BUSINESS NETWORK ESSENTIALS

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.

Topology

As a Business owner, your internal Business Network consists of either Merchants with their Venues or Service Providers with their Service Points (based on system settings).

Open

A B2B Network is formed when your business invites other companies to join the CRM.COM platform as your B2B Merchants or when you join other businesses as their B2B Merchant. This helps you build your marketplace, affiliate commerce partnerships, and Commerce Pools.

Your B2B Merchants (distinct from your own Merchants), are the Businesses you have invited to join your B2B network. Likewise, your B2B Peers are other Businesses that have invited your Business to be part of their B2B network. Find out more about these terms below.

Organisation

An organisation is an entity that has different types, such as 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 does not support user accounts. Find out more about each organisation’s key operations here.

• Business - A business is the main entity that typically manages and owns the products and services sold to contacts.

• Merchant/Service Provider - Merchants/Service Providers are franchises or partners in reward schemes (digital promotions) who extend the operations of a Business.

• Venue/Service Point - Venues/Service Points are the Business’s or a Merchant’s physical locations (shops) that can sell products and fulfil orders. Venues/Service Points can optionally be grouped under Organisation Groups. Users can’t be defined at the Venue/Service Point level.

B2B Merchant

When your Business invites another business to join your B2B network, and they accept, they become your B2B Merchant. B2B Merchants are managed similarly to your own internal Merchants (if any).

B2B Peer

The B2B Peer is the Business that has invited your Business to join its B2B Network. Once you have accepted, the Business is your B2B Peer, and you are their B2B Merchant.

The B2B Peer owns the contacts and engages in B2B cooperations with other businesses to offer its contacts joint promotions and/or an aggregated product catalogue.

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 Business user can masquerade as one of the Merchants/Service Providers of the Business.

Organisation State

The state of an organisation indicates its current operational condition, which also determines the permitted actions that 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.

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

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

See here for a more detailed explanation of each state’s restrictions.

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.

B2B Connect

B2B connections are established when a Business invites another Business to become its B2B Merchant or joins another Business as a B2B Merchant. In both scenarios, the Businesses can merge their product offerings (Marketplace) and/or promotions (Affiliate Commerce).

B2B Marketplace

Marketplace is a concept whereby a Business expands its product and service offerings by incorporating products from other Businesses into its own product catalogue.

A marketplace is formed when one business invites another to join its network as a B2B Merchant. The B2B Merchant shares selected products with its B2B Peer, thus, allowing the B2B Merchant’s products to be included in the B2B Peer’s product catalogue.

The B2B Peer accepts orders for the B2B Merchant’s products, invoices the contact for the order, and the B2B Merchant fulfils the order.

B2B Affiliate Commerce

Your B2B Merchants can create and fund reward offers for your Business’s contacts.

B2B Affiliate Commerce Delegated

Your B2B Merchants can create and fund reward offers for their products when your business sells them to your contacts.

B2B Commerce Pool

The B2B Commerce Pool model enables Businesses to participate in community commerce by making their Commerce Pools accessible for other businesses to ‘join’ and use in their reward offers. It functions like a network of businesses, where one business creates and publishes commerce pools for available product or service capacities, allowing other businesses to award their customers or provide employee benefits. Businesses can also negotiate or auction discounts (contributions) and witness improvements in your top and bottom lines.

B2B Spend

A Business allows its contacts to use funds from their Business Pocket (comprising awards earned and redeemed through purchases with that Business, or simply topped-up money) to pay for purchases at other Businesses.

Refer to Appendix A for an example and a B2B Spend scenario diagram.

'Guest' Contacts

In cases where a contact registered to Business A has made a purchase at Business B, then a contact by the name of ‘Guest [Business A Name]’ is created under Business B for the purpose of logging the purchase.

It should be noted that Business B never awards Guest contacts.

B2B Settlement

This is the process whereby Business and Merchant accounts are debited or credited based on their agreement to fund and contribute towards promotions and purchases. The settlement process can be configured to run at a set time interval from the Business Network settings.

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 captured 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 trace a purchase and identify the Organisation from where it originated.

Contact Registry

A Contact Registry holds the personal details of Contacts registered in CRM.COM. The contact registry can be enabled and maintained either at the Service Owner or Business level. If a Business maintains its own contact registry, then the contacts that sign up for the Business belong to the Business, and their details are not shared with any other organisations in the network.

Refer to the Contacts manual for further details about the Contact Registry.

Getting Started with the Business Network

This chapter outlines the key settings for creating and managing organisations in CRM.COM. Keep in mind that user permissions vary depending on:

• The organisation level (e.g., Service Owner, Business, or Merchant) to which the user is logged in.

• Their user role permissions.

• Whether they have masqueraded to another organisation. See here for user permissions when masquerading.

Organisations Core Behaviour

The table below defines the core behaviour of each Organisation type.

Creating & Managing the Business Network

You must be a registered user to view or create any type of Organisation. You can become a Business user, either by being invited to the Business by another business user, or by registering a Business on CRM.COM. It’s a good idea to read the Security manual to understand how to define user roles and invite users to your Organisation.

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

If you are signed in as a Business user, select Business Network - the organisation labels 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.

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Business Network with My Merchants & My Venues

 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 the business through the back-end. Either way, the business user can edit their business details after signing-in by clicking on their name in the top right-hand corner of the screen and selecting My Business.

Attention should be paid to the following settings:

• Name - The name of the business.

• Logo - Upload your business logo. This will be used to identify your business within the network and can also be used when communicating with your contacts.

• Description - Optionally provide an internal description of the business.

• Phone - The business’s phone number.

• Email - The business’s email address.

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

• Opening Hours - Optionally specify the Business’s operating hours for ordering delivery and pick-up. Delivery and pick-up can also be closed using the toggles Is delivery closed? and Is pick-up closed? If your Merchants/Venues will manage your orders, then you don’t need to set the opening times here on the Business, you can set them on the Merchants/Venues instead.

• Commercial Terms

  • Apply award settlement on spend? - The Business can define whether B2B settlements (business charges and rebates) are applied for Merchants when a Contact is awarded or when a Contact spends.

• Enable WiFi Network - A Business, Merchant/Service Provider and/or Venue/Service Point can define whether they support WiFi Networks, typically when offering services such as Internet access, VoIP or 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)

Merchant/Service Provider Configuration

A back-end Business user would typically manually create a Merchant/Service Provider.

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

• Name - The name of the Merchant.

• Logo - Upload the Merchant’s logo. This will be used to identify the Merchant within the network.

• Phone - The merchant’s phone number.

• Email - The merchant’s email address.

• Address - If Google Places is configured, search for and select the merchant’s address and Google Place ID.

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

• Create a Merchant/Service Provider Owner user - Create and invite an Owner 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 devices where transactions are captured and/or processed on-site.

  • Name - The TAP name.

  • Code - A TAP’s main identification attribute is its code which must be unique.

  • Type: Choose the TAP type:

    • External Reference - Mapped to an external integration. Select from the available types and proceed to configure the IP address and port settings.

    • 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 Debit payment method is available for configuration via the back-end.

• 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 occurs when a Contact is awarded or upon Contact spending, along with the corresponding contribution.

  • Settlement - Select when settlement will be applied, on award (toggle disabled), or on spend (toggle enabled). 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.

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

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

• Products not available for sale - Identify any temporarily unavailable products or those that can’t be ordered by contacts by selecting the product, along with the supply method(s).

Venue/Service Point Configuration

These settings are applicable for Venues and Service Points.

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

• Enable WiFi Network - Does this Venue/Service Point support services related to Internet access, VoIP and IPTV? Refer to the 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.

Organisation’s Administrative Actions

An organisation can perform various administrative actions for its child organisations (i.e. a Business for its Merchants, and a Merchant for its Venues). The available actions vary depending on the organisation level. To see the available actions, a system user must navigate to the summary screen where the organisation’s child organisations are listed, locate the organisation, select the options button, and choose the required action.

A Service Owner can perform the following administrative actions for a Business:

Suspend a Business or Merchant

The following restrictions apply when a Business or Merchant is suspended:

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

  • Can access the back-end system and perform operations as usual, except creating new contacts, placing new orders, ordering services and activating new reward schemes/reward offers.

  • When attempting to authenticate, a business user will be notified that they must proceed with account re-activation.

• Contacts:

  • New contacts cannot register.

  • Existing contacts can authenticate and access their data from front-end applications.

• Organisation operations:

  • Can perform back-end operations, such as billing existing subscriptions, applying reward evaluation on customer events of existing contacts, perform merchant settlement.

  • Users and external systems can perform any operations, except create new contacts, place new orders activate new reward schemes/reward offers.

  • Any child organisations (e.g. Merchants/Venues, Service Providers/Points) also inherit this state, and suspension restrictions also apply to them.

Deactivate a Business or Merchant

The following restrictions apply when a Business or Merchant is deactivated:

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

  • Cannot access the back-end system, when attempting to authenticate, business users should be prompted to proceed with account re-activation.

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

  • Contacts

    • New contacts cannot register.

    • Existing contacts cannot authenticate or access their data from any front-end applications.

  • Organisation operations

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

    • For subscriptions - The disconnection process is performed and all subscriptions are set as inactive.

    • System users and external systems cannot perform any operations whatsoever.

    • Any child organisations (e.g. Merchants/Venues, Service Providers/Points) inherit the same state, and the same restrictions apply.

Copy a Business

The Copy business action copies an entire Business organisation, including all its data and configuration, to a new Business organisation name with the exception of the following data which is not copied:

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

  • Creatives (of all modules)

  • Analytics (Insights and Reports)

  • Products, promotions, order catalogues

  • Pass plans

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

  • Reward offers and tiers

  • API keys, organisations, partners, users and webhooks

  • Automations

Delete a Business

The delete Business action will permanently delete a Business organisation along with all its data, including both test and live data. This includes contacts, transaction acquiring points, applications, products, orders, rewards etc. It's important to note that any child organisations, such as Merchant/Venue or Service Provider/Service Point, and all their data will also be deleted.

A Business user can perform the Suspend and Deactivate actions for a Merchant/Service Provider, and a Merchant/Service Provider can only Deactivate a Venue/Service Point. All actions have the same effect as described above.

Masquerading

To masquerade as another Organisation, navigate to the Business Network option from the sidebar menu and select the masquerade icon.

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

Security & Permissions when Masquerading

When a Business user masquerades as a Merchant in its internal network, by default, they have the same user permissions as the Merchant owner, i.e. unrestricted access. However, the Business can apply some restrictions based on User Role settings to restrict their users when masquerading. To setup security settings, navigate to Settings > Security > User Roles:

• Allow to masquerade - If enabled, a Business user can masquerade as a Merchant with view access only, i.e. they can’t edit, create or delete records.

• Allow to create/manage data when masquerading - This security setting allows a Business user to edit, create and delete records when masquerading as a Merchant.

Refer to the Security user manual for more security settings.

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 account(s) information and financial activities for a selected period of time and can be exported in PDF or .csv format.

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

Since Merchants/Service Providers can have an account, they can also purchase goods from the Business, become subscribers and place orders, so they are considered Contacts of the Business. All financial transactions are shown on the statement.

Business Network Settings

The Business Network settings vary depending on the organisation level at which a system user has logged into the CRM.COM back-end system. Below are the system settings for Businesses, and Merchants/Service Providers.

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

For the 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.

Organisation Groups

Select +Create Organisation Group and provide a name and description for the group.

To assign an organisation group to a contact, navigate to the Merchant/Venue, Service Provider/Service Point screen, hover next to the Organisation Details section header, and select to edit.

B2B Settlement

This process handles the payments and payouts for Businesses Owners and Merchants / B2B Merchants based on debit or credit events (e.g. for awards and spends) transacted in CRM.COM. Any charges and/or rebates are settled using the respective organisation's Account.

Enable B2B Settlement

To set up a B2B Settlement, start by enabling the B2B Settlement. Then, configure the frequency and timing for when the settlement process will occur. Keep in mind that regardless of the chosen time for the settlement, only transactions posted up until midnight of the previous day will be processed.

Settlement Fee

To charge Merchants / B2B Merchants a fee per debit or credit settlement transaction, enable the Settlement Fee and set:

• Whether the fee will be applied as an amount or percentage per settlement transaction.

• The Debit Fee (e.g. due to awards).

• The Credit Fee (e.g. due to spending).

• Explicit Fees per Organisation - Define any specific fees per Merchant in this section; any default fees set up above will be overridden for these Merchants.

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 and maximum amount that should be met from the settlement’s financial transaction to settle an organisation account.

Settlement 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.

For the 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.

B2B Network

Before taking a look at the B2B Network setup, let’s consider an example of a common type of B2B collaboration between two Businesses for rewards purposes. In this scenario, a purchase made through the B2B Merchant is also logged and rewarded by the Business too.

The B2B network options are located on the sidebar menu under Business Network.

Creating & Managing the B2B Network

Sending a B2B Invitation

When a Business decides to set up its own B2B Network, the first step is to invite other Businesses to join them.

Navigate to Business Network > B2B > My B2B Invitations.

Invite Business

The Invite Business option allows the Business to select and invite the Businesses they want to include in their B2B Network.

Once an invitation has been sent, the Business can monitor its progress. Notice that the state is ‘Pending’ and will remain so until the invited Business accepts or rejects the invitation.

Possible invitation states are:

• Pending - The invited business has not responded yet.

• Approved - The invited business has accepted the invitation to be part of the B2B Network.

• Rejected - The invited business does not wish to collaborate with the inviting business.

• Retracted - This state can be set by either the inviting business, or the invited business who no longer wishes to cooperate with the other party.

To re-invite a Business, the inviting business can select the ‘Reinstate’ option.

Responding to a B2B Invitation

A Business can see their B2B Invitations by navigating to Business Network > B2B > My B2B Invitations. This screen shows a list of invitations the business has sent out to other businesses as well as invitations that the business has received from other businesses.

The business user can respond to an invitation they have received by selecting either to accept or reject it.

If the invitation is accepted, a new ‘Company’ type Contact is created in the B2B Merchant’s Business representing the B2B Peer with an account and their CRM.COM Wallet.

Managing B2B Merchants

The business can see and manage their B2B Merchants by navigating to Business Network > B2B > My B2B Merchants.

Click on the ellipses (…) and select Edit to view the B2B Merchant.

Commercial Terms

Only the B2B Peer can set the Commercial Terms between the two parties. See how to configure them here.

What to consider when you are a B2B Merchant

A Business can see its B2B Peer Businesses (i.e. to whom it is a B2B Merchant) by navigating to Business Network > B2B > My B2B Peers.

The B2B Merchant can decide how they wish to collaborate with their B2B Peer, such as creating offers for the B2B Peer's contacts or sharing selected products.

Masquerading as a B2B Peer

To masquerade as your B2B Peer, select the masquerade icon for the respective B2B Peer from the My B2B Peers screen.

When a business user masquerades as one of their B2B Peers, they retain the same permissions as when operating within their internal business network. The most important B2B-specific configurations include:

View their own Business Network

See their own Venues by navigating to Business Network > My Venues. Note that in this B2B model, Venues include both the Venues and the Merchants of the B2B Merchant.

Sharing Products with B2B Peers

A B2B Merchant can choose which products from their own product catalogue to share with their B2B Peers for B2B reward offers and product aggregation. This is done by marking the products as Accessible across the B2B Network or Available to specific B2B Peers. For instructions on configuring products for use within a B2B network, please refer to the Product Catalogue manual.

When a B2B Merchant masquerades as one of their B2B Peers, they can view the shared products by navigating to the Product Catalogue in the normal way.

Create Reward Offers

Create delegated reward offers to provide benefits to the contacts of the B2B Peer, focusing on products owned by the B2B Merchant. In this case, the B2B Merchant sets up and funds the offer, even though the purchase takes place at the B2B Peer's location. Refer to the Reward Offers manual for assistance in setting up product-specific offers.

It is important to note that any configurations set up while masquerading as the B2B Peer only apply to that specific B2B Peer. The masquerading Business (B2B Merchant) user is limited to seeing only the relevant configurations for their own Business.

To switch back to your own Business - select your logged-in user name at the top right-hand corner of the screen, and select Switch to… .

What to consider when you are a B2B Peer

If the B2B Peer plans to sell shared products from their B2B Merchants (i.e. operating a marketplace), they need to complete additional setup to ensure a smooth B2B ordering process.

Create an Automation

The B2B Peer business should set up an automation to alert B2B Merchants when an order is placed for their products, so that they may fulfil it.

• Create an Automation with trigger event New Order

  • Filter using Fulfilled by (B2B Merchant)

  • Add an action for Order Provisioning (nearest location or postcode)

  • Add another action to send a Communication to the B2B Merchant User.

Refer to the Automations manual for more information about how to configure automations.

Masquerading as a B2B Merchant

A business user can masquerade as a B2B Merchant to view their product catalogue. However, they can only view and manage products which the B2B Merchant has shared with them (not the entire product range of the Merchant business).

To masquerade as one of the Business’s B2B Merchants navigate to Business Network > B2B > My B2B Merchants > click on the masquerade icon of the respective B2B Merchant.

When a business user masquerades as one of their B2B Merchants, they retain the same permissions as when operating within their internal business network.

B2B Network Settings

The B2B Network settings vary depending on whether a user is signed in as the B2B Peer or the B2B Merchant who has masqueraded as the B2B Peer. Navigate to Settings > Business Network to manage the B2B Network settings.

See the options available in the Community Commerce section.

B2B Spend

Enabling this option allows contacts to spend funds from their Business Pocket when purchasing at other businesses on the CRM.COM platform.

For a B2B Merchant

B2B Settlement

This setting is for a B2B Merchant when masqueraded (via B2B > My B2B Peers). Note that the B2B Merchant can set different settings for each of their B2B Peers.

After masquerading, navigate to Settings > Business Network > B2B Settlement.

These are the fees that the B2B Merchant will be charging for transactions generated by the Merchants configured on its own Business Network.

• Enable the B2B Settlement.

• If Merchants will be charged a fee per debit or credit settlement transaction, then enable the Settlement Fee and set:

  • Whether the fee will be applied as an amount or percentage per settlement transaction.

  • The Debit Fee (e.g. due to awards).

  • The Credit Fee (e.g. due to spending).

It should be noted that such fees will be charged when the settlement evaluation is performed as defined by the B2B Peer.

Rewards Resolution

The B2B Merchant can also navigate to Settings > Rewards > Generic > Resolution to configure the resolution setting.

• Restrict purchase submission to other organisations that my business is a B2B Merchant to? - Set this to ‘no’ if purchases submitted for contacts of your own business should be forwarded to other organisations that your business is a B2B Merchant of. This implies that your contacts may also be awarded by offers from your B2B Peers for purchases performed at your business.

B2B Reports

B2B Spend Analysis

A report with consolidated information relating to spending at B2B Peers, including the number of visiting Contacts, number of spends performed and total amount spent.

Appendix

Placing an Order through the B2B Network

This is an example of the process in which a B2B Peer, operating a marketplace, sells products that are shared by the B2B Merchants. The following are the steps involved:

1. A business sets up its B2B network and becomes a B2B Peer by inviting other business to join as their B2B Merchants.

2. A customer (Contact) places a single order with the B2B Peer for multiple items from various B2B Merchants.

3. The Contact pays the B2B Peer for all ordered items.

4. Multiple orders are created based on the selected items, i.e. one order per B2B Merchant who is responsible for fulfilling their assigned order.

5. The B2B Merchant is notified of the new order through the configured automation.

6. The B2B Merchant processes the order on behalf of the B2B Peer by masquerading as the B2B Peer.

7. On placing the order at the B2B Peer, an Invoice is issued at the B2B Merchant business that charges the B2B Peer (who also exists as a Company contact in the B2B Merchant).

8. The B2B Merchant sends a Contact Statement to its B2B Peer informing them for all charges. The B2B Peers settles them all, outside CRM.COM.

CRM.COM enables differentiated product pricing, allowing the B2B Peer to earn a commission on each product ordered through their marketplace. For instance, instead of paying the full £100 to the B2B Merchant, the B2B Peer pays £90, retaining a 10% commission. This is achieved by setting a second price within the B2B Merchant's system, specifically for the B2B Peer (Contact pricing). When the invoice is generated, this Contact-specific pricing is applied, and the B2B Peer is charged £90 instead of the full product price.

Purchase & B2B Merchant

Two Business organisations, Audit Co. UK and Coffee London agree to co-operate and set their B2B Terms (e.g. common contact identification means, i.e. phone); therefore, Coffee London is added as a B2B Merchant under Audit Co. UK business network.

• Scenario 1 - A contact registers with both organisations and performs a purchase at Coffee London; the purchase will be created, resulting in possible awards based on applicable offers. A second purchase will also be created (automatically) in Audit Co. UK as well (identifying the contact under Audit Co. UK based on their CRM.COM Wallet), resulting in possible awards from B2B Merchant Coffee London under Audit Co. UK as well.

  • Note - spending can only take place at the organisation where the original purchase took place, not at the B2B Peer organisation to which the purchase is forwarded.

• Scenario 2 - A contact is registered only with one organisation (Audit Co. UK) and performs a purchase at Coffee London (such a purchase will not be created though, since the contact is not found/does not exist in Coffee London). A purchase will (automatically) be created in Audit Co. UK (identifying the contact under Audit Co. UK based on their CRM.COM Wallet code), resulting in possible awards from B2B Merchant Coffee London under Audit Co. UK.

• Scenario 3 - A contact is registered only with the organisation Coffee London, and performs a purchase at Coffee London (resulting in possible awards based on applicable offers). An attempt will be made to create a second purchase (automatically) in Audit Co. UK, however, such a purchase will not be created since the related contact is not found/does not exist in Audit Co. UK (based on the CRM.COM wallet code).

Purchase with B2B Spend & Published Commerce Pools

B2B Spend

An organisation can enable B2B spending (from Business Network settings), allowing its contacts to spend their wallet balance at other businesses.

• Contact Identification - Submitting a purchase event from an organisation (business) that a contact is not registered with can be achieved either using a Spend OTP Token (issued from the organisation that such contact is registered with) OR Contact’s Wallet Identifier & Organisation Identifier (where the organisation identifier should be the one that the contact is registered to).

• Spend Amount - This is always calculated based on, firstly, the available business Open Balance and, secondly, the CRM.COM Wallet balance.

  • In the event that the contact is registered with both organisations, then the system takes into consideration only the business Open Balance from where the contact requested a Spend OTP/provided the Organisation Identifier, and not the Open Balance from both (business) organisations.

B2B Commerce Pools

An organisation can promote a commerce pool to other businesses, and in return, any business can join the promoted commerce pool by adding it to their reward offers ‘Redeem’ settings.

Reference Material

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

CRM.COM Wallet

CRM.COM Wallet

Comerce Pools

Commerce Pools

Security

Security

Communications

Communications

Integrations

Integrations

The Service Owner’s integrations are used if the following integrations are not configured at the Business level.

• Address Registry

  • Google Places

• Communications

  • SMTP

  • SMPP

  • Twilio

  • WhatsApp

  • Firebase

Rewards

Reward Offers

Service Owners

https://crmdevelopment.atlassian.net/wiki/x/EoAFlg

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