Towards a Reference Enterprise Application Architecture for the

Customer Relationship Management Domain

Andr

e Cruz and Andr

e Vasconcelos

Instituto Superior T

ecnico, INESC Inovac¸

ao, Lisboa, Portugal

Keywords:

Enterprise, Architecture, Reference, Customer, Relationship, Management, Framework, Archimate, Applica-

tion, Best Practices.

Abstract:

The work presented in this paper, focus on a ﬁrst step towards a Reference Application Architecture, for

the CRM domain. A Reference Architecture is a way to approach usual occurring problems through good

architectural design patterns. To reach a Reference Architecture, we analyzed the features of ﬁve CRM mar-

ket solutions, to get the industry best practices. The chosen CRM solutions were: SugarCRM, Microsoft

Dynamics CRM, Sage CRM, Siebel Oracle CRM and Salesforce CRM. From these solutions we extracted

ﬁfty-three common features from the systems datasheets. These ﬁfty-three features are grouped into ten mod-

ules (namelly: Sales module, Marketing module , Service module, Reporting module, Calendar module, In-

tegration module, Document module, Workﬂow module, Mobile module and Security module), with all these

modules being part of the CRM system. We arrived at these modules through the groups that already existed in

CRM’s datasheets. With the proposed Reference Architecture we expect to help architects by providing guide-

lines and knowledge about the CRM domain, with focus on CRM market solutions which targeted primarily

small and medium businesses.

1 INTRODUCTION

Companies given the complexity of integrating the

CRM with their business processes and IT, need to

know and analyze their actual state and deﬁne the

strategic direction they want to follow.(op’t Land

et al., 2009) Enterprise Architecture(EA) helps to

solve these requirements, since they are part of EA

objective, as stated by Mark Lankhorst: ”An enter-

prise architecture tries to describe and control an or-

ganisation’s structure, processes, applications, sys-

tems and techniques in an integrated way.”(Lankhorst,

2005)

In the EA domain, there is an important type of

architecture, the Reference Enterprise Architecture.

A Reference Enterprise Architecture is important be-

cause it provides a way to approach usual occurring

problems, by documenting good architectural design

practices.(Cloutier et al., 2010) The work we present

in this paper is how we deﬁned the Reference Enter-

prise Application Architecture for the CRM domain,

based on the industry best practices, in this case ﬁve

CRM solutions. The chosen CRM solutions were:

SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage CRM,

Siebel Oracle CRM and Salesforce CRM. We chose

these CRM solutions based on a list of mid-market

CRM suites from (Buttle, 2009) and a list of Top

Software from (Barrish, 2014). This paper begins

by the EA theme in section 2, highlighting the En-

terprise Architecture Framework we use to represent

our model in section 2.1 and what is a Reference En-

terprise Architecture in section 2.2. Then in section

3 we present the CRM theme, introducing the fea-

tures of ﬁve known CRM market solutions in section

3.1, and in section 3.2 we illustrated and explained the

view of the Application Architecture proposed. In the

end of section 4 we took the conclusions of the work

presented.

1.1 Research Methodology

The research methodology followed in this work, is

the Action Research Methodology from (Baskerville,

1999). This research is composed by ﬁve steps:

• I. Problem Deﬁnition: deﬁne the problem, to draw

a scenario of what to be done;

• II. Information/Data Gathering: gather and or-

ganize information about the problem, to create a

theoretical and practical basis;

185

Cruz A. and Vasconcelos A..

Towards a Reference Enterprise Application Architecture for the Customer Relationship Management Domain.

DOI: 10.5220/0005332401850195

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2015), pages 185-195

ISBN: 978-989-758-098-7

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

• III. Data Analysis and Creation of the Proposal:

create the solution based on the previous informa-

tion;

• IV. Proposal Validation: validate the solution with

a case study;

• V. Proposal Evaluation and Analysis: evaluate

and analyse the previous solution, to draw a con-

clusion about the proposal;

In this paper, we only present a part of the ﬁrst

three steps of this methodology, the last two steps are

future/ongoing work.

2 ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

The EA can be interpreted as an instrument to de-

ﬁne the future direction of the enterprise, and also

the mechanism that coordinates the actual transforma-

tion of the enterprise. EA handles the requirements

that business performance needs, which are an inte-

grated design of the enterprise and all that is related

with it, e.g.: people and their competencies, organi-

zational structures, business processes, IT, ﬁnances,

products and services and its environment.(Greefhorst

and Proper, 2011) So EA can be considered a con-

nector of the business strategy and the IT strategy,

and also the essence of enterprise informization plan-

ning.(Minli Jin, 2010) We now present some EA def-

initions to help get a clearer view of this theme.

The IEEE Standard ISO/IEC 42010 states that an

architecture is: “The fundamental organization of a

system, embodied in its components, their relation-

ships to each other and the environment, and the prin-

ciples governing its design and evolution.” (Iee, 2000)

Mark Lankhorst deﬁnes EA objective by stat-

ing: ”An enterprise architecture tries to describe and

control an organisation’s structure, processes, ap-

plications, systems and techniques in an integrated

way.”(Lankhorst, 2005)

The Gartner Group deﬁned a EA concept as: “En-

terprise architecture (EA) is the process of translating

business vision and strategy into effective enterprise

change by creating, communicating, and improving

the key principles and models that describe the en-

terprise’s future state and enable its evolution.” (Lap-

kin, 2008) In the next section, we explain what En-

terprise Architecture Framework we used to represent

our proposed solution. Following the context we in-

troduce important deﬁnitions of key concepts for EA

and which we use during this work:

Design Pattern: ”A design pattern systematically

names, motivates, and explains a general design

that addresses a recurring design problem in a sys-

tem. It describes the problem, the solution, when

to apply the solution, and its consequences. It also

gives implementation hints and examples. The so-

lution is customized and implemented to solve the

problem in a particular context”.(Gamma et al.,

1995)

Models: ”a purposely abstracted and unambiguous

conception of a domain” . (Lankhorst, 2005)

View: ”A representation of a whole system from

the perspective of a related set of concerns”.(Iee,

2000)

Viewpoint: ”A speciﬁcation of the conventions for

constructing and using a view. A pattern or tem-

plate from which to develop individual views by

establishing the purposes and audience for a view

and the techniques for its creation and analy-

sis”.(Iee, 2000)

In the next section, we explain what Enterprise Ar-

chitecture Framework we used to represent our pro-

posed solution.

2.1 Enterprise Architecture Framework

An Enterprise Architecture Framework is, as stated

by (Lankhorst, 2005): “a conceptual structure of what

an EA should contain and how to create it, i.e. mod-

els, principles, approaches, standards that guide the

development of enterprise architectures”. For the rep-

resentation of the EA, there are several numbers of

different EA frameworks, which distinguish several

architecture layers and views.(R. Winter, 2010) The

notation that we used to represent our architecture so-

lution in section 3.2 is the Archimate Framework no-

tation, represented in Figure 1. We chose the Archi-

mate, because it offers in a detailed and comprehen-

sive way the representation of the Application layer

and its relation with the Business architecture and the

Information architecture that are going to be an im-

portant step of the future work.

Figure 1: Archimate Framework from (Haren and Publish-

ing, 2009).

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Following is the explanation of what is done in

each layer present in Figure 1:

• Business Layer: ”offers products and services to

external customers, which are realized in the orga-

nization by business processes performed by busi-

ness actors.”

• Application Layer: ”supports the business layer

with application services which are realized by

(software) applications.”

• Technology Layer: ”offers infrastructure services

(e.g., processing, storage, and communication ser-

vices) needed to run applications, realized by

computer and communication hardware and sys-

tem software.”(Haren and Publishing, 2012)

In this paper we only focus on the Application

Layer, which is illustrated in section 3.2. Next we

explain what a Reference Enterprise Architecture is.

2.2 Reference Enterprise Architecture

A Reference Architectures capture the essence of ex-

isting architectures, and the vision of future needs and

evolution to provide guidance to assist in developing

new system architectures.(Cloutier et al., 2010) The

Reference Enterprise Architecture primary objective

is to direct and constrain the instantiations of solu-

tion architectures. Another important aspect, is that

a Reference Enterprise Architecture is considered an

organizational resource, established by the four facts

below:

• Provide common language for the stakeholders;

• Provide consistency in implementation of technol-

ogy to solve problems;

• Support the validation of solutions through the

prove Reference Architecture;

• Encourage adherence to common standards and

patterns;(of Defence, 2010)

3 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

MANAGEMENT

In recent years, companies have acquired CRM tech-

nology to expand their markets clearly. The CRM

technology brings with it, the creation of market-

ing opportunites, the rise of customer value and cus-

tomer satisfaction, in order to achieve business ex-

cellence,(Fardoie and Monfared, 2008) with the main

purpose of gaining loyal customers.

Kenneth C. Laudon and Jane P. Laudon deﬁned

CRM systems as a way to: ”capture and integrate

customer data from all over the organization, consoli-

date the data, analyze the data, and then distribute the

results to various systems and customer touch points

across the enterprise.” (Laudon and Laudon, 2012)

The CRM software provide solutions for three ma-

jor areas(Laudon and Laudon, 2012):

• Sales Force Automation: ”is the application of

computerized technologies to support salespeople

and sales management in the achievement of their

work-related objectives.”(Buttle, 2009)

• Marketing Automation: ”is the application of

computerized technologies to support marketers

and marketing management in the achievement of

their work-related objectives.”(Buttle, 2009)

• Customer Service: ”provide information and tools

to increase the efﬁciency of call centers, help

desks, and customer support staff. They have ca-

pabilities for assigning and managing customer

service requests.”(Laudon and Laudon, 2012)

There are three major technologies components in

CRM(Fardoie and Monfared, 2008):

• Collaborative Technologies: can be interpreted as

the customer touch points. In other words, the col-

laborative technologies are the different channels

that the customers use to interact, such as email,

phone call, fax, website pages, and so on.

• Operational Technologies: are all the processes

and functions related to the three major areas:

sales (account management, territory manage-

ment and others), marketing (campaign manage-

ment, email marketing and others) and customer

support (case management, contact center and

other).

• Analytical Technologies: correspond to the pro-

cessing of the sales information, marketing and

customer support and its transformation in infor-

mation for reports and analytics. This can be used,

for example, as a diagnosis of customer relation-

ship management.

In the Reference Enterprise Application Archi-

tecture proposed these three technologies are taken

into account, but the Operational technologies are the

main focus of the proposed architecture. Next we

present the analysis and identiﬁcation of the functions

that we made on some CRM market solutions, to get

the best practices of the industry.

3.1 Customer Relationship

Management Features

To specify the Application functions of our CRM Ref-

erence Architecture, we extracted the features of ﬁve

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known CRM solutions and compared what features

were common between them. We based the choice of

these CRM solutions on: the list of mid-market CRM

suites from (Buttle, 2009) and the list of the Top CRM

Software from (Barrish, 2014).

Merging the two references referenced above we

arrived to the ﬁve CRM chosen: SugarCRM, Mi-

crosoft Dynamics, Sage, Oracle(Siebel) and Sales-

force. The common features between them, were the

features chosen to be the functions of the Applica-

tion Architecture of our CRM Reference Architec-

ture. We considered the common features between the

ﬁve CRM solutions as the most importants, because if

the major part of the CRMs provide those features, is

by the fact that they are essential for the CRM do-

main. We didn’t consider the costs of the features.

We introduce below the tables with the features of

each CRM, to verify what features were common be-

tween them and also the explanation of each feature.

For the identiﬁcation of the features that are present in

the tables, we made a clustering of the features from

the features present in the datasheets of the chosen

CRM solutions. To give an example of the clustering

made, in the SugarCRM datasheet there were two fea-

tures: lead capture and lead scoring, routing and as-

signment, we clustered these two features in a feature

by the name of lead management, because in the other

CRM solutions existed a feature by the name of lead

management, which covered these features as one, in

other words, lead management is a more comprehen-

sive feature. The features are presented in groups,

in accordance with clustering of these features by the

datasheets of the CRM solutions. Only in the case of

the ”Other important features” where we cluster the

common features that weren’t speciﬁc of an area, as

were the features from sales, marketing for example.

Table 1: Sales Features Table.

Sales Features Sugar CRM Microsoft CRM Sage CRM Siebel CRM Salesforce

CRM

Account Man-

agement

X X X X X

Activity Man-

agement

X X X X

Approvals X X

Competitor

tracking

X X X X X

Contact Man-

agement

X X X X X

Contract Man-

agement

X X X X

Sales Literature X X

Lead Manage-

ment

X X X X

Opportunity

Management

X X X X X

Product Man-

agement

X X X X X

Quote Manage-

ment

X X X X

Sales Forecast-

ing

X X X X X

Territory Man-

agement

X X X X X

Order manage-

ment

X X X X

Quota Manage-

ment

X X X X

Sales Pipeline X X X

Description of the Sales features(Oracle, 2007c;

Microsoft, 2008d; Salesforce, 2012; Sage, 2012; Sug-

arCRM, 2014), illustrated in Table 1:

Account Management: offers sales representa-

tives and managers a complete view of the cus-

tomer relationship including contacts, contact his-

tory, completed transactions, current orders, ship-

ments, enquiries, service history, opportunities

and quotations.

Activity Management: keeps sales representatives

and managers aware of all activities, whether

complete or pending, related to an account, con-

tact or opportunity, by establishing to-do lists, set-

ting priorities, monitoring progress and program-

ming alerts.

Approvals: manage success with ﬂexible approvals

processes for deal discounts, expenses, and more.

Competitor Tracking: maintain detailed informa-

tion on competitors associated with opportunities.

Contacts Management: includes tools for build-

ing, sharing and updating contact lists, making ap-

pointments, time setting, and task, event and con-

tact tracking.

Contract Management: enables representatives

and managers to create, track, progress, acceler-

ate, monitor and control contracts with customers.

Sales Literature: create, manage, and distribute a

searchable library of sales and marketing materi-

als, including brochures, white papers, and com-

petitor information.

Lead Management: allows companies to create, as-

sign and track sales leads. Leads either expire or

convert into qualiﬁed opportunities.

Opportunity Management: enables representa-

tives and managers to create an opportunity record

in the database and monitor progress against a

predeﬁned selling methodology.

Product Catalog and Management: enables work

with a full-featured product catalog that includes

support for complex pricing levels, units of mea-

sure, discounts, and pricing options.

Quote Management: allows representatives and

managers to quote for opportunities. This may be

part of a broader order management capability.

Sales Forecasting: offer sales representatives and

managers a number of qualitative and quantitative

processes to help forecast sales revenues and close

rates.

Territory Management: allows sales managers to

create, adjust and balance sales territories, so that

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sales representatives have equivalent workloads

and/or opportunities.

Order Management: allows representatives to con-

vert quotations and estimates into correctly priced

orders once a customer has agreed to buy.

Quota Management: design quota plans that moti-

vate your sales team while supporting your com-

pany’s revenue goals.

Sales Pipeline: is the process of managing the entire

sales cycle, from identifying prospects, estimating

sales potential, managing leads, forecasting sales,

initiating and maintaining customer relationships,

right through to closure.(Buttle, 2009; Sugar-

CRM, 2004; Salesforce, 2000; Oracle, 2007c; Mi-

crosoft, 2008d)

By analyzing Table 1, we consider that the most

important sales features are: account management,

activity management, competitor tracking, contact

management, lead management, opportunity man-

agement, order management, product catalog and

management, quote management, quota management,

sales forecasting, sales analytics and territory man-

agement.

Table 2: Marketing Features Table.

Marketing Features Sugar CRM Microsoft CRM Sage CRM Siebel CRM Salesforce

CRM

Campaign

Management

X X X X X

Campaign

Execution

X X X X X

Email Mar-

keting

X X X X X

Newsletter

Management

X X

Marketing

Campaigns

X X X

List Manage-

ment

X X X X

Lead Man-

agement

X X X

Web To Lead

Capture

X X X

Description of the Marketing features(Oracle,

2007b; Microsoft, 2008c; Salesforce, 2012; Sage,

2012; SugarCRM, 2014), illustrated in Table 2:

Campaign Management: deﬁne tasks, activities,

and marketing materials for the entire campaign

life cycle. Create budgets and deﬁne follow-up

activities. Track responses to every campaign ac-

tivity, monitor campaign results.

Campaign Execution: includes use of predeﬁned

system templates for future re-use in campaigns,

or create new campaigns from scratch, schedule

campaign activities to be performed immediately

or at speciﬁc times in the future, and launch cam-

paigns anywhere in the world with strong multi-

lingual and multi-currency capabilities.

Email Marketing: Send email campaigns, merge

customer data into personalized emails, insert

conditional messaging based on recipient at-

tributes, track delivery and response for each re-

cipient automatically.

Newsletter Management: track responses to every

campaign activity and convert email responses to

leads or opportunities, qualify leads, and do much

more.

Marketing Campaigns: marketing campaigns like

Telemarketing, Internet marketing, Event-based

marketing and Direct mail marketing, all except

Email Marketing.

List Management: automatically create static or

dynamic lists based on accounts, contacts, or

leads.

Lead Management: track marketing campaign re-

sults across a variety of channels, from online ads

to social media, to when leads come in, automated

scoring and lead routing ensure that leads never

fall through the cracks and always get to the right

sales representative fast.

Web to Lead Capture: a way to allow visitors to

your website or other online location to become

leads.(Buttle, 2009; SugarCRM, 2004; Sales-

force, 2000; Microsoft, 2008c; Oracle, 2007b)

By analyzing Table 2, we consider that the most

important marketing features are: campaign man-

agement, campaign execution, list management, and

email marketing.

Table 3: Service Features Table.

Customer Service Features Sugar CRM Microsoft CRM Sage CRM Siebel CRM Salesforce

CRM

Case Escala-

tion and Noti-

ﬁcation

X X X

Case Routing

and Queuing

X X X X

Contact Cen-

ter

X X X X X

Case Manage-

ment

X X X X X

Customer Self

Service Portal

X X X X X

Email Man-

agement

X X X X

Knowledge

Base

X X X X X

Customer In-

formation

X X X X

Service Con-

tracts

X X

Description of the Service features(Oracle, 2007d;

Microsoft, 2008b; Salesforce, 2012; Sage, 2012; Sug-

arCRM, 2014), illustrated in Table 3:

Case Escalation and Notiﬁcation: ensures that is-

sues get escalated according to internally deter-

mined rules.

Case Routing and Queuing: Queuing and routing

applications allow issues to be routed to agents

with particular expertise and positioned in that

agent’s queue according to some criterion.

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Contact Center: enables users to understand each

customer as an individual, obtain all relevant cus-

tomer information in a single view, and access that

information when it matters from an incredibly

fast, multi-channel agent desktop application.

Case Management: create, assign, and manage

customer service requests across multiple chan-

nels, including phone, email, Web, in-person and

emerging channels. Manage cases from initial

contact through resolution and automatically as-

sociate incoming support inquiries with the appro-

priate case.

Customer Self Service Portal:allows companies

to provide self-service capabilities to customers

and prospects for key marketing, sales and sup-

port activities. Also allows non-technical users

to create and deploy web-to-lead forms, enables

users to log and manage support cases online, al-

lows customers to update account, contact, billing

and shipping address and gives users the ability

to manage subscriptions to company communica-

tions in an automated fashion.

Email Management: maintain accurate account,

contact and service history with automated track-

ing and response for customer email messages.

Knowledge Base: resolve common support issues

quickly using a searchable knowledge base. En-

sure that published information is complete, cor-

rect, and properly tagged using built-in review

processes. Build and maintain a solution database

that makes it easy for people to ﬁnd appropriate

solutions quickly.

Customer Information: manage accounts, con-

tacts, calls, products, territory, activity and con-

tracts.

Service Contracts : Service contracts are agree-

ments between you and your customers for a

type of customer support. Service contracts

can represent different kinds of customer sup-

port, such as warranties, subscriptions, or ser-

vice level agreements (SLAs).(Buttle, 2009; Sug-

arCRM, 2004; Salesforce, 2000; Oracle, 2007d;

Microsoft, 2008b)

By analyzing Table 3, we consider that the most

important service features are: case routing and queu-

ing, contact center, case management, knowledge

base, customer self-service portal and email manage-

ment.

Description of the Reporting features(Oracle,

2007a; Microsoft, 2008d; Salesforce, 2012; Sage,

2012; SugarCRM, 2014), illustrated in Table 4:

Table 4: Reporting and Analytics Features Table.

Reporting and Analytics Features Sugar CRM Microsoft CRM Sage CRM Siebel CRM Salesforce

CRM

Custom

reports

X X X X X

Dashboards X X X X X

Sales Analyt-

ics

X X X X

Marketing

Analytics

X X X

Service Ana-

lytics

X X X

Custom Reports: easily build customized reports

with wizard-based tools that do not require tech-

nical resources from IT.

Dashboards: insightful and focused dashboards for

executives and top constituents that adeptly high-

light key marketing metrics, key sales metrics and

for service analytics.

Sales Analytics: generate and use reports, make

data relevant and track pipelines to transform in-

formation into Sales Intelligence.

Marketing Analytics: is the application of math-

ematical and statistical processes to marketing

problems. Exploratory applications of marketing

analytics provide insights into, and understanding

about, issues and problems.

Service Analytics: provides in-depth knowledge

into service request activity, resolution trends,

service revenue, costs, and customer satisfac-

tion. (SugarCRM, 2004; Salesforce, 2000; Ora-

cle, 2007a; Microsoft, 2008a)

By analyzing Table 4, we conclude that all the re-

porting and analytics features are important, not only

because they are present in most of CRM solutions but

also by the fact that one of the principal technologies

of the CRM is the CRM Analytics and these features

are part of it.

Table 5: Integration Features Table.

Integration Features Sugar CRM Microsoft CRM Sage CRM Siebel CRM Salesforce

CRM

Email Inte-

gration

X X X X X

Social Net-

works

X X X

Integrated

third-party

apps

X X X

Web service

API - SOAP

X X X X X

Web service

API - REST

Computer

Telephone

Integration

X X X X X

Automatic

Call Distribu-

tor

X X X X X

Microsoft

Ofﬁce Inte-

gration

X X X

Cloud Con-

nectors

X X X

Description of the Integration features(Oracle,

2007c; Microsoft, 2008d; Salesforce, 2012; Sage,

2012; SugarCRM, 2014), illustrated in Table 5:

Integration Features: all most common compo-

nents that are integrated with CRM.

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By analyzing Table 5, we consider that the most

important integration features are: email integration,

web services api-SOAP integration, CTI and ACD.

Table 6: Security Features Table.

Security Features Sugar CRM Microsoft CRM Sage CRM Siebel CRM Salesforce

CRM

Role Based

Security

X X X X

Advanced

Password

Management

X X X X

Audit Trail X X X

Field Level

Security

X X X X

User Based

Security

X X X X X

Team Based

Security

X X X

Description of the Security features(Oracle, 2011;

Roger Gilchrist, 2009; Salesforce, 2012; Sage, 2012;

SugarCRM, 2014), illustrated in Table 6:

Role based Security: privileges are assigned to de-

ﬁned categories of users (known as roles) rather

than to individual users.

Advanced Password Management: allows admin-

istrators to set up system generated passwords ver-

sus manually created passwords for new users,

failed login lockout attempts, and conﬁgure the

email templates used to send password informa-

tion to users.

Audit Trail: automatically records changes made to

ﬁelds within the application, ensuring data secu-

rity and integrity across the organization.

Field Level Security: restrict access to high busi-

ness impact ﬁelds to speciﬁc users and teams.

User based Security: authentication of users for se-

curity access.

Team based Security: Control what your users can

access. Lock down sensitive data to speciﬁc teams

(groups). (Oracle, 2011; Roger Gilchrist, 2009)

By analyzing Table 6, we consider that the most

important security feature is: role based security, team

based security, ﬁeld level security, advanced pass-

word management and user based security feature.

Table 7: Other Important Features Table.

Other Important Features Sugar CRM Microsoft CRM Sage CRM Siebel CRM Salesforce

CRM

Workﬂow

Processes

Automation

X X X X X

Document

Management

X X X

Mobile Ac-

cess

X X X X X

Ofﬂine Ac-

cess

X X X X

Data Dedupli-

cation

X X X X X

Calendar

Management

X X X X X

Description of the other important CRM fea-

tures(Oracle, 2007a; Microsoft, 2008a; Salesforce,

2012; Sage, 2012; SugarCRM, 2014), illustrated in

Table 7:

Workﬂow Processes Automation: design and run

any business process with point and click simplic-

ity using Workﬂow.

Document Management: the Documents module is

used to create and manage ﬁles to share with users

and contacts.

Mobile Access: access customer data instantly on a

mobile device.

Ofﬂine Access: allows access a subset of records us-

ing the same browser-based interface as the online

system but without an Internet connection.

Data Deduplication: detect and remove duplicate

records.

Calendar Management: allows users to easily

schedule, view, and manage their activities (e.g.

calls, meetings, tasks) in one place. (Salesforce,

2000; SugarCRM, 2004; Oracle, 2007a; Mi-

crosoft, 2008a)

In Table 7, are presented features that for them-

selves are a speciﬁc module, and which we decided to

group in a unique table. Note the Mobile access and

Ofﬂine Access are part of the same module, that in the

CRM solutions datasheets goes by the name of Mo-

bile CRM. All the features presented in the this table

are important, because all are common to at least three

CRM solutions. Following in section 3.2 we present

the view of our Application layer from our Reference

Architecture model.

3.2 Reference Enterprise Application

Architecture Proposed

In this section, we present a view of the Application

layer from our Reference Architecture model, which

we deﬁned through the features identiﬁed in the Ta-

bles 1-7 from the previous section. The view is illus-

trated in Figure 2.

The point of this view, is to present the Applica-

tion layer that we deﬁned, with the modules and the

respective functionalities. We arrived to this model

through the features that we identiﬁed and are pre-

sented in the Tables 1-7 of section 3.1. For the selec-

tion of the features from those tables, we chose the

features that are common to, at least, three of the ﬁve

CRM solutions (Tables 1-7, section 3.1). The com-

mon features are:

• Sales Features: account management, activity

management, competitor tracking, contact man-

agement, contract management, lead manage-

ment, opportunity management, product catalog

and management, quote management, territory

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Figure 2: CRM Reference Application Architecture (Archi-

mate notation).

management, quota management, order manage-

ment, sales pipeline and sales forecasting.

• Marketing Features: campaign management,

campaign execution, email marketing, marketing

campaigns, list management, web lead to capture

and lead management.

• Service Features: case escalation and notiﬁcation,

case routing and queuing, contact center, case

management, customer self service portal, email

management, knowledge base, customer view and

service analytics and service contracts.

• Report and Analytics Features: custom reports,

dashboards, sales analytics, marketing analytics

and service analytics.

• Integration Features: social networks, email in-

tegration, web-services api - soap integration, mi-

crosoft ofﬁce integration, automatic call distrib-

utor, computer telephone integration, cloud con-

nectors and integrated third-party apps.

• Security Features: role based security, advanced

password management, control data access, user

based security, team based security and audit trail.

• Other Important CRM Features: workﬂow and

processes automation, document management,

data deduplication (this one related to technologi-

cal layer), mobile and ofﬂine access and calendar

management.

There are some features that are repeated, this is

happens due the fact that each of modules interact

between them and have some functions in common.

This aspect will be resolved in future work with a

CRUD matrix. These features were grouped into 10

modules. We arrive to these modules by analyzing

the CRM datasheets. The features on those CRM

datasheets were grouped in areas. Those areas we in-

terpreted them as the modules in the CRM. For the in

the other important CRM features we created a mod-

ule for each one of them, because they weren’t part of

any speciﬁc area. The modules are the following:

• Sales module composed by the common sales fea-

tures, Figure 3;

Figure 3: Sales Module.

• Marketing module composed by the marketing fea-

tures, Figure 4;

Figure 4: Marketing Module.

• Service module composed by the common service

features, Figure 5;

Figure 5: Service Module.

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Figure 6: Reporting and Analysis Module.

• Reporting module composed by the common re-

porting features, Figure 6;

• Mobile module composed by mobile and ofﬂine

features, Figure 7;

Figure 7: Mobile Module.

• Document module composed by document man-

agement feature, Figure 8;

Figure 8: Document Module.

• Integration module composed by the common inte-

gration features, Figure 9;

Figure 9: Integration Module.

• Security module composed by the common secu-

rity features, Figure 10;

• Calendar module composed by the calendar man-

agement feature, Figure 11;

Figure 10: Security Module.

Figure 11: Calendar Module.

• Workﬂow module composed by workﬂow process

automation feature, Figure 12;

Figure 12: Workﬂow Module.

This solution is a ﬁrst representation of a Refer-

ence Application Architecture for the CRM domain,

based on the datasheets of ﬁve CRM solutions that we

considered as the best practices of the industry.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The work presented in the paper focus on a ﬁrst step

towards a complete Reference Enterprise Application

Architecture, with the goal to create a documented ar-

chitectural design practice for the CRM domain. With

this work, we provide a view of the CRM domain as

a guideline, to help architects in this domain. The

main achievements taken from this work are the anal-

ysis made to each of the CRM solutions datasheets

and the representation of that analysis in the Applica-

tion layer in Archimate. Thanks to the analysis made,

we can take conclusions related to the CRM solu-

tions, like: the SugarCRM is the most complete in

terms of Sales domain, for the Marketing domain Mi-

crosoft CRM stands out as the CRM solution which

provides more features, in terms of Customer Ser-

vice the most suitable CRM solution is the Salesforce

CRM , in the Reporting and Analytics ﬁeld all the

CRM solutions are all well equipped, in the Integra-

tion domain the SugarCRM solution is the solution

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with the most integration capacity and, for the last, in

terms of Security, the Salesforce CRM and Microsoft

CRM are the solutions with the most features. Still in

relation to the Application architecture proposed, an

important part of the work made was the identiﬁca-

tion of the ten common modules of CRM solutions:

the sales module with fourteen functions, the market-

ing module with seven functions, the customer sup-

port module with eight functions, the reporting mod-

ule with ﬁve functions, the mobile module with two

function, the document module with one function, the

calendar management module with one function, the

workﬂow module with one function as well, the in-

tegration module with eight functions and the secu-

rity module with six functions. This is an ongoing

research, that started with this paper by presenting

an analysis on what are the principal features asso-

ciated with CRM market solutions. The solution pre-

sented in this paper has some limitations, because the

work presented only covers the functional require-

ments. We didn’t present an evaluation, because its

a ﬁrst step composed only by the functional require-

ments, and with that we wouldn’t have any interesting

results to present. This is a work in progress towards

a complete Reference Enterprise Application Archi-

tecture for the CRM domain. We started by present-

ing in this work, the main features of ﬁve CRM solu-

tions and the modules that satisfy them. In the future

work, we will identify the main information entities

of these ﬁve CRM solutions. With the information

entities and with the features identiﬁed in this work,

we will reach a ﬁnal Reference Enterprise Applica-

tion Architecture, through a CRUD matrix. When we

reach the Reference Enterprise Application Architec-

ture, we will evaluate it with case studies from the

Public Portuguese Administration, through some met-

rics to evaluate information systems.

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