maybe commerce with crm… or maybe both relatively independent and web 2.0 ish i mean data exchange in xml etc. module in sugarcrm for magento order mgmt maybe

I don’t think a parent/child relationship is the best way to look at it… both are equally important in a B to B environment… standard retail to consumers would lend little use for Sugar. Here are my thoughts:
1. Sugar should import new client details and ordering information. This is a good first step
2. Magento should export client details to Sugar and Sugar admin should have an easy discard option.

Inmy company we’re working to a middleware-like solution, trying to synchronize magento and sugarcrm databases with a standalone script. At the moment we user direct SQL queries for data getting and setting. First script version (in python until now) use sugar as the “master” and magento as the “slave”, but now we are trying to have a bidirectional sync.

I’d approach this question from the work flow perspective.

What kind of use-cases do we know, that require interaction of both systems?

You have retail customers buying products in magento. They enter data themselves into magento. This data might be needed by your sales team in sugarCRM. Therefore we need to sync the contact data from magento to sugarCRM.
In the other direction there could be corporate customers that are managed by the sales team in sugarCRM. The sales team might place orders they received by phone or mail in the magento system. These Orders would be handled by someone of the shop team. The shop employee should see which sales person dropped the order.
I’d like to see customer data flow from magneto to sugarCRM and a order module for sugarCRM that can drop orders into magento.
In this example it is obvious that all customer data is copied from magento to sugarCRM. Customer data from sugarCRM is only copied to magento if a order was placed from inside sugarCRM.
It would be nice if the sales Team could look up order data in magento for any customer. But here all data would stay in magento and the module for sugarCRM is only a integrated backend to magento.

I would like to see some conversation btn magento & sugar in the following scenarios;
1) Telesales have access to all customer/order info held in magento. This is so they can contact a customer who has bought/expressed interest in product A to let them know that it or a related product is now on offer.
2) When sending out a newsletter from magento, I want to know what leads in sugar have expressed an interest in product or category x so that I can target the newsletter accordingly. So, when somebody comes into the offline shop and expresses an interest in product/range x, magento needs access to this info.
3) Similarly, in sugar the sales team want all newsletter subscribers so that we can send paper a catelogue out. Perhaps this has a sales coupon. When user buys online using this coupon, sugar will need to know so that we can attach returns to marketing efforts.
4) Sales team using sugar need to know customer value/profile - how often does this customer purchase, are they worth chasing, etc? For this, they’ll need access to magento customer/order data.

What we need to remember is that many outfits use multiple sales and marketing channels. They may well have one-many physical shops alongside many websites. They may also combine physical and virtual marketing.

All these sales/marketing channels need to be combined or synchronised, so that neither magento nor sugar act as a data silo. We need mechanisms for sharing and collating this material across all these channels.

Ed

Newsletter integration is a interesting part, indeed.
But I would try to disable the newsletter function in magento. We would need a custom module in magento that allows customers to sign up to Campaigns in sugarCRM and can show the Customer to which Campaigns he already signed up.

Any progress here guys, we would be happy to join developping.

Hi, my name is Matthew Edmond of Saloob, Inc. (http://www.saloob.com)

I have used SugarCRM and OsCommerce based on an open-source plug-in created for them both by some smart Aussie guy a year or two ago.
http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/osc-sugar-integ/

It used NuSOAP to connect to oSCommerce and provided the following modules for SugarCRM;

* OsCommerceOrders
* OsCommerceProducts
* OsCommerceCustomers

One could synch/migrate oSCommerce customers INTO SugarCRM.

It also required a module to be added on the oSCommerce side for;

* Orders Create/Update
* Customers Rego/Update
* Products Create/Update

After using SugarCRM - I realised one major missing feature was Product Management.  (Going slightly off-track on this point - but stay with me)

At first I used Projects for each Product - but it didn’t quite fit - and really wanted to be able to add (a) Product(s) to any Project, Task, Account and visa-versa - making a Project and Tasks FOR a product. I know CRM is “Customer” related, but I wonder how many companies out there who use SugarCRM would also have a separate Product Management System? And if they did, they would then have to find some way to synchronise to SugarCRM anyway, right?

And, if you don’t have a Service or Product, then probably also have no customers to manage in CRM - so it makes sense to keep that part pretty closely connected. So, if using Magento to manage the Products SALES - then using SugarCRM to manage the Product for all other facets makes sen

Ouch! That bites! Bloody cut out a bunch of my text - gotta remember it now! Damn - beware!

(cont) ...makes sense.

* Products created in Magento should be updated to SugarCRM
-> Synch Product Name, Pricing, Currencies, Stock Levels
-> Provide ability to create Projects, Tasks and Forums for the Product in SugarCRM

* New Accounts created in Magento should AWLAYS be synched to SugarCRM
-> Provide Admin check-box: All new Accounts to be synched to SugarCRM

* New Accounts in SugarCRM will NOT be automatically updated in Magento UNLESS the order was taken via some offline method.
-> Provide Admin check-box: Synch this Account to Magento

* Introducing existing customers from SugarCRM to Magento is the best way to populate Magento - by sending out a Campaign Email created in SugarCRM.
-> Update SugarCRM if they actually registered
-> First allow user to check by email to pre-populate the fields from SugarCRM
-> This allows for excellent integrated marketing of the campaign and can even follow through to end-purchase results.

Before it cuts me off again, I want to propose using Funambol - it still keeps “data silos” - but synchronises them so all sources are on the same page - and in most cases only requires one source to be the creator.
-> Can be tweaked for added data types - like Products
-> Can already work with multiple clients and devices - such as Outlook and Mobile Phones for contacts and schedules = IMPORTANT for sales guys.
See the current SugarCRM Funam

Ah-ha! It got me again - but this time I copied my text!

(cont) ...See the current SugarCRM Funambol Project:
http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/sync4j/

Finally - I am working on the SugarCRM Flashphone project that integrates with Contacts to allow 100% web-based communication. This will be ready SOON and it also has a “Callme” button that can be used as a sales tool on web-sites and shopping carts - perfect for Magento Sales integration.
Anyone interested, please contact me and/or check out the project:
http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/flashphone

Funambol is no option to me. It requires Java. Java is not availible on my hosting environment, if it were I’d take a fully intergrated ERP/CRM solution like OpenTaps (http://www.http://opentaps.org/) in the first place and dump SugarCRM..