Re: OGo, CRM and other field specific software (LONG)

On 5. Jan 2005, at 20:29 Uhr, Chris H wrote:
> If we can role this out, feature complete in say 30-60 days labor 
> thats just fine.

Again I think that this is getting clearly out of the "intended 
bounds". I understand all of your points wrt the business development 
behind the development of a full CRM solution. I'm not interested in 
that at all, we have more than enough to do with building the best 
groupware.

I'm talking about an effort which is supposed to take about 1-3 days - 
*no more* - to wrap already existing OGo functionality in an interface 
which mirrors that of SugarCRM (SugarOGo? ;-). If this is sufficient 
and possible because SugarCRM functionality is indeed as limited as it 
appears, it is clearly overkill to setup planning for an "full" OGo CRM 
project.

The plan would be:
a) a few hours of investigation - maybe Dustin already does that
b) some day to work out whether some days are sufficient
c) implement it, 1:1 copy of SugarCRM UI when possible
d) add more stuff [longer term]

Eg d) would involve something like graphical charts or printing, but 
I'm sure this could be easily taken on by someone else and be written 
in PHP, Perl, Python, ....

> Then it becomes an exercise in competing for mind share with sugarCRM 
> customers existing and potential no?

No. I have no intentions in putting a significant effort into this, as 
this is major work, you described it. I'm only interested in driving 
people towards OGo, that doesn't need to cover all SugarCRM customers 
in the world, if its 10% are looking up, I'm fine.

> How do we let them know of what we have?

Using the same channels we use for OGo. The "OGo CRM" module would 
state:

"OGo CRM is a clone of SugarCRM. 'CRM-wise' it does exactly what 
SugarCRM does,
  nothing less and nothing more. You should use it because you have 
everything
  neatly integrated with the best and most open groupware server in the 
market."

Thats it. Targetted at people which are fine with SugarCRM 
functionality and don't need a lot of support (though if there is a 
requirement for the latter, I'm sure someone might be able to make a 
business case out of it). Small IT businesses might be in this 
category.

> and what are the competitive advantages of OGo?

More or less obvious, see above.

> Why OGo and not another gpl CRM variant?

Same question like above. OGo also has a pretty good brand which might 
be moved over to OGo CRM and certainly brings more hits than an 
arbitary GPL CRM.

> Many more questions of that nature but this is getting long again..:)

Not really.


Just discovered something which surprised me, if I take Freshmeat as a 
reference, SugarCRM doesn't seem to be very popular at all:
    Record hits: 4,554
    URL hits:    3,310
    Subscribers: 24
Compared to OGo:
    Record hits: 47,159
    URL hits:    39,649
    Subscribers: 134

Just hype? ;-)

Greets,
   Helge
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