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On Friday 29 December 2006 08:07, Richard Brown wrote: > Hi Guys > > This is really a call to web site developers and programmers. > > I am currently looking at the future of computing and provision of > online services. I do believe there will come a time where maybe we > see servers pwoering all our apps. I wonder if there is where Linux > will really come into its own. Instead of seeing the desktop as the > Holy Grail maybe to see web apps as the future. Please please please pretty please! > > So welcoming the future in means a whole new road map for me. And it > involves ecommerce, customer resource managers (crm) and accounting > packages (erp). To build systems from the ground-up will take many > years and cost mega bucks so the only way forward is to use existing > systems and develop them to meet your needs. WRONG - M$ did that when they moved from 8 bit to 16 bit and they stopped program development for 15 years. Theres an engineering process called annealing and I've found no equivalent in management but it basically means that when a disruptive technology comes along you can embrace it and benefit from it or you can try and develop around the old system and the old problems will remain. ERP will cost a fortune if its done by the ignorant (or greedy) for the ignorant (or [rightly?] paranoid). When done by people with a bit of nouce it will significantly reduce the cost of running a business and, most surprisingly, educate a lot of managers in business methods. These people will also be the biggest source of resistance - its amazing how someone on £100kpa puts up a fight when he realises that his job is a few lines of sql, and when a signifigant proportion of middle management realise the same you suddenly find things in your car boot or unusual expense claims attributable to you! > The main problem with the > current availability is integration. > > Basically I have looked at a variety of products - WP, Zen Cart, > Drupal and I have noticed that they all provide very good shopping > carts. What they don't provide is erp and crm facilities with > integration. They might have erp and crm modules but they don't seem > to integrate. But for erp and crm to be of any use surely they need to > integrate. > > i.e. I am a new customer and I visit ABC Online Shop. I register and > buy a new product. Now in order to manage the customer and do > follow-up I need to create a new record in my crm. To process the > invoice and add it to my accounts I now have to create a new record in > my erp. I now have three records of the same customer and will need to > access these records if the customer does any further transactions > with me. > > Integration means that when I buy an item and register as a new > customer, the record is automatically added to my erp and crm complete > with buying record. Then when I login to my crm to note a follow-up > call and a new purchase that automatically updates the erp. You see > the easy bit is the online shop. The hard bit is getting the various > programmes to talk to each other. Most erp systems I've worked on can do this - its only a table or two extra but the ERP systems designers charge a fortune for the CRM 'module' - the customer data is almost always there for the delivery part of the system but because some marketing wassock (ERP end) decided that CRM was somehow a separate entity and most marketing people (CRM end) dont want to be left out of the newest marketing ploy and dont understand the simplicity of it you normally have to pay many tens of thousands for a new 'Select blah,mummble from tables you already have... Whichever way you go make sure you have access to YOUR data - ie you can easily extract and update the information you want. > > Ok so what I am wondering is whether any developers out there know of > open source software that integrates and provides what I need. But > also whether any web developers out there want to get together and > collaberate on such a project? http://sourceforge.net/projects/compiere/ may possibly cover your need I've always wanted a year off to play with it and see how it can operate. Theres an old joke about a bloke in cornwall asking for directions and he's told 'oooh you dont want to start from here'. You should probably start with an erp for even your simple pim records so when you need to upgrade the trouble isnt too great. Computing is very much like building - the stronger the foundations are the higher you can build - but at least with computing you can reuse parts of the foundations if you have to! Most importantly it must have a customer controlled button which says 'GET OFF MY BACK!' which disables any of marketings ability to communicate with the customer in any form* and allows me to transact business without some muppet suggesting 400 useless items and hiding the one I really want. It must also allow full browsing of the catalogue so that my 'purchasing system' can find any items it wants so my computer can price up how to order many items as cheaply as possible. The company will hate this though and prevent it happening at all costs. And a web service suite that allows my computer to do all the work so I can program mine so I dont have to lift a finger. Tom te tom te tom * this simplifies the design of any system by a factor of about 10,000 -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html