[Plone-NGOs] Member management [pulled from Costs thread]

michael nt milne michael.milne at gmail.com
Wed Jan 10 12:42:58 UTC 2007


> The argument seems to be that Zope is a CMS, not CRM suite, and that
> there are some CRM tools that can be bolted on.

>Yes, that is true, but that doesn't mean bulk loading members and having
>a bit more useful member metadata wouldn't be useful.

I agree here. I feel that Plone's out of the box member handling could be
improved greatly and not touch on core CRM functionality. I know that
remember is making advances here but it seems to be addressing
infrastructure more than user management tools. People can 'join' a site and
subscribe to services without becoming a 'content' item on a site. Tools
like being able to email a group of site members or being able to invite
members to join are basics that should be running out of the box. Also there
should be integration with subscription services like member RSS and also
newsletters. You should have a 'my services' page in your member area. And
to link this kind of information into a proper CRM tool like Salesforce is
the way to go with tools like the Salesforce connector etc. Then you have
the best of both worlds, people signing up to a public facing service, being
able to manage their accounts and site managers being able to manage them.
And then data can be exported into a CRM if required. So you have value on
both sides.


On 1/9/07, Martin Aspeli <optilude at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Ben Rudder wrote:
> >
> > On 9 Jan 2007, at 16:27, Martin Aspeli wrote:
> >
> >> I think bulk member management is something Plone core should grow.
> >> Perhaps you're interested in sponsoring that?
> >>
> >
> > I agree with you that it would be good to have more core membership
> > management tools, but I've seen some of the developer threads on this,
> > and it seems a fairly heated issue (maybe some are yours Martin)
>
> I don't think it's a heated issue. It's possibly not one where quite so
> many people feel the investment in the out-of-the-box story is justified
> since many people would customise anyway.
>
> > The argument seems to be that Zope is a CMS, not CRM suite, and that
> > there are some CRM tools that can be bolted on.
>
> Yes, that is true, but that doesn't mean bulk loading members and having
> a bit more useful member metadata wouldn't be useful.
>
> > The problem for our little project is that we couldn't afford the cost
> > of any major new application development, so started with what we first
> > needed in CRM, which is basically just a group mailing and alerting
> > facility, and extra member data fields. At some point we will no doubt
> > have to reconsider this (possibly doomed) attempt to step-build our CRM
> > requirements, and I do wonder if this is an issue that NGOs will
> > confront more commonly than commercial developments.
>
> membrane makes this pretty easy if you're a developer. Look at the b-org
> tutorial.
>
> > Oh, :-) and how terrifying do you think it would be as a semi-technical
> > to "sponsor" such a thing, even if I had the slightest clue how?
>
> We can work with you to find out how best to channel funds, though. It's
> important not to rush into it.
>
> Martin
>
>
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-- 
michael
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