This doc outlines the suggested structure / key areas of the CRM.COM Platform Overview. The aim of this overview is to allow an integrator / key user to understand what CRM.COM does in terms of key functional areas.
The content
Contacts
CIM (identify contact for customer events) and GDPR
Contact Community
Segmentation
Dynamic segmentation of contacts
Easily definable with sentence like queries
Segment on demographics, transaction history, subscriptions owned
Use it for pricing, notifications, tiering
Onboarding and Authentication
Multiple authentication methods
OIDC
Customer Events
Capture a diverse set of customer events
Purchase event
Full purchase ticket with SKUs and optional spend request of the customer open balance
Referral event
Achievement event
Financial KPI event
Accounts and financials
Multi-currency, multi-country, multi-tax
Payment methods
Methods
Primary and backup
CRM wallet
Subscription payment methods
Support for multiple payment types
Cards, wallets, account debit based
Payment gateways
Payment intends
Ready made gateways
Plug-in gateway
The wallet
EMI grade wallet
Multi-tenant wallet at the option of the tenant (business). One wallet keeps balances of multiple businesses
Wallet maintains
a CRM.COM open balance - open money that can be spend at any business or paid out back to contact payment method
Topup via a CRM.COM registered payment gateway
a business balance
business open balance - open money that can be spend at the business or paid out back to contact payment method
Topup via a business registered payment gateway
Commerce pool balance - a commerce balance redeemed into an open balance against a purchase
Wallet identity
email or phone and a wallet code
Wallet fees
Fees on transactions
B2BSpend
Open balance of a contact at Business A can be spent at Business B
Promote and Join
A business promotes a commerce pool
Another business joins
The two businesses agree a contribution
Passes
Promotion, Gift, Top-up
Printed, electronic
Settlement
The process that settles
Commerce pool award and redeem between business to business and business to merchant
Open balance spend between business to business and business to merchant
Rewards
Powerful and diverse offers
Reward Achievement
Increase spend
Improve membership
Increase visits
Award
at transaction, SKU, segment or combinations
award against a commerce pool (for example coffees on any weekday)in the customer wallet
Manual or auto-redeem
Redeem converts a commerce pool amount into an open balance in the customer wallet
Instant or deferred redeem
Instant redeem is applied on the transaction in hand; deferred from next transaction
Business Network
A diverse business community
Platform Owner (Cloud Operator)
Service Owner - owns the service and can bill tenants for the service. May use a contact registry where all businesses have a common customer base
Transaction Processor - serves multiple service owners and routes purchases to multiple businesses that have a common transaction point (i.e terminals)
Business (Tenant)
Merchant (Service Provider)
Venue (Service Point)
organisation groups
teams
Contact Registry
Ownership
Explicit ownership(i.e products)
Implicit
assignable (i.e SRs)
Fulfilled by (orders) and serviced by (subscriptions)
Data access and data access permissions (roadmap)
CRM
Activities
Communications
Leads
Service Requests
Commerce
Product Catalogue
Products (types, families, brands, categories)
Physical (traceable and non-traceable) and services (termed, usage, one-time, expenses)
Advanced compositions (flat, fixed bundle, flexible bundle)
Variant products with variations and modifiers
Dependencies and tiering
Pricing
Extensive price rate models
Promotions
Licensing
Add a license dimension to your product and provision it to 3rd party systems (ideal for XaaS models)
Orders
Multi-domain order management
Physical goods (complex and simple)
Project based with invoice milestones
Termed and one time services
Fulfilment policies
Order queues
Quotation process
Inventory management and devices
Warehouse and stock
Devices
Device Management
Ownership lifecycle
Subscriptions
TMForum enterprise grade subscriptions
Diverse subscription models
Termed and one time
Auto renew or expiring
Pre-bill, post-bill, payment driven
Trial management
Subscription actions for any industry
add service, regret, change service, pause, resume, change terms, activate, deactivate and many more
Usage based billing
Usage limit and usage charge level
Device based subscriptions
bill it, provision it, charge it a fee
Rental, purchase or bring own device
Provisioning
Trigering provisioning commands to manage termed and one-time services
Integration API and plug-in mechanism to create own provisioning adapters
Foundation
Analytics
Insight analytics
Reporting
Users and Security
Applications
Mobile passes
Server configured and designed (no dev required) mobile passes (Google and Apple wallets)
Supports wallet spend via OTP
Landing pages
Server configured landing pages for
Customer registration
Purchase a gift card (gift pass)
Self Service API
Web Portal
Server configured web portal (no dev required)
Supports use cases for ordering, rewards, subscriptions
Native APP
iOS and Android
Server configured web portal (no dev required)
Supports use cases for ordering, rewards, subscriptions
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Description
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Notes
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Introduction
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The big picture
The platform operator (CRM.COM) onboards Transaction Processors and Service Owners.
Businesses sign up to a service owner.
The business has the option to use the CRM.COM open balance or its own business open balance and also enable or not B2BSpend.
Contacts onboard via self service (API, APP, mobile pass) or via integration with our back office API and automatically get a financial account and a wallet. Multiple business balances are handled in a single multi-tenant wallet.
The business sets up one or more reward schemes with multiple offers. Purchase events are then submitted via POS systems and a transaction processor and awards increase commerce pools balances in the wallet. Redemptions increase the open balance.
The business setup its product catalogue of termed services and takes orders resulting in subscriptions. The CRM.COM Wallet with the business open balance is used to fund the subscriptions. A card on file is stored in the wallet with an auto topup setting.
The business also enables B2BSpend and Promote and Join in order to maximise its market coverage. It also does a demand level aggregation agreement with an external company, a nationwide gym company, where its customers sign up with their wallet code and the business returns an agreed discount against their subscription.
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Identify and Engage
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Identity management and self service API
Ready made app, portal and mobile passes
Transaction Processor and POS integration capturing customer purchases and spend requests
Segment customers into multiple micro-personas using the advanced CRM.COM embedded BI
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Contacts
Customer Events
Communications, Activities Leads, Service Requests
Foundation and Security
Analytics
Apps and Portals
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Differentiate and Reward
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CRM.COM wallet, maintains customer CRM.COM open balance, business open balance, business commerce balance
Passes (gift, topup) crediting the wallet
Offers provide discounts for purchased basket
Rewards provide commerce balance in customer wallet at point of customer interaction based on historic and current purchases
Frictionless flows with demand driven aggregatio. Take the purchase and apply offers refunding into the wallet
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Accounts
Wallet
Passes
Rewards Core
Rewards Offers
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Subscriptions and Commerce
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An enterprise class product catalogue, allowing the brand to easily setup even the most complex product offering, termed or physical
Order to fulfil or order to subscribe with advanced promotions
Subscribe on any billing model: pre-pill, payment driven , post-bill and for multiple frequencies
Diverse subscription models: Termed, Usage (real time charging, allowance based), hybrid termed and usage
Subscription support for a diverse product range: from triple play (voice, data, video) to digital services to usage products (energy, FMCG, horeca)
Extensive support of global and local payment gateways and ability to plug in your own local gateways
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Inventory
Orders
Product Catalogue
Subscriptions
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Business Communities
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A platform topology, with Platform Owner, Service Owner, Business, Merchants (the business network)
B2BSpend across Businesses: Customers spend their open balance across the business network
Promote and Join of Commerce pools across Businesses
Demand based aggregation. Subscribe and buy complimentary products from other businesses with wallet as identity (gym membership, TV subscription) with offers adding discounts to the wallet
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Business Network
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CRM.COM (preface - introduction)
CRM.COM is a SaaS multi-tenant solution that powers the Membership economy
Our business model is based on Business Communities and helps them create positive network effects
With our platform offerings we help proud brands better engage with their customers and move their relationships from one-way and point-to-point transactions to multi-party transactions within our network of business communities
Services like the Commerce wallet for brands, which manages rewards and payments in combination, or subscription programs from as complex as data and telephony to innovative IoT products, make the CRM.COM platform offerings unbeatable.
Other cutting-edge services, such as demand base aggregation and promote & join, makes CRM.COM's offerings one of the most comprehensive in the membership economy market
CRM platform is ideal for any modern brand: from a micro-business with 100 customers to a major brand with 2 million customers; from a simple flat termed subscription model to a complex triple play termed and usage model; to an innovative new-gen model of say meals on subscription.
CRM.COM powers 100% of the technology (i.e., native cloud, first APIs, micro-services) and business models required to run your organization as a membership community, providing four blocks that can be setup as a stepped journey:
Identify your customers onboard and Engage: Onboard and manage your customers, provide omni- channel self-service access, capture purchases with a versatile wallet spend model, segment into micro-personas and obtain insights through a flexible and easy to use BI
Differentiate and Reward to Connect: Based on Customer knowledge (i.e., static data, transactional data, conditional data) organizations can easily build intelligent promotions and reward offers and ultimately build a healthy Community/Ecosystem. A commerce wallet keeping a commerce and statutory balance, supporting all customer payment methods, make these rewards more flexible and attractive
Order and Subscribe to become a Member of the Ecosystem/Community: Organizations can build a flexible product catalogue and introduce a straightforward subscriptions model supporting termed, usage and hybrid methods. An easy to follow and integrated, ordering and purchasing flow make subscriptions more engaging for the consumers and efficient for the businesses.
Build your Business Community/Networks to enrich your services offerings and consumers reach: More services offered to more customers through our Businesses networks. Demand based aggregation with community-wide spend and promotion aggregation drive even more positive network effects of the CRM.COM platform.
CRM.COM Platform - the big picture
2 pages
the whole system in 1 diagram
the key components
CRM.COM Platform Services (process flows)
functional blocks (entities and core processes)
contact, contact identity- registry, contact identity- business, account, wallet, wallet settlement, payment gateway CRM.COM, payment gateway business, payment methods account, reward engine, payment methods wallet, pass plan, pass, device,
subscription, subscription services, billing engine, service delivery engine, usage, usage allowance, usage limit
Mobile app, portal, mobile pass, landing page
Events / actions
Registration SS, New contact back office API, purchase event, purchase event with spend request
Award, autoredeem, redeem pass
order, change service
CRM.COM services / systems:
Platform owner, Service owner, transaction processor, business, service provider (merchant), service point (venue),
External systems:
POS, payment gateway, external transaction processor, provisioning provider, OTT video platform
Flows/ swimlanes
Contact register and rewards
Register SS with and without Registry
POS no integration, submits purchase events, auto-redeem, auto-payout to CRM.COM Wallet open balance
eGift
new pass send and redeem
mobile pass with pass
spend with OTP
Product catalogue, B2B ordering
Business and person contacts, with credit limits and card on file
Product catalogue for IoT security devices
Ordering projects with milestone payments
Device sold
Device rented with a termed service
OTT subscriptions
OTT video platform registers contacts using CRM.COM self service api / email + OTP
Ordering and card on file with self service API
Digital services billed anniversary monthly / quarterly
Activate / deactivate with provisioning
Demand driven aggregation
B2B spend and promote / Join
CRM.COM Technology Architecture (technology stack)
CRM.COM Membership four Block details
A. Identify and Engage
A1. On-boarding and Identification
The platform supports consumer or business contact types. Each business entity can have either Businesses or Consumers as customers.
There are many ways to onboard a new contact :
Bring existing contacts from a third party external system by using CRM.COM Backoffice APIs integration type
Using CRM.COM contact registrations flows for ready made channels of native mobile app and portal or mobile passes
Integration with external front -end apps/portals by using CRM.COM Self Service APIs
Manually, by using CRM.COM back end system or file mapping Import process
Considering contacts Identification the platform use the Customer Identification Medium feature that uniquely identifies a contact in each type of transaction within the platform.
In details CIM can be:
Bank Cards
Mobile phones
Email
Gift Pass
Loyalty ids
A2. Contact Segmentation
Segmentation allows businesses to create groups of contacts based on specific criteria. These criteria can be static (eg demographics) or conditional (eg ownership of a service). As a result, customer segments or personas can be targeted with specific and more personalized offers with obviously better success rates. An integrated BI system coordinate these offers and ultimately make the offers more attractive
A3. Transaction Processor & POS integration
With the Transaction Processor, the platform determines the routing paths for all routing events (e.g. purchase events) between entities in the Platform Community (e.g. service owners, businesses, merchants)
Transaction Acquiring Points (TAP) are defined at the level of the Business/Merchant and uniquely identifying the origin (i.e., transaction terminal) of a routing event (i.e. purchasing transaction).
The Platform additionally supports many type of direct integrations with Terminal devices or other Android devices (i.e., plugins, APIs) so that can easily collect purchase events from all on-boarded businesses
A4. Identify and Engage block, Platform relevant modules
Contacts
Can be either Business or consumers are the central point of CRM.COM, and the starting point of any business flow.
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Customer events
Customer Events capture contact financial and marketing interactions for analytical and award purposes. The classification of an event (i.e., achievement, purchase, referral) determines how CRM.COM will process and award the event.
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Communications
Communication Plans used to communicate with customers segments through various channels such as Email, SMS, and push notifications by using third-party integrations. Communications can be generated either due to a system events, specific calendar plan or directly by the user (add-hoc). Communications usually user for operational or marketing/promotion reasons
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Leads
Leads are the prospective customers of a business. When a lead is created, it is assigned to a queue. The defined stages of this queue well define the process of approaching a new lead and ultimately qualifying it as a win or a loss.
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Activities
Activity is a task that can be scheduled to take place for a Contact, a Lead, a Service Request or an Order as part of a business flow
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Service Requests
Service Requests are customer requests submitted either by a back-end user using CRM.COM, or a Contact via a self-service platform / front-end application (e.g. an app or portal). To configure Service Request settings click on your logged-in user name in the top right-hand-corner of the screen > Settings / CRM / Service Requests.
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Apps & Portals
Applications
CRM.COM provides a modern approach to enabling Contacts to register, earn and keep track of their rewards, view offers and platform community merchants, place online orders and view and manage their subscriptions via CRM.COM’s Consumer App and Portal.
Additionally, Businesses without existed platform POS integration can use the Business App to submit purchases in order to award their contacts.
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Landing Pages
A Landing Page is a stand-alone web page that a Contact, a system user or ‘external’ 'lands' on, typically after navigating to a link for registration or buying a pass (e-gift) purposes. Landing Pages in CRM.COM can be accessed via scanning a QR code or simply navigating to its associated URL address.
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If no landing pages are configured then the following default landing pages will be used for system users.
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Mobile Pass Cards
A mobile pass card is a virtual card relating to a Business, which can be distributed to Contacts who can then store it to their mobile wallet. CRM.COM supports Apple Wallet (for iOS users) or Google Pay (for Android users) to store mobile passes.
Mobile Pass cards are only available when a contact is registered with a specific business and can be used to identify a contact when making purchases from a POS. Additionally mobile pass card track the contact's available balance for that business (act as contacts wallet).
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Analytics
Insights
Insights is a CRM.COM feature that provides a modern, in-depth analysis and understanding of the various events taking place within the platforms' business community.
Events are key components of Insights. Each Insight can be performed for a single Event type.
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Reports
CRM.COM offers a collection of predefined reporting templates to help system users analyze and understand the performance of their business network.
Reports can be run ad hoc or scheduled to run at a predetermined time and then emailed to the sign-in system user.
Users have access to different report template depending on their position (access rights) in the platform's business community structure (eg SO, Business, Merchant, Venue).
Since the user selects the report template, he should use the, selection criteria, column, groups, to create the final report.
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Foundation
Security
Roles/Users
Security settings allow a user to configure policies governing system features, ranging from creating API keys for client applications, to setting-up user roles and finally inviting users.
The configurable security settings vary depending on user’s organization level (i.e. a user logged-in at Service Owner level will not see the same configuration options as someone logged-in at Business level).
User Roles are a group of permissions assigned to users and define the access that users have throughout the system features/modules.
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API keys
Public Key is a unique identifier used by Platform Community Businesses to allow its users to consume self-service APIs, (e.g. if customers will be using a consumer app)
The secret key should be kept confidential and used by the business to perform business functions within the CRM.COM technology stack framework.
Web-hooks
Web-hook is an automated call to an external the platform server providing real time information for a CRM.COM entity, without requiring additional integration. These calls are triggered when a specific event happens.
Each web-hook call can be protected with authentication security, such as username/password or API Key.
For API keys and Web-hooks navigate to Settings / Security / API Keys
Platform
Integration's
CRM.COM provides an easy, flexible and tool agnostic way to integrate with a variety of third party tools.
Integration points are triggered and operated based on various events fired by an enterprise, portal, or application (within the CRM.COM platform) and managed by the CRM.COM event handler.
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Automation's
Automation is a predefined sequence of actions allowing a business to automate repeatable tasks that are necessary to carry out its operations. An automation starts with an event trigger within CRM.COM platform ( e.g. a contact registration or a issue an invoice) and is completed with a well defined sequence of actions (e.g. send contacts an outbound email communication, create a purchase order).
This is an easy you use and intelligent tool that combine events and Platform actions and help the businesses to build efficient automations
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B. Differentiate and Reward
B1. Commerce wallet
The CRM.COM platform supports a very flexible and easy-to-use EMI-grade wallet. This wallet is automatically created for each contact during contact registration (or manually created by the back-end system). Wallets are uniquely identified by contact email or phone and a system id,
CRM.COM wallet can be multi-tenant, upon business community members approval, and keeps balances for multiple business.
This wallet maintain two type of balances (for every business the user is registered,):
CRM.COM open balance: this is money that can be spent on any business of the CRM.COM platform community, or paid out back to contact payment method. Open balance can also be updated with top-up actions through CRM.COM registered payment gateway.
CRM.COM commerce balance: this is money that can be spent only on specific business (creator of the balance) of the CRM.COM platform community, or paid out back to contact payment method. Commerce balance is updated through active business rewards, is happening at the moment of customer interaction and is based on historic and current purchase events. The open balance can also be updated with top-up actions through Business registered payment gateway.
A contact commerce balance redeemed into an open balance when a purchase event is triggered. (Commerce pool balance).
The CRM.COM platform closely monitors every transaction that takes place through its wallet
An interesting concept of the CRM.COM wallet is that of B2B spending. This feature allows the contact of a business A to use its wallet and spent on a business B (following a business agreement between A and B)
Passes (i.e., vouchers or gift cards) in either printed or electronic format can also credit a Contact’s wallet with their values.
Another interesting process close related to CRM.COM wallet is this of Settlement.
By using this process the Business of the CRM.COM platform community settle:
Commerce balance (awards) and redeem rules between Business to Business and Business to Merchant
Open balance and spend rules Business to Business and Business to Merchant
B2. Rewards
Rewards are the mechanism by which the CRM.COM platform credit transaction balance into customer wallets immediately after customer interaction, based on actual purchases or historical data (eg customer subscriptions).
Reward Offers award Contacts with a cashback amount which can be redeemed for future purchases, or provide an instant discount for their current purchase.
The purpose of rewards is to create incentives, based on the organization's strategy and consumer profile, to attract new customers and minimize churn within the organization's customer base.
Rewards are based on a robust and diverse platform functionality and are grouped into 4 areas according the business outcome the businesses are looking for
Rewards for compensating customer Achievements
Rewards focused on increasing customer spend
Rewards focused on improving membership at Business/Merchant Community and Platform levels.
Rewards focused on driving traffic at Business/Merchant Community and Platform levels.
In more detail, reward typically occurs on customer transactions (customer events, time events, contact events) and is based on a specific product (e.g., SKU, category), customer segments, or a combination of the two.
Promotional offers are another important feature of the CRM.COM platform similar to rewards. Promotional offers are structured similarly to Reward Offers, but are independent of Reward Schemes. Offers are valid for all contacts limited by customer segmentation only(if applicable) and provide instant discount on basket purchased.
B3. Differentiate & Reward block, Platform relevant modules
Accounts
A contact’s account is a ledger of all financial transactions carried out between the business and the contact.
Financial transaction is an event carried out by a contact(i.e., top-up the account), or a system process on behalf of the contact(i.e., issuing an invoice for a recurring subscription service, and typically affects the contact’s account
Both person and company type contacts can have accounts.
A contact account will normally be created upon contact creation
For each contact we may have multiple accounts (one is primary) in different currencies (one currency per account) and each account can set-up its own credit limit.
Contact running balance (debit & credit transactions) is calculated for a specific accounting period.
Accounts can have three different statuses:
Active - Account is fully functional. New accounts are automatically set to Active.
Suspended - No financial transactions can be created except those that credit the account. Account must be settled before becoming active again.
Terminated - This is a final and irreversible state. No any type of financial transactions can be executed. There are limitations to setting an account in a terminated state (i.e., active services, open balance).
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Wallet
A multi-currency, real time, multi Tenant digital Wallet allows the contact/owner to perform various actions such as paying for orders/purchases, accumulating awards for purchases per business, redeeming awards, topping-up funds using a payment method, transferring funds etc.
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Passes
Passes (aka vouchers or gift cards) can be purchased in either printed or electronic format, have a predefined, or defined on purchasing time value and used by the beneficiary as a form of payment during purchasing.
In CRM.COM, when a pass is redeemed, it can either credit a Contact’s wallet with the value of the pass which can be used for future purchases (i.e., gift cards), or used to enable an offer during a purchase (i.e., price reduction in case of promotions).
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Rewards Schemes
Reward Schemes are configured to target specific groups of Contacts (e.g. owners of a specific termed service), and award them through reward offers for their transactions with the platform (i.e., product purchasing). A Reward Scheme can have multiple reward offers and can control how consumers can sign-up to the scheme.
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Rewards Offers
A Reward Offer definition defines a set of goals which must be fulfilled by Contacts in order to earn an award. Multiple Reward Offers can be created for the same Reward Scheme, and a Contact can be awarded by multiple offers for the same purchase from one or more schemes.
Upon registration of a business, a Reward Scheme is automatically created along with four default Reward Offers :
€5 Registration Offer - Awarded upon successful registration of a contact, this is a cashback offer
20% Birthday Offer - Valid only on the day of the Contact’s birthday, this is an instant discount offer and applies only to the Contact’s first purchase on their birthday
5% Cashback on all Purchases - Awarded when purchasing any product at any location, this is a cashback offer
€1 Referral Cashback - This cashback offer is awarded to the Contact if the referred person registers using the Contact’s referral code and makes an initial purchase
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Contacts can be classified into different tiers (e.g. Silver, Gold, Platinum) based on the revenue they have generated for the business within a given time frame. Tiers are measured in value units which have an exchange rate against the business base currency.
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C. Subscriptions and Commerce
C1. Product Catalog
CRM.COM platform support an enterprise class product catalogue, allowing the businesses to easily setup even the most complex product offering, termed or physical (i.e., type, classification, composition).
Aside from the standard product attributes and basic pricing information, the product catalogue can also include business rules and restrictions, such as discounted and rental prices, product bundling, and in the case of services - price terms defining subscriptions for the ordered service.
It is important to note that the business community structure of the CRM.COM platform is clearly represented in the product catalog management. In short, all products created at the business level are available for order from all Merchants/Service Providers of that business However, any Products created at the Merchant/Service Provider level are only available for order by that Merchant/Provider Services.
A unique SKU code assist to identify products throughout the system, and is useful for integration with systems.
Product synchronization feature updates the products in CRM.COM product catalogs, either through an API call or through a file mapping and import process. In short New products are created along with their accompanying definitions (i.e., new product ‘Homemade Lemonade’, new product category ‘Cold Drinks’) and existing products are updated using the transmitted data (i.e., price of ‘Homemade Lemonade’ is updated)
A flexible and easy to use Price Rate Model can easily support any type on contemporary product/service pricing method (flat, tiered, volume, stair-step)
C2. Promotions
Promotions are configured at the Business level, and their purpose is to apply a percentage or fixed amount instant discount, either to the basket total amount, or to specific basket items at checkout.
Promotions are independent of reward schemes
C3. Orders
Order is a request by Platform Contacts (service consumers) to purchase physical goods or services from a Business. From the supply side the Businesses use orders to serve the Contact’s request (i.e., order to fulfill, order to subscribe) and receive payment for the order.
CRM.COM platform support a very flexible, multi-domain and end-to-end order process (i.e., initiate, process, charging/invoicing, delivering/provisioning).
CRM.COM platform support all possible ways of physical products/services supply:
Delivery : when the contact create an order set a delivery address (according platform businesses structure)
Pick-up : The contact designates the business locations from which the ordered items will be collected
Direct Sale : This supply method is applicable only for digital services
The supply method is important since it could affect pricing, applicable taxes, and promotions.
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C4. Inventory
CRM.COM inventory feature refers to the type and quantity of stockable, physical goods residing in the Business’s warehouse, with the ultimate intention of either selling or renting these items to contacts, or the business’s organizations.
Usually each business has a single warehouse which is automatically created when it signs-up to CRM.COM. The stock balance is adjusted accordingly whenever a stock item changes ownership (i.e., stock-in, stock-out, stock adjustment).
Device in CRM.COM platform, is a physical item which is uniquely identifiable (i,e,. barcode, electronic id).
A device can belong to a contact (i.e., a mobile phone) and have been registered on CRM.COM, with no any charge, for just provisioning, communication (e.g. for receiving push notifications), or usage monitoring purposes.
When the device belong to the business and is a stockable item then it follows the std ordering process.
C4. Subscription
Subscription is the outcome of an ordering process and define a collection of services a Contact subscribes to. Apart from the services provided, the subscription also outlines how, and when the Contact will be billed, as well as the payment terms.
Each contact can have many subscriptions but only one per billing cycle (services billed at the same time interval).
CRM.COM platform TMForum enterprise grade Subscription module support for a diverse product range, from triple play (voice, data, video) to digital services to usage products (Energy, FMCG, Horeca).
Subscription module cover a broad area of business models. Can easily support models like Termed (i.e., one time, period), Usage (real time charging, allowance based) or Hybrid.
Additional services such as trial management and automatic renewal or expiration, make the subscription service more attractive.
During the subscription period, the CRM.COM platform supports several features to better curate the subscription lifecycle. Add a service, cancel subscription, change service, stop subscription, continue subscription, change terms, activate, deactivate are some of them.
C5. Billing
CRM.COM’s powerful billing engine manages both traditional and innovative billing models. Features include:
Managing recurring billing for multiple cycles and complex invoicing of high volume subscribers
Multiple billing models driven by the subscription’s billing terms (advanced post paid), or by payments made by the contacts (prepaid)
Usage billing service
Managing subscription service's billing cycles on pre-bill or post-bill basis
Automated billing payment collections during the billing run
It is important to note that all billing terms for a service are included in the Product Catalog (ie, amount to be paid each billing cycle, billing cycles, auto-renewal, trial period). Therefore, when ordering, the contact selects not only the service required, but also the billing details.
Regarding services provisioning CRM.COM platform support provisioning event commands to manage termed and one-time services. Additionally integration APIs and plug-in mechanism help platform partners to easily create their own provisioning adapters.
Finally CRM.COM platform provide extensive support of many local or global payment processors. Platform partners can easily configure ready made processors or use plug-in functionality to onboard new. This make payment process for platform community, more engaging
C6. Subscriptions and Commerce, Platform relevant modules
Products
Products are the physical goods and services that a Business and/or Merchants/Service Providers sell. Products defined in CRM.COM can be sold by placing an order, or by issuing an invoice.
Its is important to ensure that you have defined all the relevant product settings (i.e., product type, product classification) prior to configuring your Products (setting/commerce/ orders & products).
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Orders
Ordering is an end-to-end process, starting with placing a new order, processing its various steps, charging for the items, and finally delivering the ordered items using the selected delivery method.
The ordering process is managed through order queues and queue stages. On creation, an order is assigned to an order queue. An order queue defines a set of queue stages that orders must progress through during their lifecycle, until they complete or fail.
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Inventory
Upon onboarding, each company automatically get a single warehouse. Items belonging to this warehouse can be sold or rented on the platform's business network. The inventory balance is adjusted accordingly each time a stock item changes ownership. Returned items are also taken into account in this balance calculation.
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Subscriptions
A contact is subscribed to a set of services through a successful ordering process and billed for them on a recurring basis.
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This doc outlines the suggested structure / key areas of the CRM.COM Platform Overview. The aim of this overview is to allow an integrator / key user to understand what CRM.COM does in terms of key functional areas.
The content
Contacts
CIM (identify contact for customer events) and GDPR
Contact Community
Segmentation
Dynamic segmentation of contacts
Easily definable with sentence like queries
Segment on demographics, transaction history, subscriptions owned
Use it for pricing, notifications, tiering
Onboarding and Authentication
Multiple authentication methods
OIDC
Customer Events
Capture a diverse set of customer events
Purchase event
Full purchase ticket with SKUs and optional spend request of the customer open balance
Referral event
Achievement event
Financial KPI event
Accounts and financials
Multi-currency, multi-country, multi-tax
Payment methods
Methods
Primary and backup
CRM wallet
Subscription payment methods
Support for multiple payment types
Cards, wallets, account debit based
Payment gateways
Payment intends
Ready made gateways
Plug-in gateway
The wallet
EMI grade wallet
Multi-tenant wallet at the option of the tenant (business). One wallet keeps balances of multiple businesses
Wallet maintains
a CRM.COM open balance - open money that can be spend at any business or paid out back to contact payment method
Topup via a CRM.COM registered payment gateway
a business balance
business open balance - open money that can be spend at the business or paid out back to contact payment method
Topup via a business registered payment gateway
Commerce pool balance - a commerce balance redeemed into an open balance against a purchase
Wallet identity
email or phone and a wallet code
Wallet fees
Fees on transactions
B2BSpend
Open balance of a contact at Business A can be spent at Business B
Promote and Join
A business promotes a commerce pool
Another business joins
The two businesses agree a contribution
Passes
Promotion, Gift, Top-up
Printed, electronic
Settlement
The process that settles
Commerce pool award and redeem between business to business and business to merchant
Open balance spend between business to business and business to merchant
Rewards
Powerful and diverse offers
Reward Achievement
Increase spend
Improve membership
Increase visits
Award
at transaction, SKU, segment or combinations
award against a commerce pool (for example coffees on any weekday)in the customer wallet
Manual or auto-redeem
Redeem converts a commerce pool amount into an open balance in the customer wallet
Instant or deferred redeem
Instant redeem is applied on the transaction in hand; deferred from next transaction
Business Network
A diverse business community
Platform Owner (Cloud Operator)
Service Owner - owns the service and can bill tenants for the service. May use a contact registry where all businesses have a common customer base
Transaction Processor - serves multiple service owners and routes purchases to multiple businesses that have a common transaction point (i.e terminals)
Business (Tenant)
Merchant (Service Provider)
Venue (Service Point)
organisation groups
teams
Contact Registry
Ownership
Explicit ownership(i.e products)
Implicit
assignable (i.e SRs)
Fulfilled by (orders) and serviced by (subscriptions)
Data access and data access permissions (roadmap)
CRM
Activities
Communications
Leads
Service Requests
Commerce
Product Catalogue
Products (types, families, brands, categories)
Physical (traceable and non-traceable) and services (termed, usage, one-time, expenses)
Advanced compositions (flat, fixed bundle, flexible bundle)
Variant products with variations and modifiers
Dependencies and tiering
Pricing
Extensive price rate models
Promotions
Licensing
Add a license dimension to your product and provision it to 3rd party systems (ideal for XaaS models)
Orders
Multi-domain order management
Physical goods (complex and simple)
Project based with invoice milestones
Termed and one time services
Fulfilment policies
Order queues
Quotation process
Inventory management and devices
Warehouse and stock
Devices
Device Management
Ownership lifecycle
Subscriptions
TMForum enterprise grade subscriptions
Diverse subscription models
Termed and one time
Auto renew or expiring
Pre-bill, post-bill, payment driven
Trial management
Subscription actions for any industry
add service, regret, change service, pause, resume, change terms, activate, deactivate and many more
Usage based billing
Usage limit and usage charge level
Device based subscriptions
bill it, provision it, charge it a fee
Rental, purchase or bring own device
Provisioning
Trigering provisioning commands to manage termed and one-time services
Integration API and plug-in mechanism to create own provisioning adapters
Foundation
Analytics
Insight analytics
Reporting
Users and Security
Applications
Mobile passes
Server configured and designed (no dev required) mobile passes (Google and Apple wallets)
Supports wallet spend via OTP
Landing pages
Server configured landing pages for
Customer registration
Purchase a gift card (gift pass)
Self Service API
Web Portal
Server configured web portal (no dev required)
Supports use cases for ordering, rewards, subscriptions
Native APP
iOS and Android
Server configured web portal (no dev required)
Supports use cases for ordering, rewards, subscriptions
Item | Description | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | Position the doc, who is it for, what is it for | |
| 2 | The big picture | The platform operator (CRM.COM) onboards Transaction Processors and Service Owners. Businesses sign up to a service owner. The business has the option to use the CRM.COM open balance or its own business open balance and also enable or not B2BSpend. Contacts onboard via self service (API, APP, mobile pass) or via integration with our back office API and automatically get a financial account and a wallet. Multiple business balances are handled in a single multi-tenant wallet. The business sets up one or more reward schemes with multiple offers. Purchase events are then submitted via POS systems and a transaction processor and awards increase commerce pools balances in the wallet. Redemptions increase the open balance. The business setup its product catalogue of termed services and takes orders resulting in subscriptions. The CRM.COM Wallet with the business open balance is used to fund the subscriptions. A card on file is stored in the wallet with an auto topup setting. The business also enables B2BSpend and Promote and Join in order to maximise its market coverage. It also does a demand level aggregation agreement with an external company, a nationwide gym company, where its customers sign up with their wallet code and the business returns an agreed discount against their subscription. | Make a diagram |
| 3 | Identify and Engage |
| Contacts Customer Events Communications, Activities Leads, Service Requests Foundation and Security Analytics Apps and Portals |
| 4 | Differentiate and Reward |
| Accounts Wallet Passes Rewards Core Rewards Offers |
| 5 | Subscriptions and Commerce |
| Inventory Orders Product Catalogue Subscriptions |
| 6 | Business Communities |
| Business Network |
| 7 | |||
| 8 | |||
| 9 | |||
| 10 |
CRM.COM (preface - introduction)
CRM.COM is a SaaS multi-tenant solution that powers the Membership economy
Our business model is based on Business Communities and helps them create positive network effects
With our platform offerings we help proud brands better engage with their customers and move their relationships from one-way and point-to-point transactions to multi-party transactions within our network of business communities
Services like the Commerce wallet for brands, which manages rewards and payments in combination, or subscription programs from as complex as data and telephony to innovative IoT products, make the CRM.COM platform offerings unbeatable.
Other cutting-edge services, such as demand base aggregation and promote & join, makes CRM.COM's offerings one of the most comprehensive in the membership economy market
CRM platform is ideal for any modern brand: from a micro-business with 100 customers to a major brand with 2 million customers; from a simple flat termed subscription model to a complex triple play termed and usage model; to an innovative new-gen model of say meals on subscription.
CRM.COM powers 100% of the technology (i.e., native cloud, first APIs, micro-services) and business models required to run your organization as a membership community, providing four blocks that can be setup as a stepped journey:
Identify your customers onboard and Engage: Onboard and manage your customers, provide omni- channel self-service access, capture purchases with a versatile wallet spend model, segment into micro-personas and obtain insights through a flexible and easy to use BI
Differentiate and Reward to Connect: Based on Customer knowledge (i.e., static data, transactional data, conditional data) organizations can easily build intelligent promotions and reward offers and ultimately build a healthy Community/Ecosystem. A commerce wallet keeping a commerce and statutory balance, supporting all customer payment methods, make these rewards more flexible and attractive
Order and Subscribe to become a Member of the Ecosystem/Community: Organizations can build a flexible product catalogue and introduce a straightforward subscriptions model supporting termed, usage and hybrid methods. An easy to follow and integrated, ordering and purchasing flow make subscriptions more engaging for the consumers and efficient for the businesses.
Build your Business Community/Networks to enrich your services offerings and consumers reach: More services offered to more customers through our Businesses networks. Demand based aggregation with community-wide spend and promotion aggregation drive even more positive network effects of the CRM.COM platform.
CRM.COM Platform - the big picture
2 pages
the whole system in 1 diagram
the key components
CRM.COM Platform Services (process flows)
functional blocks (entities and core processes)
contact, contact identity- registry, contact identity- business, account, wallet, wallet settlement, payment gateway CRM.COM, payment gateway business, payment methods account, reward engine, payment methods wallet, pass plan, pass, device,
subscription, subscription services, billing engine, service delivery engine, usage, usage allowance, usage limit
Mobile app, portal, mobile pass, landing page
Events / actions
Registration SS, New contact back office API, purchase event, purchase event with spend request
Award, autoredeem, redeem pass
order, change service
CRM.COM services / systems:
Platform owner, Service owner, transaction processor, business, service provider (merchant), service point (venue),
External systems:
POS, payment gateway, external transaction processor, provisioning provider, OTT video platform
Flows/ swimlanes
Contact register and rewards
Register SS with and without Registry
POS no integration, submits purchase events, auto-redeem, auto-payout to CRM.COM Wallet open balance
eGift
new pass send and redeem
mobile pass with pass
spend with OTP
Product catalogue, B2B ordering
Business and person contacts, with credit limits and card on file
Product catalogue for IoT security devices
Ordering projects with milestone payments
Device sold
Device rented with a termed service
OTT subscriptions
OTT video platform registers contacts using CRM.COM self service api / email + OTP
Ordering and card on file with self service API
Digital services billed anniversary monthly / quarterly
Activate / deactivate with provisioning
Demand driven aggregation
B2B spend and promote / Join