THE BASICS

Before looking at how the Business Network is created and managed, it’s essential to understand some basic terms used throughout CRM.COM regarding the Business Network.

Organisation

An Organisation is an entity and can have a type of Service Owner, Business, Merchant/Service Provider and Venue/Service Point. System users can be invited to join an organisation at any level, except for the Venue/Service Point level, which doesn’t support users.

• Service Owner - Facilitates the service whereby businesses can register (in a self-service manner) and can also support it’s own Contact Registry

• Business - A business can:

  • Register with a service owner for rewards and/or subscriptions

  • Use the service owner’s Contact Registry or maintain its own

  • Have an account and payment method

  • Define and manage Reward Offers, Communication Plans, Organisation Groups, Products and Inventory

  • Create Activities, Service Requests, Orders

• Merchant/Service Provider - Merchants/Service Providers are franchises or partners in reward schemes (digital promotions) who extend the operations of a Business. Within the Rewards context, the term Merchant is widely used, while in Subscriptions & Billing context, the term Service Provider is used. Merchants/Service Providers can:

  • Have an account and payment methods

  • Define Reward Offers, Communication Plans, Organisation Groups and Products

  • Can create Activities and Orders

• Venue/Service Point - Venues/Service Points are the Business and Merchant/Service Provider's physical locations (shops) and can be assigned to fulfil orders. Within the Rewards context, the term Venue is widely used, while in Subscriptions & Billing context, the term Service Point is used. Venues/Service Points can optionally be grouped under Organisation Groups. Users cannot belong to a Venue/Service Point.

The following diagram depicts the hierarchical structure of the Business Network.

Organisation State

The state of an organisation indicates its current operational condition, which also determines the permitted actions which the Organisation can perform. The organisation state applies only to Businesses, Merchants/Service Providers and Venues/Service Points and can be one of the following:

• Active - No restrictions apply

• Inactive - No actions can be carried out by the Organisation, and users can't log in

• Suspend - Certain restrictions apply, but users can log in

Refer to this document’s Changing the Organisation State section for a more detailed explanation of each state’s restrictions.

Contact

A customer of the Organisation registered in the system can be a person or a company.

Contact Registry

A contact registry holds the personal details of Contacts registered in CRM.COM. The contact registry can be enabled and maintained at the Service Owner or Business level. Refer to the Contacts manual for further details about the Contact Registry.

Organisation Groups

Organisation Groups are defined at the Business level and are used to group organisations of type Merchant/Service Provider, Venue/Service Point based on common business characteristics. Refer to Settings to find out how to configure and use Organisation Groups.

Teams

Provides a method of grouping system users into manageable Teams so that they can be assigned to and carry out tasks such as Activities or Service Requests. Only users of a Business type organisation can be grouped into teams.

TAPs

Transaction Acquiring Points can be defined at the level of the Business, Merchant/Service Provider and Venue/Service Point and are typically used for uniquely identifying a device (e.g. POS terminal) where purchase transactions can be recorded, or for additional miscellaneous transaction actions, such as sending a receipt to a third-party platform to be printed. When a purchase event is posted to CRM.COM, the unique TAP code is also provided to be able to trace a purchase and also identify the Organisation from where it originated.

Masquerading

Allows a user of an Organisation to temporarily act as a user of a child organisation based on the Business Network hierarchical structure, e.g. a user logged in as a Service Owner can masquerade as a Business user, and a Business user as a Merchant/Service Provider.

Getting Started

This chapter covers the most significant settings when creating and managing organisations in CRM.COM. Bear in mind that you will be allowed to perform varying actions depending on the organisation level you have signed in at or masqueraded to and your user role permissions.

Organisations Core Behaviour

The table below defines the core behaviour of each Organisation type in regards to creating and managing child organisations.

Creating & Managing the Business Network

To view or create any type of Organisation, you must be a system user yourself. You can become a system user, either by being invited (by another user) or because you registered an organisation. It’s a good idea to read the Security manual to better understand how to define users roles and invite users to your Organisation.

To view or create an organisation, use the sidebar menu to navigate to one of the following options. The sidebar menu options differ according to how you have logged into the system (i.e. Service Owner user or Business user or Merchant/Service Provider user) or what type of Organisation you have masqueraded as.

• If you are signed in/masqueraded as a Service Owner user, select Businesses - the Businesses summary screen is displayed, and you can manually create a new business from here.

• If you are signed in/masqueraded as a Business user, select Business Network - the organisation types visible under this option depend on how your Business Network Model has been configured. You will see either My Merchants & My Venues or My Service Providers & My Service Points.

• If you are signed in/masqueraded as a Merchant/Service Provider user - the only available option is My Venues/My Service Points to view or manually create Venues/Service Points.

When creating an organisation, the editable information varies depending on the type of Organisation being created. Contact information and images are typically available for all organisation types, but there are also details and settings relevant only to specific organisations. These are covered below as they play an important role in the operation of the organisations.

Business Configuration

A Business can self-sign up to a Service Owner, or a Service Owner user can create it via the back-end.

When creating or editing a Business from the back-end system, attention should be paid to the following settings:

Address - If Google Places is configured, search and select the Business address and Google Place id.

Contact Registry - If the Service Owner supports a Contact registry, then the Business will have the option of using it too, if disabled, then the Business maintains its own Contact Registry.

Create a Business Admin user - When creating a new Business (or Merchant/Service Provider) via the back-end system, it’s also possible to create and invite an Admin user on-the-fly. Simply enable the respective toggle, and invite the User by completing their personal information in the area below. This action can also be performed by navigating to Settings > Security > User Roles & Users > Users > Invite User.

Enable WiFi Network - A Business, Merchant/Service Provider and/or Venue/Service Point can define whether WiFi Networks are supported (usually when they provide services related to Internet access, VoIP and IPTV to residential and Business customers).

Enabling a WiFi Platform, a set of attributes should be provided

• WiFi Platform - Defines the WiFi platform (e.g. Unifi) that such service will be provided.

• Site Identifier - An id provided by the WiFi Platform to identify the Organisation and keep track of service usage.

• WiFi Network - Defines the wireless networks specific to each Organisation's physical location, enabling customers to connect and join these networks. Additional actions can be performed on such networks, such as enabling and/or disabling them.

• Guest Portal - Defines the portal URL endpoint, where customers will land when joining a WiFi Network. Such a portal is responsible for authenticating customers, granting access to the Internet, or placing an order for additional usage (if already consumed)

Opening Hours - Optionally specify the Business' operating hours for ordering delivery and pick-up. Delivery and pick-up can be disabled using the toggles Is delivery closed? and Is pick-up closed?

Commercial Terms - Set the business' commercial terms by signing in or navigating to the Business level > select your signed-in user name in the top right-hand corner of the screen > My Business.

• Apply award settlement only if amount was spent? - The Business can define whether settlement takes place for the Merchants the moment a Contact is awarded or upon the Contact spending

• Contact Self-submit Purchases - Contacts will be able to submit a purchase by scanning a QR code or Barcode and be awarded. A Business can define a set of soft rules to prevent unauthorised behaviour, such as the maximum number of purchases and/or purchased amount that a contact can submit.

Merchant/Service Provider Configuration

A Merchant/Service Provider would typically be created by a back-end Business user or a user who has masqueraded to a Business.

When creating a Merchant/Service Provider, attention should be paid to the following settings:

Address - If Google Places is configured, set the Business address and Google Place id - this is particularly useful if front-end apps are used.

Create a Merchant/Service Provider Admin user - Create and invite an Admin user on-the-fly. Simply enable the respective toggle, and invite the User by completing their personal information in the area below. This action can also be performed by navigating to Settings > Security > User Roles & Users > Users > Invite User.

Once created, select the Merchant/Service Provider to edit any of the following optional configurations:

Transaction Acquiring Points - Define the device where transactions are captured and/or processed on-site. A TAP’s main identification attribute is the code, and it can have one of the following types:

• External Reference - mapped to external reference integration

• POS - Represents a Point of Sale terminal, where purchase customer events are captured and submitted to CRM.COM. Each POS terminal usually has a unique code used for identification purposes (determining in which venue is installed); such code should be defined on the TAP code.

• Receipt Printer - Allows provisioning and printing of CRM.COM orders to an external ESC/POS printer. Print provisioning requires the printer’s IP address and port to be defined on the TAP.

• Card Terminal - Payment card machine

To add a TAP for a Business, click on the ‘eye’ icon on the right-hand side of the screen.

Enable WiFi Network - refer to Business configuration.

Opening Hours - Optionally specify the Merchant’s/Service Provider’s operating hours for ordering delivery and pick-up. Delivery and pick-up can be disabled using the toggles Is delivery closed? and Is pick-up closed?

Payment Methods - Configure the Merchant/Service Provider’s payment methods, only the Account payment method is available for configuration via the back-end. Payment methods are used primarily for B2B settlements.

Commercial Terms - Configure the Merchant’s agreement and settlement process (typically for multi-merchant rewards platforms). Merchant agreements allow the Business to define whether settlement takes place the moment a Contact is awarded or upon Contact spending, along with the corresponding contribution.

The settlement process charges participating Organisations (usually Merchants) the cost of awards. The settlement process creates financial transactions either in real-time or at a set time intervals (e.g. daily).

• Settlement - Select when settlement will be applied, ‘settle on award’ (default) or ‘settle on spend’. Besides the Organisation’s settlement method, settlements also take into account the owner of the offer who funds the award.

  • Settle on award (default) - The Merchant will be debited for the awarded amount (and the award owner credited) upon awarding the Contact.

  • Settle on spend - The Merchant will be debited for the awarded amount (and the award owner will be credited) when the Contact spends (redeems) their award.

• Contributions - The percentage of the awarded amount that will be contributed by the Merchant (debited for) when an award is granted. The stated percentage can be overridden by defining explicit offers with their own corresponding contribution percentages.

• Block Merchant - This option is available from the Merchant screen and allows the Business to block the Merchant from awarding Contacts and Contacts from spending their awards at the Merchant.

Opening Hours - Specify the Merchant’s operating hours for ordering delivery and pick-up. Delivery and pick-up can be disabled using the toggles Is delivery closed? and Is pick-up closed?

Products not available for sale - Identify any temporarily unavailable products or those that can’t be delivered or picked-up by simply selecting the product, along with the supply method.

Venue/Service Point Configuration

These settings are applicable for Venues and Service Points.

Venue/Service Point has the same industry and business scope as it’s parent - A Venue/Service Point can inherit its parent’s business-related definitions or, alternatively, define its own.

Enable WiFi Network - refer to Business configuration.

Opening Hours

Refer to the Merchant/Service Provider section to see how to configure opening hours.

Products not available for sale

Refer to the Merchant/Service Provider section to define products unavailable for sale.

Copying and Deleting a Business

Service Owners have the ability to perform administrative actions, such as copying and deleting existing Business organisations.

Navigate to Business Network > Businesses > select the options button on the Business card > Copy/Delete

• Copy - Copies an entire Business organisation, including all its data and configuration, to a new Business organisation name. The following data is not copied:

  • Transactional data (e.g. customer events and financial transactions)

  • Creatives (of all modules)

  • Analytics (Insights and Reports)

  • Commerce products

  • Finance pass plans

  • Platform applications, custom forms, filters, import data and white-label settings

  • Tenancy & Security API Keys, users and webhooks

• Delete - Permanently deletes a Business organisation, including all its data (test and live) - such as contacts, transaction acquiring points, applications, orders and rewards. In addition, any Merchant/Venue or Service Provider/Service Point child organisations and their data will also be deleted.

Masquerading

To masquerade as another Organisation, navigate to the Business Network option from the sidebar menu and select the masquerade icon from the Service Owner, Transaction Processor, the Business, or Merchant/Service Provider screen.

To switch back to the Organisation from where you masqueraded - select your login name (top right-hand corner of the screen) > Switch to ….

Changing the Organisation State

Suppose a Service Owner, a Business or a Merchant/Service Provider wants to restrict the actions of a child organisation. In that case, they can do so by changing the Organisation's State to either Inactive or Suspend. If need be, this action can be reversed at any point in time.

Navigate to the summary screen where the Organisation appears, locate the Business/Merchant/Venue, select the options button and choose the required action.

To reactivate an organisation, follow the same procedure, but this time select Activate.

Applied Restrictions

As mentioned previously, only Business, Merchant and Venue organisations have a state, and each state has a set of restrictions detailed below.

• For Business organisations

  • ACTIVE

    • No restrictions apply, and any operations can be performed

  • INACTIVE

    • Users (of any organisation type belonging to its business network, including Business users)

      • Cannot sign in to the back-end system

      • Cannot perform any actions (e.g. create a contact, create reward offers)

    • Contacts

      • New contacts cannot register from front-end applications

      • Existing contacts cannot sign in to front-end applications

    • Organisation operations

      • Cannot perform any operations - such as billing, reward evaluation, settlement, ordering

      • Disconnection process is performed to inactivate any contact subscription services

      • System users and external systems cannot perform any operations

      • The Business organisation and its Business Network (Merchant/Service Providers, Venues/Service Points) are not retrieved in any business network-related APIs (e.g. for front-end and back-end systems)

      • Any child organisations (i.e. Merchants/Venues, Service Providers/Points) inherit the Inactive state and comply with the respective conditions accordingly

  • SUSPEND

    • System users (of any organisation type belonging to its business network, including Business users)

      • Can sign in to the back-end system and perform operations as usual, with the exception of creating new contacts, placing new orders, ordering new subscription services, or activating new reward schemes/reward offers

      • When business users sign in, they are informed that they should proceed with their business' re-activation

    • Contacts

      • New contacts cannot register through front-end applications

      • Existing contacts can still sign in through front-end applications

    • Organisation operations

      • The Business can still perform back-end operations, such as billing existing subscriptions, applying reward evaluations to customer events of existing contacts, performing merchant settlements

      • System users and external systems can perform any operations except the creation of new contacts, new orders, new subscriptions or activation of new reward schemes/reward offers

      • The Business organisation and its business network (Merchant/Service Providers, Venues/Service Points) are retrieved in business network-related APIs (e.g. for front-end and back-end systems)

      • Any child organisation (e.g. Merchants/Venues, Service Providers/Points) inherit the Suspend state and adhere to the respective restrictions

• For Merchant/Service Provider organisations

  • ACTIVE

    • No restrictions apply, and any operations can be performed

  • INACTIVE

    • System users (of Merchants/Service Providers)

      • Cannot sign in to the back-end system, when attempting to sign in, Merchant/Service Provider users are notified that their Organisation is Inactive

      • Cannot perform any actions (e.g. create new reward offers etc.)

    • Contacts

      • Cannot specify the Inactive Organisation as a ‘preferred organisation’

    • Organisation operations

      • Cannot perform any operations, e.g. rewards related

      • Cannot order and purchase one-time or termed services

      • System users and external systems cannot perform any operations related to the Merchant/Service Provider

      • Merchant/Service Provider organisation and its business network (Venues/Service Points) should not be retrieved in any business network API that is used by external systems (e.g. for front-end and back-end systems)

  • SUSPEND

    • System users (of any organisation type)

      • Can sign in to the back-end system and perform operations as usual, with the exception of activating new reward schemes/reward offers

      • When Merchant/Service Provider users sign in, they will be informed that their Organisation is suspended

    • Contacts

      • Can still specify a suspended organisation as a ‘preferred organisation’

    • Organisation operations

      • The Organisation is still operational in terms of rewards (contacts awarding/spending)

      • The Organisation cannot order and purchase one-time/termed services

      • System users and external systems can perform any operations, with the exception of activating new reward schemes/reward offers

      • The Merchant/Service Provider organisation and its business network (Venues/Service Points) are still retrieved in any business network API that is used by external systems (e.g. for front-end and back-end systems)

• For Venue/Service Point organisations

  • ACTIVE

    • No restrictions apply, any operation can be performed on behalf of or by the Venue/Service Point

  • INACTIVE

    • Not operational, e.g. the Venue/Service Point cannot fulfil an order, or post purchase events (even if its TAPs are active)

Merchant/Service Provider Financial Statement

Back-end Business users can issue a financial statement for their Merchant/Service Provider child organisation(s). The statement shows the Organisation’s basic account information and financial activities for a selected period of time. The statement can be exported in either PDF or .csv format.

To view a Merchant/Service Provider statement - sign in/masquerade to the Business > Business Network > My Merchants/My Service Providers > locate and Edit the Organisation> select the options button > Statement.

Business Network Settings

The Business Network settings vary depending on the organisation level a system user has logged into CRM.COM. System settings for Service Owners, Businesses and Merchants/Service Providers are covered here below.

To configure your Business Network settings, select Settings from the sidebar menu, then Business Network.

Service Owner

A Service Owner system user can configure the following business network-related system settings:

Billing Business

This setting is only relevant for Service Owners selling subscriptions to Businesses as a SaaS. Set the Business responsible for billing the subscription plans and select the default plan for new businesses signing-up. If this setting is not configured, then new businesses signing-up to the Service Owner won’t be billed.

To configure, navigate to Settings > Business Network > Billing & Subscriptions > Billing Business.

Partners

Service Owner partners (associates) can be defined at the Service Owner level and assigned to individual Businesses. As a result, the partner logo will appear at the bottom of the sidebar menu when a user of the Business or child organisation of the Business is logged in to the back-end system.

Partners are defined purely for the purpose of acknowledging an associate’s collaboration with the Service Owner in winning a business proposition and serve no other purpose in the system.

To configure partners and upload their logos, navigate to Settings > Platform > Partnerships > Partners.

To add a partner to a Business, navigate to Business Network > Businesses > locate and Edit the Business in question > click in Partners and select one or more partners from the drop-down list.

Business

The following Business Network settings are available only at the Business level (i.e. a user must be logged in as a Business user or have masqueraded down to a Business level).

Navigate to Settings > Business Network.

Business Network Model

Set up which (child) organisations your Business network will consist of. The chosen setting will appear throughout the back-end system UI.

For example, the sidebar menu options under Business Network’s (midnight) cut-off point will be processed

And is performed in three steps:

• Settlement Transactions - Settlement transactions are created against each event and determine whether the Organisation at hand should be credited or debited for such an event

• Accounting Settlement - Determines whether a single debit or credit account journal entry should be created for each Organisation based on the total amounts (debit & credit) from all previously created settlement transactions posted against that Organisation

• Financial Settlement - Creates a single debit or credit account journal entry for each Organisation. Depending on the account journal entry created, a respective payment or payout will be posted against the Organisation's primary payment method (if a primary is not specified, then on the first available payment method)

Settlement Fees

A Business can set up additional fees that will be applied on (award & spend) settlement transactions. Settlement fees are applicable only for merchant/service provider organisations and could be a fixed amount or percentage based against each award/spend.

Settlement Rules

Set up supplementary rules that will be applied during the settlement process, such as

• Financial Transaction Types: define the types that will be set on the posted financial transactions (payment or payout) as created from the settlement process

• Amount Allowance: defines the minimum & maximum amount that should be met from the settlement’s financial transaction to settle an organisation account

Teams

Create Teams to group Business users based on their area of responsibility, users can belong to multiple Teams. Teams can be added to a user during the invitation process, or when editing a user from Security settings.

Teams can then be assigned to carry out Activities, Leads, Orders, and Service Requests.

Merchant/Service Provider

The Business Network configurations available at the Merchant/Service Provider level are limited to Organisation Groups.

To configure your Business Network settings at the Merchant/Service Provider level, select Settings > Business Network.

Organisation Groups

Define groups for classifying Venues/Service Points based on common business characteristics. See Organisation Group configuration for Businesses.

Reference Material

You may also find it useful to refer to the following manuals for further reading about the Business Network.

B2B Network

B2B Network

Security

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TFDv2/pages/612991008

Communications

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TFDv2/pages/542703818

Integrations

Service Owner integration is used if the following integrations are not configured at the Business level.

• Address Registry

  • Google Places

• Communications

  • SMTP

  • SMPP

  • Twilio

  • WhatsApp

  • Firebase

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TFDv2/pages/1397522770

Rewards

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TFDv2/pages/432472155

Platform

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TFDv2/pages/1164476548