" website, which can be integrated with your real CMS
* or use Joomla/Drupal for your website, there are integration approaches under the way for that.
* Provide a customer community site with liveray or alfresco share

In other words - do not underestimate your documenthandling efforts, keeping all your product data up to date, searchable and coordinated. All around document - Alfresco is perfect for it.

I hope that helpes a bit
Norgan

Thank you kindly Norgan for your thorough reply, I appreciate it a lot. What troubles me are the connection/middleware between all the systems: the one between the ecm and the crm, the one between the ecm and the web sites. I get the feeling that developing these might prove to be very costly and resource intensive.

On a more practical note, what would it take to integrate Alfresco with SugarCRM, Drupal or Wordpress? I guess Alfresco has the proper API for general import/export/web services, etc?

Thank you for your help!

[zaizi]

Alfresco & SugarCRM is done. See http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/alfresco/

Alfresco & Drupal / Joomla is done: For Drupal checkout http://drupal.org/project/cmis_alfresco and http://drupal.org/project/alfresco and for Joomla http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/bridges/6947/details.

Alfresco & Wordpress / Blogger is available out of the box with with Alfresco.

[manufaktur]

Alfresco & SugarCRM is done. See http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/alfresco/

Alfresco & Drupal / Joomla is done: For Drupal checkout http://drupal.org/project/cmis_alfresco and http://drupal.org/project/alfresco and for Joomla http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/bridges/6947/details.

Alfresco & Wordpress / Blogger is available out of the box with Alfresco.

Zaizi, that's excellent news for us. Even if the modules are in beta they would save us an incredibly amount of time as we are mainly considering Alfresco, SugarCRM and Drupal. Thank you kindly for the valuable information, Zaizi.

We are looking for a solution where we can automate the CMS using data from Alfresco. For example, Drupal should be able to periodically connect to Alfresco and check if there are any new products added. If there are new products, the data and related files should be downloaded to Drupal and the data presented as a Drupal page. How good is Alfresco or the Drupal module at this type of syncronization work?