At the conceptual level, the Conceptual CRM view consists of the conceptual definition of data and
business functions for customer relationship management across business units and processes of an enterprise.
Business functions and the associated data can be defined independent of the organization and process
implementation.
The conceptual data models consist of the Enterprise Data Model for CRM (EDM) supporting the
operational CRM data requirements of an enterprise, and the Analytic Data Model for CRM (ADM) supporting the
analytic CRM data requirements of an enterprise. Operational CRM data consist of transactional data from sales,
surveys, customer inquiries and other customer interactions. Analytic CRM data consists of aggregate data along
subject areas for analytical processing. The function models for CRM consist of the Operational Function Model
(OFM) and the Analytic Function Model (AFM). The function model defines “what needs to be done”, which can be
implemented by different processes utilizing different technologies. For example, the operational function of
managing customer inquiries may be implemented by a call center process or a Web-based self-service process
using different technologies. Similarly, the analytic function of determining cross-selling strategies may be
implemented by various online analytic processing and data mining tools.
At the external level, the Operational CRM model (OCRM) describes the business processes, events,
people and organizations that are required to implement the day-to-day business operations. The components of the
OCRM consist of the user application view, the business process view and the organization view. For example,
OCRM may include processes for 1-1 marketing campaigns, call center operations and Web-based applications.
Similarly, the Analytic CRM model (ACRM) consists of different types of analytic structures for an enterprise
supporting various processes in decision support, predictions, forecasts and estimations. The components of the
ACRM consist of the user application view, the analytic process view and the decision structure view. For example,
ACRM may include online analytical processing and data mining processes such as statistical modeling and
artificial neural networks. As illustrated in Figure 2, there exists a feedback loop between the OCRM and ACRM
depicting the relationship between operations and analytics. Operational CRM and analytic CRM nourish each other
in the feedback loop. Analytic CRM creates customer intelligence that enhances future customer operations,
whereas operational CRM captures critical data required for CRM analytic processes.