CRM integration: anybody interested?

We are currently looking how we can get a good CRM working with Hikashop and Acymailing. Our core components for every website.

We are looking at vTiger 6.0 (OS version) and CRMery. For vTiger there is a bridge made, although for two weeks I am trying to get a demo or more details. vTiger is also not the most stable platform and only running on PHP 5.3 but that should change in the next months when they release 6.1. Interface and options are pretty nice in this version.

CRMery has nice integration with Joomla and Acymailing already and they are willing to develop a Hikashop plugin for around $750.

I am interested to hear if people already have experience with bridging a CRM to Hika and if people are interested in sharing some costs if I ask a dev to make a proper bridge.

Hi NIcolas, great!

Just as a thought, because I am not sure how busy your team is (hardly dare to ask ), would it make sense if we pay your team members to work on this?
CRMery has an API for example. Taking the acymailing plugin there could already show pretty clear how much work it would be.
vTiger also has a documented API.

It would be interesting to hear what people prefer as bridge/ CRM system. vTiger with it's extensive options or CRMery with full integration out of the box but very few options. People/service orientated versus Sales orientated.

We need "service" orientated options but it is worth a lot to support Joomla people too.

Your tweet + an extra one has already been retweeted the moment you placed it

Ok good call to focus on Hika. Hope the CRMery guys have time for this. Getting it in vTiger is probably a harder task....

I don care i sharing the cost of any good improvements in hikashop but i´ve rather put the money in developing a ERP wich all the joomla shopping carts lacks, i´ve never used a CRM can you explain me how you pla to use it with hikashop and th advantages???

Guess it just depends a lot on your needs how you have setup your business. We have some that are more centered around customer care, selling only a few products and getting hundreds of emails where it is nice to keep track of and see what those clients bought and to which newsletter they are subscribed. Hence we need a CRM.

If you do mainly products and inventory I can imagine that an ERP would fit better although there is a lot of overlap. What are you using?

I am currently negotiating with a company to hire a developer dedicated to this project.

Hi Nicolas, and zebrafilm

I am far from expert but I have reasonable background on joomla, software developement, office tools and database management. I am developing a joomla 3 site for my sportcenters in Pacific using Hikashop (good advise from my best friend Mihàly), Acymailing, RSevent, RSForm.

My main target is to be able to follow who has visited and register the site, who bought a sport package, who bought a 20 billets and how many billets are used today and how many remains, who received the newsletter, who asked for a quote and when I replied, who has registered to the sport event tomorrow in the center 1, ...
My specific needs are the local currency which is not a major one, and following people from around the world buying different services and in which center.

At this point I was studying an advanced contact management tool like Core contact enhanced, but at the end I believe I need in background a real CRM. However ERP is interesting, ideally the both would be a must even if too big for my current needs.

I start from scratch studying joomla CRM and I also spotted CRMery. Actually I have no clue what is better between Zoho, vTiger, Sugar, BUT my main concerns are :
1- having an import/export in Excel (I am Excel expert)
2- having a connection between the joomla tools (API)
3- having a 1 shoot price plan (I don't want per month or per usage, ...)
4- having multiple currencies

By the way regarding the 3- I see only CRMery is proposing an quite hight but single price.

What would be your advise?
Does hikashop have an existing API with a CRM?

Thanks
Yannick

Ok after investigation it will most probably be Zoho CRM for me.

Sorry, me again. No I am back to CRMery as 1st choice as I want a native joomla CRM.

Let e walk through your points and give a status update:

1- having an import/export in Excel (I am Excel expert)
Most CRM will do this
2- having a connection between the joomla tools (API)
Not many available, thats why I am looking into making bridges. Even if they have, like CRMery it might not be enough. For example I need my joomla users/shoppers as contacts into the CRM but none of the existing tools, nor CRMery does this.

3- having a 1 shoot price plan (I don't want per month or per usage, ...)
CRMery has a fixed fee the first year and something like $200 every year for updates. This is not very well communicated on their website.
Others might be free but need more custom work or help with fixing issues.

4- having multiple currencies
Most bigger CRM have this.

I have worked with vTiger in the past, dropped them because of slow support and upgrades and moved some clients to SugarCRM. It worked more or less the same for them but little differences popped up in daily use and most preferred vTiger.
I have checked the newer v6.0 which looks promising but has too many bugs to be used as daily tool. Currently running some v6.1 beta's and that seems to go the right way. Release expected in June/July. There is now a lot of activity on fixing bugs and supporting a bit more modern servers.
I wish CRMery did more or less the same but it is very limited. No real email integration, (yes it can load email from external mailbox), etc. It also has a lot of bugs, although I heard they are now hiring people to make a big step so that might make a difference in a while.

I found one company who advertises with a Joomla/Hikashop to vTiger bridge. Mailed them and they asked $1000 for it. Asked for a demo of some sorts but nothing there, but they would setup one in 2 days. Long story short, I mailed every week, got the 2 days answer every time and thats more than a month ago.
Don't think they have it but just try to sell, create it now.

Like you I am still int doubt if it should be completely integrated or be side by side. Working in vTiger is nice, has lots of options already so why invent the wheel again. I am waiting for client evaluation of vTiger if it is the way to go. Otherwise we might code something for Joomla. OPENERP is much more about sales and bit less about customer relations and thats more the direction we need. Hope to make some decisions next month.

Thank you very much.
Yes CRMery is $499 1st year then $299 per year, not cheaper at the end than monthly fees.
I will look at vTiger.

I see 3 strategies as far as I am concerned :

1) I will study the full development in Excel (I have the knowledge to build from scratch a tool in excel, and using the import export data from database. I already did that for a big company where I was stuck by lack of API between internal softwares and tools. I build an entire application in Excel VBA where I made extracts from everywhere and every DB + additional data entered manually in excel , then merge it in my way in excel, then upload the final result I want in a database [somewhere I was using excel as "API" as workaround]). I am studying on purpose Tabulizer, Content uploader ... this king of gadgets. But as you can imagine this Excel stuff is a long job, tricky process for synchro, and maintenance

2) I will study how to develop my own joomla module picking up the data from different database myself. Example : display the user1 and his/her relative information : the list of newsletters sent + the product bought in hikashop + the event registered ...
The problem is that I have zero experience in SQL and my learning curve - even if I am a fast learner - might be quite long.

3) I am ready to contribute financially to any development, and especially if other can benefit starting by Nicolas who deserve some support looking at the excellent job he did with hikashop. Said differently if somebody has the knowledge to make an extension/integration which makes sense and can serge other interests, then let's go. Here it means that our list of needs if clear, specifications are clear, and then we would be able to know the resource availability and the quote. I am open.

I suggest we stay in touch for the next steps
My target is to have something working in 2nd semester this year.

Friendly,
Yannick

The purpose is not to spam this hika forum for long debate out of hika. However I share that I had to look at an event tool because I could not easily in hika (or I don't know how to) manage my full needs. If I am wrong then I do all in hika and then I have no integration to find ..

I believe I can not do this 2 scenario in hika : to sell 1 product ("1 event in that case") at a certain date with a variable price displayed depending on user scenarios, and being able for me to just list per event who has registered.
I think the best is no price displayed but just booking (it is not free but not-paid on-line because the price is not know depending on multiple cases).
[concrete example : I organize a dive tour Saturday, if you just come there is a price, if you alredy have 20 tickets card then you already paid before but I have to check 1 as done, if it is part of a training then it was included in a price ...]

I have the feeling of a gaz machine, and I have chosen RSEvent for that, knowing that I still have to integrate it with hika to answer ma needs.

Just to share I bought Ohanah to test but abandon. Nightmare with multiple currency, multiple language, and at the end it might be a good tool out of the box if you use it alone, but not integrated into a site.

Friendly,
Yannick

Interesting discussion but getting a bit off topic.

@Nicolas: is there something like a roadmap setup with ideas for the future? Would help avoiding double work. (could be under NDA)

@Yannick: I am looking at two options at the moment: create a dashboard in Joomla with an overview of Hika info, Acy info and Joomla user levels. Which would help my clients with their customer support.
Integration with Crmery or vTiger (most likely). Waiting for some quotes and developers and a meeting with clients next week.

If you want to work with DB /SQL in Joomla you should look at Fabrik (fabrikar.com) It is a nice and easy way of dealing with data for people with a bit of programming knowledge. Don't think your excel quest will bring you anywhere in Joomla.

I agree with Nicolas that it seems you are looking for an event extension, there are a lot of nice ones but none integrates with Hika (as far as I know) May be also check out Hikaserial because I see a lot of your demands already done there. Events are possible in Hika, there is an example in the support. Unfortunately it is pretty complicated to do and limited so my clients also use a separate event extension.

Hi,

No we don't have a public roadmap, only an intern one. But if we see that third person developed plugins, etc, we can integrate them directly

Hi,
I will go for SugarCRM - it's the worldwide number 1 open source CRM with an unbelievable amount of bridges to pretty much everywhere - except most joomla extensions...
For SugarCRM I have come across a Joomla user plugin, a VirtueMart plugin and a Community Builder plugin, that seem to work well, but no one for HikaShop.
Personally I also want to use SugarCRM for our direct marketing and customer support inside and outside joomla - and I am currently looking for joomla people who want to support a bridge from SugarCRM to acyMailing (Enterprise).
As SugarCRM will discontinue its Community Edition in 2nd QT 2015, I will also choose a derivate 100% based on the core SugarCRM CE 6.x - in my case EnjayCRM.

Anyone who wants to join efforts for a SugarCRM to acyMailing bridge?
Clemens

Clemens, vTiger also came from Sugar originally. I have worked with both but none of my clients likes sugar over vTiger. Some even wanted to go back after they went for Sugar. Still that might be a personal thing but as you mention, they will stop the OS version so why develop for it? Personally I like OroCRM also and was hoping for CRMery to be more cooperative but for now the best option seems VTiger V6.1 (out end of the month).

We have just started the development of the bridge and hope to have something working at the end of Juli.
People that want to help test and give feedback are welcome too. Just drop me a mail bridge at zebrahosting dot eu

Quick update here:

We have hired a very nice developer with experience in Joomla and vTiger. He is doing a great job and helps thinking about the concept.
What we got now:
vTiger module called Joomla SQL hosts. Here you can set a connection to one or more Joomla DB / sites.
vTiger module called JoomlaBridge. This one pulls manually or automatically users from Joomla (if they are not admin) and tries to split the names in first and lastnames and puts them in as vTiger contacts. Tested with a site with over 1000 users and all fine. (it is done in batches of 250 eacht time). We are currently testing the push back to Joomla for a full sync but so far so good.
It is a very universal module where you can import field lists to import. Standard we sync all user details including user levels, activation etc which then can be altered in vTiger too.
So next up will be sync with Hikashop. vTiger has already a product and order system and we hope to connect those two.
Estimated time: 2-3 weeks.

W very much like CRMery and HikaShop

The 1 integration that is missing for us is the following:

There is no sync of clients in CRMery with Customers in HikaShop.
I've been attempting to develop a plugin that would add a button in the client menu of CRMery "Push", "Advance" or similar that when clicked for a specific client, takes all pertinent data about that client and creates a HikaShop customer that is tied to the common Joomla User for the selected. This single function would save my team massive amounts of time. Im a Designer so this type of coding isn't my forte, I would be willing to pitch in with others for the development of such a plugin.

This single integration would solve the problem for invoice generation by our sales reps.