January 23, 2012 ·
By Barry Nicholson
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The following is a commentary, by Barry Nicholson, RemoteLink’s CTO, on the use of IP Intelligence, the technology that uses geolocation data as a way to learn more about web visitors to your website.
IP Intelligence is becoming more used by virtually everyone. But it’s not new. We used it in the early 2000s to help us market conferencing. We had different ads and different sites showing up in the rankings in different ways to maximize our conversion rate based upon IP based geolocation.
If anything, you have to be more careful today then you did in years past. The proliferation of cell phone web browsers is confusing IP address geolocation somewhat, because the IP associated with cell phones may have nothing to do with the physical location of the user.
Even static IP’s are becoming more ‘centralized’ then they use to be, especially since the shortage of IPv4 addresses is starting to affect ISPs and telecommunications carriers. Some of the ISPs are talking about NATing all customers behind their systems (e.g., all AT&T DSL users in Naperville might have the same IP, or all WOW cable users could have the same IP.) If they do that the geolocation information could become very generalized.
As an example of potentially bad data, go to the following web site from your phone (while not connected to wi-fi): http://whatismyipaddress.com/
Mine just told me I was in Tony, Wisconsin. Obviously I missed an exit or several hundred on my way into the office this morning. [RemoteLink is located in Aurora, IL.]
This is the same technology that Google, Bing and others use, but they have to rank that information. The IP address location information is often the least reliable information available. Your phone’s GPS is most reliable, followed by the cell tower your phone is using, etc.
It’s fun stuff, but you have to be careful. It can be quite amusing. The worst case I saw was a few months back. I was in Houston and Google IP location told me I was in Seattle. Only half a continent away!
QuickBooks to SugarCRM Integration is one of our most requested services.
Our presentation at SugarCon 2011 was very well attended, and no matter where we go or what audiences we are addressing, when SugarCRM comes up, you can bet that the topic of QuickBooks to SugarCRM integration will also come up at some point.
 | QuickBooks to SugarCRM Integration is a complicated service, and investigating the effectiveness, and the ROI, of incorporating the integration into your business processes requires some homework on your part. You need to determine how your business will accommodate the most prevalent integration architectures, how your internal processes may change, and how security issues will be addressed. | |
How it works – The BIG Picture
Most integration architectures are cloud, SaaS based, meaning, the software that actually does the work of integrating the two products runs on a 3rd party, often-secure server in the cloud. This implies that the cloud service will need external access to both your SugarCRM instance as well as your QuickBooks instance.
On the SugarCRM side of the house, the developers of SugarCRM have built web interconnectivity into the all flavors of the SugarCRM architecture using industry standard SOAP and REST connection protocols. There is no additional cost for using these protocols and most, if not all of the QuickBooks to Sugar Integrations utilize one or both of these connection interface protocols. SOAP has a bit more overhead than REST, but both are equally up for the task of integrating SugarCRM with just about any external software.
We Often Do Not Think About Security, Firewalls and Networks – It’s Important!
While SugarCRM supports these interface protocols out-of-the-box, it is important to note that the hosting architecture, including security systems such as firewalls, etc., can have a huge impact on the viability of the integration working, and the effort required to make it work. Many businesses host their SugarCRM instance on the Sugar Corporate cloud using SugarOnDemand. If this is the case for your business, connecting to a third party integration server comes standard, and needs additional configuration.
If your organization hosts SugarCRM on your own internal servers, or, you utilize a third-party hosting server outside of SugarOnDemand, you will need to verify that your SugarCRM instance can be externally addressable, with a static domain name and/or static IP address, on a high-speed link; and, that any and all security between your SugarCRM and the outside world can and will be configured to accept traffic on the SOAP and/or REST interface ports.
You Will Need A License For That
There are some further issues to consider on the SugarCRM side. Any integration will require one, dedicated, admin user license; which, will be an additional expense for the paid versions of SugarCRM. While the Sugar Customer Service Web Portal uses SOAP and does NOT require a dedicated, paid user account, the interface provided for the Portal is a much scaled down version of functionality and will NOT work for a QuickBooks to SugarCRM Integration.
Additionally, as of the writing of this article, there is a bug in Sugar that prevents the association of Product objects to ProductBundle objects using the SOAP interface. Ensure that the integration solution you choose understands this issue well, and has a proven patch to fix the problem. Otherwise, your integration functionality can be significantly reduced.
What SugarCRM Version Is Needed?
The flavor of Sugar you have, as well as the version will also impact any integration solution you are investigating. Integrating SugarCRM Accounts and Contacts to QuickBooks Customer is certainly a very basic expectation; however, the biggest bang for the integration buck comes from integrating QuickBooks transactions like Invoices, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders and Sales Receipts with SugarCRM Quotes module, which also involves QuickBooks Items and SugarCRM Products and Product Catalog.
Here’s The Hidden Fine Print You NEED TO KNOW
- The majority of QuickBooks to SugarCRM Integrations on the market do NOT integrate any objects beyond SugarCRM Accounts/Contacts and QuickBooks Customers, thus, severely limiting your ROI on the integration expense. Even if you do find an integration that supports the integration of QB Transactions and Items with Sugar Quote and Product Catalog, you have to be using a flavor of SugarCRM that supports these SugarCRM modules/objects. The community version of SugarCRM does NOT support Products or Quotes, and is therefore very limited in effectiveness of a QuickBooks integration.
- The version of SugarCRM is also important. The interfaces for SugarCRM 6.x changed from SugarCRM 5.x is such ways as to cause some fairly significant revisions to any integrations that currently work for 5.x and older SugarCRM versions. Many of the QuickBooks to SugarCRM integrations that exist on the market today have NOT been tested against the 6.x versions of SugarCRM, and will likely not work, without significant development efforts of the integration software developers.
- The issues with QuickBooks side of the connectivity to 3rd party integrations is much more complicated, and can require substantially more work than the SugarCRM side of the integration. This is due to the fact that QuickBooks instances are predominantly hosted on internal servers, on internal networks, and sometimes, not on server machines at all, but on user machines, most often those of the CEO, CFO, or primary accountant. All cloud-based, SaaS QuickBooks to SugarCRM integrations will require external connectivity to your QuickBooks instance, and virtually all of them require the instance to be running on a server-class machine, using a server-grade version of Microsoft windows, which is normally multiple thousands of dollars in annual licensing fees. The reason for the server is that the integration will interact with QuickBooks just like a regular admin user would, so your host machine needs to be capable of handing multiple user access.
- Additionally, many integrations utilize some form of ODBC for external connectivity, and the drivers that support ODBC for QuickBooks are limited, and need to be installed as third-party applications. As these drivers have unrestricted access to a variety of data in the QuickBooks database, this exposes all kinds of security issues and concerns. Most drivers can lock out access to social security numbers and credit card data if configured properly. Most ODBC connectors require the use of a dedicated QuickBooks admin user. This can be expensive, especially if you are using a QuickBooks version that requires licenses to be purchased in groups of five, and you already have an even multiple of five users before adding the dedicated integration user.
- There are known memory-leak issues in QuickBooks, especially when the software is utilized heavily and external ODBC accesses are being made frequently. The QuickBooks executable can eat up hundreds of megabytes of memory within a few days and can grow to gigabytes in several days.This will cause enormous slow-downs for users and the integration services. Often times monitors need to be put in place that will automatically restart the QuickBooks application in a non-destructive way, once the memory usage has grown beyond a predefined threshold. Such monitors are typically beyond the scope of your usual IT admins and can require specialized consultants to ensure the process is secure and safe, and does not result in database corruption or locking out users during peak usage times.
- Versions of QuickBooks are also important. Most important are that the data connectivity drivers, typically ODBC, are compatible with whatever version of QuickBooks you are running. Most versions of QuickBooks support these drivers, including many International flavors. While QuickBooks Online does support external connectivity, the interface is not very stable, and QuickBooks can and often does change the interface without notice, causing integration issues some of the time. Also, the extent of the functionality supported by the QuickBooks Online connectivity is general limited when compared to the desktop versions.
- Internet connectivity speed is very important, for both the SugarCRM and QuickBooks hosting servers and their associated environments. There are many times when the performance of the SugarOnDemand external interface speed is not adequate for maximum QuickBooks to SugarCRM integration. The problems related to inadequate Internet connectivity speeds on the QuickBooks side is normally worse. For these reasons, users of QuickBooks to SugarCRM integrations that require a high-level of performance will typically turn to experienced vendors that specialize in SugarCRM, and QuickBooks hosting, and often times, it is advantageous if the hosting company can host the integration software as well. It is difficult to find providers of a full-suite of QuickBooks to SugarCRM integration services to provide for third-party installations of their software.
A Couple of Final Points to Consider
QuickBooks to SugarCRM integrations that offer the higher-ROI features of integrations including QuickBooks Items and Transactions typically carry annual licensing fees in the thousands of dollars per year, with hundreds of dollars for initial setup and ongoing support and maintenance. As SugarCRM or QuickBooks changes versions, the integration vendors must check out their software, and make any necessary modifications to make sure it runs with the new versions BEFORE you upgrade to any new versions.
Between hosting changes, installation fees, support and licensing fees, a professional QuickBooks to SugarCRM integration can cost you several thousand dollars a year in annual support an licensing, and a few thousand dollars or more in setup and hosting upgrades, as well as additional SugarCRM and QuickBooks licenses. However, even a low-level administrative assistant can cost a business $40K per year or more. Reducing the need for administrative staff, even by 50% of one headcount, can provide for significant ROI in terms of cost savings, and rework prevention due to clerical, data-entry errors.
Is QuickBooks to SugarCRM integration for you?
Do you spend more than half a headcount per year transferring data between the two applications? If so, then it should be a no-brainer, providing your IT staff is capable or at least willing to have an external, third-party integration application accessing your proprietary SugarCRM and QuickBooks data.
Logo credits: QuickBooks by Intuit, SugarCRM
Are You an Entrepreneur?
Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Len Schlesinger speak. Len is the president of Babson College, which Len introduced as the number one college for entrepreneurship in the world. Len’s presentation was related to one of his latest books, Action Trumps Everything.
Two main ideas deeply resonated with me, and they are principles that our company, RemoteLink embraces. The first, is the idea that entrepreneurship is a discipline that can be taught, and learned, not a mysterious, magical gift that one needs to be born with.
The second idea, is that the difficult social and economic issues that our world faces, will be best (and maybe only) solved through entrepreneurial enterprises that focus on addressing not only economic issues, but social and sustainability issues as well, simultaneously, as basic practices of business.
Entrepreneurship can be Learned
Len quotes Muhammad Yunus, Micro-finance Pioneer, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, as saying, “We’re all entrepreneurs, only too few of us get to practice it.” Len goes on to quote business guru Peter Drucker – “Most of what you hear about entrepreneurship is all wrong. It’s not magic, it’s not mysterious, it’s a discipline, and like any discipline, it can be learned.”
At RemoteLink, one of our core principles is that every single person is born a masterpiece of God’s creation, and it is our job to help people uncover and live out their masterpiece. At RemoteLink, we are in full agreement with Muhammad Yunus and Peter Drucker that everyone is capable of entrepreneurship and that it is a privilege for RemoteLink to provide a platform on which people can discover and grow that ability. We wish to unleash the untapped potential of people from all walks of life, and all socio-economic backgrounds.
Focus on Economic and Social Issues Simultaneously
To make his second point, Len lays out a pretty clear vision for how entrepreneurial businesses can and should change the world they operate in – “Focusing on economic outcomes to the exclusion of any other variable is a problematic construct. The notion that we can address economic issues separately, and then only deal with sustainability and social issues if there is anything leftover, doesn’t work. You can’t deal with those things sequentially, but have to do so simultaneously. That requires significant invention and entrepreneurship.”
International Social Investment – RemoteLink Philippines
At RemoteLink, we embrace this vision as well. In 2007, RemoteLink incorporated an wholly-owned subsidiary in San Pablo City, Philippines. San Pablo City is a severely under-resourced city with a large population of abused and dangerously neglected children, many of whom end up living on the streets. RemoteLink created a business unit to partner with a local outreach organization, Philippine Frontline Ministries. This business unit provides high-tech training and jobs, as well as the physical facilities and space for a K-12 school and local church, training, and recreational center. RemoteLink Philippines exists to reduce the effects of poverty on parents and children in the San Pablo area, and hopefully beyond in the years to come. Over the last 5 years, RemoteLink Philippines has developed high capabilities in the areas of graphic arts, web site development and landing page design, and uses these skills to support dozens of clients local to the Philippines, and our US base of clients as well.
Bringing our Social Investment Experiences Home
We would like to leverage our experience in the Philippines to develop similar programs here at home, in our own back yard. Our newest product, Internet Presence Marketing, is becoming an area of significant growth for us. We are helping local and national businesses Get Found, Be Liked, and Add Customers in very efficient, cost-effective and measurable ways. 
As the new business unit grows, we are excited about the potential of hiring local people in need of jobs, job training, and potential for career advancement. We have developed the operational side of the business to maximize operational efficiencies, while at the same time providing entry-level, flexible work opportunities for college students, and parents whose work hours are restricted to when their kids are at school. We are exploring a partnership with a local outreach organization in East Aurora called Community 412. We would love to fill up their East Aurora facility with chairs, tables and computers to provide local jobs for parents of school-age kids within walking distance of their homes and school.
In addition, our operational structure is built on employees being encouraged to grow and take the next step. As the business grows, there will be great opportunity for career advancement, and we will provide the training, and the corporate support to develop people internally for more advanced positions. We also provide the opportunity for experienced Internet Presence Marketing experts to grow their sales skills, participate in commissioned sales work, and even move out as entrepreneurs and open their own sales offices.
We look forward to offering our customers the best, most efficient and cost-effective Internet Presence Marketing services, from a brick-and-mortar, long-standing, local business, while simultaneously engaging the social and sustainability issues that are vital to the growth and development of our local communities and the people who make these communities their home.
