I'm trying to build a CRM on top of Wordpress. I'm building it as a plugin but I'm trying to figure out the logistical aspect before I start hounding away. Can some of the Senior Wordpress developers chime in?

With the above scenario I'm thinking about giving Employees a contributor role, and making customers subscribers. Or would it be better to create a custom database of users and not let Wordpress handle these? Or is there a better way that I'm not considering?

EDIT

I'm getting feedback that Wordpress may开发者_JAVA百科 not be the best option here. I have a lot invested into wordpress - it has a custom theme and I'm very familiar with the wordpress codex. That's why I prefer it. I have worked with Kohana in the past, I feel it quickly gets bloated, may just be my inexperience - but to me Wordpress just makes sense.

That said, I'm not sold on it being developed in Wordpress. What should it be developed in? The idea is that Sales people can manage customer information (a single place for CRM), customers can login and make orders, schedule video conferencing times, add their own employees so we know who to contact at different branches, add their billing information, and the list goes on.

I started compiling a few fields we'll need in the database, here's a few fields from a few tables just to give you an idea of what kind of application I'm attempting.

Employee Database - first, last, email, office, cell, job title, video

Customer Database -customer_id, first name, last name, phone number, email, physical address, account_mgr

Contact Database - first, last, phone number, position, email

Endpoint Information - contact information, phone, email, IP, city, state

My first thought was...Wordpress += CRM? Wrong tool for the job.

Your approach should be initially to look at the database structure and design something that meets the projects needs. After that, look at a good MVC framework to build the app in. If you are unfamiliar with MVC frameworks, CodeIgniter is a good entry point. Learn the ropes with that then quickly move on to something more powerful like CakePHP, Zend or my favourite Yii (www.yiiframework.com).