Data Redundancy And Automation

[gcullins]

I am brand new to osCommerce, so please bear with me. If this topic has been covered before, and you are aware of it, please let me know where the topic is and I'll happily read up. I've tried searching the forums, but have thus far not found what I'm looking for.

 

That being said, here's my question.

 

I've currently got a set of customer data in MySQL DBs that enables my customers to log in to their accounts and view/update their contact information, product information, support contracts, and other activities.

 

I would like to use osCommerce to sell our products online (duh!), but I'm stuck with trying to figure out how to best integrate it with what I already have. Basically,

• 1. How do utilize our existing customer data via osCommerce, so that I don't have redundant sets of data?
  
• 2. How can I automate the sales cycle, so that, for example, if a customer were to purchase a support plan their customer record would be updated and they would have immediate use of their purchase?
  
• 3. Is it possible to use osCommerce to manage products, but build an entirely custom customer front end that would only call the products from osCommerce?
  

Any help you can offer is obviously greatly appreciated.