CURIE: Towards an Ontology and Enterprise Architecture of a CRM Conceptual Model

Abstract

Companies face the challenge of managing customer relationships (CRM) in a context marked by a drastic digital transformation and unbridled evolution of consumer behavior, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The customer is more demanding, has access to the global market and interacts with companies through multiple digital channels, such as email, social networks, mobile apps or instant messaging. In this situation, the success of a CRM implementation highly depends on information technology and the applications used. To harmonize this new business context with the development of information systems (IS), a suitable CRM ontology and enterprise architecture (EA) is needed. While an ontology-based conceptual model provides a unifying framework, aids sharing and reusing knowledge, and facilitates communication within a domain, an EA-based model unequivocally describes, analyzes, and visualizes how an organization should operate from the perspective of business, application, and technology. The purpose of the paper is the proposal of CURIE-O, a CRM OntoUML UFO-based ontology, together with CURIE-EA, a CRM ArchiMate-based EA to serve business managers and IS specialists an updated unifying framework of reference in the CRM domain as well as a highly efficient tool to support application development and maintenance in this changing and increasingly digital context. Modeling has proven to be an essential element to achieve high-performance information systems. In order to apply the ontology and the EA proposed here, the authors developed a CRM task management application prototype that was implemented as a case study in a consulting company. The methodology followed was design science research (DSR), in order to design and validate the artifacts. Within the DSR framework, other complementary research methods have been used, in particular literature research, interviews and focus groups carried out with several hotel chains in Tenerife (Canary Islands). The main existing CRM models in the scientific literature have also been analyzed together with the leading CRM market solutions.

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“…Improved pricing 1 (Wang and Zhou, 2014) Improved sales force efficiency and effectiveness 1 (Hladky et al, 2014) Improved products and services 2 (Alfrjani et al, 2016), (Ali et al, 2020) Innovative products and services 1 (Kudryavtsev et al, 2020) Customer complaint management 2 (Jarrar et al, 2003), (Thakor and Sasi, 2015) Customer segmentation 1 (Yılmaz and Alptekin, 2013) Supporting users of CRM systems 11 (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2002), (Gottgtroy and Gottgtroy, 2003), (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2003), (Caliusco et al, 2004), (Damme et al, 2007), (Yan and Zha, 2010), , (Wu, 2012), (Tiryaki and Atalay, 2020), (Blankenberg et al, 2022), (Fernández-Cejas et al, 2022) Supporting CRM projects 1 (Lee et al, 2007) Integration of information in a CRM system 2 (Hladky and Maltseva, 2013), (Tiryaki and Atalay, 2020) Description of business processes 2 (Goy et al, 2008), (Magro and Goy, 2012) Personalization of business processes 1 (Liang et al, 2011) Social branding 1 (Zailskaitė-Jakštė and Damaševičius, 2014) From the data represented in Table 4, it can be concluded that each of the listed CRM benefits B1-B8 is addressed in at least one study selected for the systematic literature review.…”