Introduction
This document gives an overview of how the CRM.COM platform powers the membership economy and ultimately helps proud brands evolve from tactical transactions to strategic memberships.
In the table bellow we present all major CRM.COM Platform components with a short description. All services supported by platform is a combination/sequence of those components
The diagrams at the end of the document show how the four CRM.COM platform products were used to develop three typical services. Here its obvious how the platform uses various platform features to implement specific services.
These charts are a clear representation of the CRM.COM Membership Economy approach.
The purpose of this document is to enable integrator/key user and provide an outline of what the CRM.COM platform can do in terms of key functional areas and the four products offered. With a similar way platform can support any service associated with our target vertical industries
CRM.COM Product Positioning
CRM.COM is a SaaS multi-tenant Platform 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
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 products that can be setup and used as a stepped journey:
Identity Management: Onboard and manage your customers, provide omni- channel self service access, capture purchases with a versatile wallet spend model, segment into micro-personas
Commerce Wallet & Digital Promotions: Promotion and reward offers targeting customer segments and a commerce wallet keeping a commerce and open balance and all customer payment methods
Subscriptions and Commerce: An advanced product catalogue and versatile ordering and a powerful subscription platform supporting from the simple termed service to XaaS to advanced usage based for IoT and triple play.
Business Community: Enrich the services offered with B2B community services and products. B2B Commerce Pool with spending across the network and B2B promotions-based aggregation to collaborate with any organization.
CRM.COM Platform - The big picture
CRM.COM Platform basic components
Below you can find a summary table with the main components of the CRM.COM platform together a brief description of their purpose/functionality.
The intention of this table is to make it clear for each integrator/key user what the main components of the platform are and ultimately to have an idea of their main functions
Item | Description |
contact | Contact is the core entity of CRM.COM Platform and represents a physical person or a company with which a business interacts. Contact includes information such as emails, phones, addresses, demographic data, Financial, Subscription data and marketing settings. |
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 more personalized way (i.e.,Pricing, Communication Plans) with obviously better success rates. Segments can also be created by importing list of contacts from Analytics tools like Mixpanel or marketing tools like Mailchimp |
communications | Communication is the interaction between contacts and businesses using different channels. CRM.COM Platform supports Email, SMS, notifications. The communication is triggered by either due to a system one-time event or a system scheduled event or directly from the user. Communications plan facilitate this communication to engage contacts with the businesses. They are scheduled to run either once or repeatedly, they have a start date/time, end date/time, and a repeating time interval. For each plan, the recipients are defined using the predefined customer segments. |
account | Account is a ledger of financial transactions carried out between a company and its contact / customers (i.e., invoices, payments). Account keeps the running balance of a contact / customer and an manage debit and credit transactions posted against. Account created upon contact creation |
account financial transactions |
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contact registry | Contact registry is a directory of Contacts who are registered in CRM.COM, platform (i.e., name, email address, phone, language). The Contact Registry can be enabled and maintained either at the Service Owner level or at the Business level. In the first case Businesses cannot register/create their own Contacts, but they must sign-up a contact to their business by using Service Owner Contact Registry. In the second case Businesses can register Contacts of their own. |
wallet | The CRM.COM support an EMI grade wallet, which is created upon contact creation and maintains multi-currency balances for a contact. Wallet is a mini ledger that can easily be topped up by credit events or by awarding through a reward offer. CRM.COM wallet have two type of balances. Open balance, with no spending conditions, fed by wallet journal transactions and Commerce balance with spending conditions, fed by rewards. CRM.COM wallet store money that can be used to fund various transactions for a specific business or CRM.COM Partners Ecosystem. |
wallet payment method | CRM.COM wallet can have its own payment methods that show how the wallet is funded whenever required. Multiple payment methods, of type card can be added but the first added is also the primary one by default. |
payment methods | A payment method shows a contact 's preferred source for paying off physical goods and services purchased from the business such as Cash, Cards, Account Debit (SEPA direct debit) or any kind of Wallets such as Google Pay. The CRM Wallet is also considered as a contact Payment method. Payment methods are classified into online and offline ones. Online payment methods indicate that money will be collected through a Payment Gateway Service. Cards, Account Debits and Wallets are examples of online payment methods. On the other hand, offline payment methods indicate that the business collects the money manually like payments using Cash or Cheques. A contact might have multiple online payment methods. Similar to contact payment methods, payment methods can be configured for Business, Merchant/Service provider. CRM Wallet is considered, by default, as one of the contact’s payment methods. The CRM Wallet is the primary contact payment method in case the contact have non define any other |
events | Events are actions resulting from a CRM.COM log entry which has been triggered by a system user, a system process, a Contact or an external system, and successfully processed by CRM.COM. Events can be consumed by various CRM.COM processes/services like segmentation/awards reports/insights, webhooks. |
passes | A pass credits a customer’s wallet (open/commerce balance) or provides a discount on a product or service being purchased. A pass has an expiration date and spend conditions may apply. There are three types of passes:
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pass plan | Pass Plan is the configuration framework mandate the the behavior (i.e., printed, electronic) and characteristics (i.e., number, value) of the passes.. A Pass Plan, control and generate one or more passes. |
product catalogue | A product catalog includes a list of physical goods and services that a business is selling, together their basic characteristics, pricing information and promotions. All the products of the catalogue can be sold through an order or an invoice. The product catalog also includes business rules and restrictions (i.e., discounted prices, rental prices, bundles structure) A product catalogue support multiple prices based on specific platform business rules (i.e., country of operation, currency) |
orders | Order is the process of fulfilling, a platform contact (consumer) request to purchase 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:
The supply method is important since it could affect pricing, applicable taxes, and promotions. An intelligent Quotation platform feature can give an accurate estimation of the cost of an order. The Quotation is automatically generated during the ordering process, so that Contacts can be informed of the order cost, when a payment is due, and how much they will have to pay at the time of ordering. During the ordering process, the quoted amount is automatically adjusted according to the selected items and quantities for ordering. |
rewards | Rewards are the mechanism by which the CRM.COM platform credit transaction balance into customer wallets immediately after customer interaction. Reward schemes targets specific market groups(i.e., students, service subscribers) and through specific group of reward offers provides awards targeted against the contact transaction / behavior, such as purchases, referrals, service upgrade and profile completeness. Each reward offer, through a set or rules, defines an objective that contacts should succeed in order to earn an award in the form of cashback (conditional or not). The award can be subsequently redeemed (instantly or deferred) into an open balance. 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. Very similar to rewards are the Promotional offers. These 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. |
subscriptions | 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. A Subscription groups together services per billing cycle and its state depends on its services' states (active, inactive, churned). Each contact/subscriber can have many subscriptions but only one per billing cycle (services billed at the same time interval). CRM.COM TMForum enterprise grade Subscription module, support for a diverse services range, from triple play (voice, data, video) to digital services to usage products (Energy, IoT, 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, automatic renewal or expiration, add a service, cancel subscription, change service, stop subscription, continue subscription, change terms, make the subscription service more flexible for the businesses and convenient for the contacts/user |
billing | Billing is the CRM.COM Process responsible for billing subscriptions for their billing cycle on a pre-bill or post-bill basis. More specific CRM.COM billing :
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inventory | An inventory represents a storage place for traceable and non traceable products. These products can be retrieved and transferred to contacts or merchants/service providers; increasing or decreasing the inventory stock. These stockable products can be sold or rented to contacts/customers, as well as to be returned back to the inventory owner/business. A single business, can hold only one warehouse with stockable products. |
Apps and Portals | Apps & Portals is a CRM.COM modern approach helping businesses use a super flexible and non-code tool to build their App/Portal channels and prospect contacts to easily self-onboard to a business and monitor their transactions. More specific CRM.COM Apps & Portals supports 5 main operations areas :
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mobile pass | Mobile Pass Cards are all the the non payment associated cards, such as coupons, loyalty cards, subscription cards, rewards. These mobile pass cards will be set up by the CRM.com user and shall be linked to contacts that ‘enroll’ into this card scheme. |
landing page | 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. |
Analytics | CRM.COM Analytics consists of two main functions
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leads | Leads are the prospective customers of a business. When a lead is created, it is assigned to a structured process / 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. |
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 |
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). It's compulsory to provide a predefined Queue (structured process) for the Service Request |
OTT Subscription & Billing basic stream
These streams are clearly focused on OTT organizations (i.e. media) without devices associated with services and the CRM.COM Subscriptions & Commerce product.
Businesses use CRM.COM's user interface processes to help users place an order and sign up for business offers.
CRM.COM billing helps businesses better manage monetization of their offerings. Other additional services, such as segmentation and communication automation, make the relevant flow more efficient.
The Service provisioning components helps businesses better control their offerings, avoid lost revenue, and deliver a great customer experience at the same time.
Ready made integrations with various payment processors help businesses provide a seamless payment experience
e-Ordering and Rewards basic stream
The following flow represents an end-to-end process where a single organization/business uses a Finance & Rewards product to reward an online ordering process.
This stream is mainly focused on the Horeca/Retail Industry.
Within this stream we can find many innovative CRM.COM services (eg portal, mobile). This makes the user experience more engaging and at the same time minimizes time to market for organizations involved in the process.
CRM.COM wallet and ready integrations with business terminals make the cash out/redemption process even more flexible
Purchasing, Rewards Scheme and Cashback basic stream
The flow below presents a std rewards solution as it has been developed for a major Greek payment processor, focused on the Horeca/Retail industry and supported by the CRM.COM Financials & Rewards product.
This solution provides cashback to the consumer account based on purchase events that occur at business terminals and offers provided by business rewards programs.
