4 Replies Latest reply: Oct 1, 2014 1:07 AM by TheBCMan RSS

    Is BC really THAT inflexible?

    TheArtDictator Community Member
    TheArtDictator Sep 18, 2014 3:04 AM

      Hi,

       

      I am a designer who loves working with Muse and the CMS side of Business Catalyst. But now my client (a travel agency) asked if he could use the rest of BC too. Because he really wants to automate his business more. So we watched the BC video’s about CRM and eCommerce and were very excited about the possibilities.

       

      It all seems very promising but we got stuck on, what we thought, one simple question; does it work for him too? Or is BC not that flexible?

       

      Acknowledging our ‘expertise’ on this matter we asked somebody who has made several databases himself to dive into this.

      Basically he told us that BC is nice for building websites but the CRM and eCommerce are really too inflexible. And it can’t be adjusted to what my client needs. So he says it has to be custom build database, because you can add extra fields to webforms, but these extra fields can not be connected to real fields in the database. And he says there is no way that you can combine info from separate database parts and that’s exactly what we need.

       

      You may have guessed it, that doesn’t really clarify things for us and after seeing all the other websites running on the CRM and eCommerce side of BC we think that what we want BC to do isn’t that big a deal. So I thought I would just drop our list in the forum and hope that someone who has worked with BC can answer these questions…

       

      What we think it needs to do:

      • Booking forms differ per event (trip) and this has to go in the database, connected to the client.

      • Automated confirmation after payment.

      • Automated notification if payment is due.

      • Listing of clients data (from booking form and the extra fields) including payment status.

       

      What we would like it to do:

      • Clients can go on multiple trips and have a login to change settings etc.

      • Newsletters can be automatically send and monitoring/overview of succes rate etc.

       

      And it would be especially great if:

      • Email exchange between the agency and the clients can be ‘joined’ in the CRM.

      • Visitors of the site can see (per trip) how many people (and their age) are going

       

      So, basically my questions about Business Catalyst are these:

      • Can the Events module be changed to add fields like “Passport number”, “Travel date”, “Occupation”, etc? Because my client is in the travel business and he needs extra information.

      • Is it possible to change the CRM by adding fields that connect to the Events Module and the Client information?

       

      Thanks in advance for (all of) your reactions, great or small, because we want to make this website a succes and think BC can help a lot, but we just can’t start because of this…

       

      Cheers!

      • 109 Views
      • Categories: Content Management and Modules, API/3rd Party Integration, Reporting & Analytics, Customer Database, eCommerce, Web Apps, General Discussion
      • Tags:
        • 1. Re: Is BC really THAT inflexible?
          Liam Dilley CommunityMVP
          Liam Dilley Sep 18, 2014 6:09 AM (in response to TheArtDictator)

          Hi there,

          Firstly - The Web fields not going into the CRM at the start there is untrue. All data from a form goes into the CRM as cases agaisnt the person. You can create custom CRM fields to extend the CRM and also include them into a form.

           

          Booking forms differ per event (trip) and this has to go in the database, connected to the client.

          BC booking forms are for that event, the data for the person that fills it in will go against their CRM entry. It does not need an external database.

           

          Automated confirmation after payment.

          Web forms do this in BC, you do not need any 3rd party solution for this

           

          Automated notification if payment is due

          Recurring Billing is part of BC.

           

          Listing of clients data (from booking form and the extra fields) including payment status.

          BC Reports can do this

           

          Clients can go on multiple trips and have a login to change settings etc.

          Out of the box BC can allow you to book to multiple events. But someone can not login to BC and cancel and event, you would have to do a form to request it and the site admin do this in the backend. Allowing someone to book for the same event for other people is not out of the box solution and high end front end coding but is possible in BC, we have done this a lot at Pretty.

           

          Newsletters can be automatically send and monitoring/overview of succes rate etc

          Not to sure exactly what you want on this but there are a lot of newsletter options, regular option sending etc.

           

          Email exchange between the agency and the clients can be ‘joined’ in the CRM.

          All form interactions create cases, purchases generate orders and invoices. ON cases and orders you can login and view these as a user. On cases you can have conversation chains and direct from the admin you can contact the person to carry on that chat conversation on that case.

           

          Visitors of the site can see (per trip) how many people (and their age) are going

          You can show on a trip the capacity, percentage of space left and basically show how many people are going. Who they are etc - No. This is personal information and BC does not expose other peoples information for others to view in that way.

           

           

          Can the Events module be changed to add fields like “Passport number”, “Travel date”, “Occupation”, etc? Because my client is in the travel business and he needs extra information.

          End of the day, the form is just a web form, BC just does some back end magic when it is on the booking page to do the booking too. You can create custom CRM fields, add them to the form and the booking.

           

          Is it possible to change the CRM by adding fields that connect to the Events Module and the Client information?

          As above

           

          If you have issues or would like a BC partner who knows what they are doing you can contact our director - brett AT prettydigital.com.au if you need us to do any work for you in this regard.

          • 2. Re: Is BC really THAT inflexible?
            TheArtDictator Community Member
            TheArtDictator Sep 19, 2014 1:04 AM (in response to Liam Dilley)

            Thank you very much Liam!

             

            You just confirmed our thoughts. The problem is that there is just no BC specialist in our country (The Netherlands) and people just say the strangest things to sell us their packages. We looked at BC and thought we had a solution to stay away from very costly custom solutions and extra add-ons but found no real answers...

            i'll ask my client if I can ask your Director for a quote on this project!

            • 3. Re: Is BC really THAT inflexible?
              Liam Dilley CommunityMVP
              Liam Dilley Sep 19, 2014 6:45 AM (in response to TheArtDictator)

              BC is not perfect, it does have its flaws, but what system does not excel in some things and not do well in other things... There is no holy grail CMS out there. With some work BC could be though, thats always been my belief. Been hit and more miss on things but if the Adobe BC team really nutted right things - It could be the thing everyone uses like photoshop is to design.

               

              We do work for people all over the globe, time zones can be a pain but if your really struggling just drop Brett our director a line. Always helping people on BC and get into BC, train people on BC and create awesome websites, apps etc for BC

              • 4. Re: Is BC really THAT inflexible?
                TheBCMan Community Member
                TheBCMan Oct 1, 2014 1:07 AM (in response to TheArtDictator)

                TheArtDictator: Welcome to BC, I wont add to Liam's post he has covered most things very well. Some things in your requirements might require an external server or some changes to your expectations of a "system" to fit BC, the big question is existing data, do you have things you need to transfer over? user / client data etc?

                 

                I've developed a site on BC for a client in the travel space before and hooked in several different things, 90% of was on BC, the final 10% had to be custom added for things like seat availability etc.