CRM Module

Usage of CRM widely differs by target customer use case: from full Customer Care and Backoffice operation for retail providers to a lightweight customer reference database for wholesale operators.

CRM in tSM provides party and relationship master data used by commercial and operational modules. In telco terms, CRM is the commercial identity layer for customer-facing operations and the anchor for order-to-cash and trouble-to-resolve processes. It is also the place where operator-specific governance is applied to customer lifecycle, account responsibility, contact roles, and address quality.

1. Telco Operating Models

CRM is used in different depth depending on the operator model:

Operating model	Typical CRM usage
Retail ISP / convergent operator	Full customer care and backoffice operation (customer onboarding, account hierarchy, contacts, lifecycle handling, communication and process support).
Wholesale operator	Mainly a trusted customer reference database with selected account/contact structures for integration and contract context.
Hybrid operator	Shared CRM core with profile-specific overlays for retail and wholesale lines of business.

2. tSM CRM Domain (Standard)

tSM CRM includes these core concepts:

• Customer: central party entity for commercial relationship context,
• Account: commercial, contractual, and billing responsibility context,
• Person and PersonRole: human contacts and operational/legal role semantics,
• CrmAddress and CrmAddressRole: address and address-role context for fulfillment and billing,
• Lead: pre-customer opportunity context for qualification and conversion,
• Campaign: outbound and portfolio-targeting context for sales/marketing execution,
• code-table driven governance for type/status/segment/legal-form values.

Core platform behavior:

• business key + UUID identity (key and id),
• extension data via chars,
• registry-driven lifecycle and classification,
• reusable references for Ordering, Inventory, Billing, Ticketing, and workflow.

2.1 Entity semantics in telco

• Customer: commercial party master and the root context for service, order, and support interactions. Commonly aligned with TMF customer/party context.
• Account: commercial and billing responsibility boundary under the customer (for example per contract, line of business, settlement model, or cost center). Commonly aligned with TMF account concepts.
• Person and PersonRole: operational and legal contacts (technical, billing, sales, legal representative), reused across ordering, provisioning communication, and assurance workflows.
• CrmAddress and CrmAddressRole: service, billing, shipping, and correspondence locations with role semantics consumed by fulfillment and billing processes.
• Lead: pre-order qualification entity used for pipeline management and conversion into customer/account structures.
• Campaign: commercial execution entity for targeted waves and outbound actions linked to lead/customer populations.

2.2 CRM in telco process landscape

• Lead-to-Order: lead qualification and conversion feed ordering.
• Order-to-Fulfillment: customer/account/address/person references are reused by order handling and service/resource fulfillment.
• Order-to-Cash: account and address references drive billing-party and invoicing context.
• Care-to-Resolve: customer and contact context is reused by ticketing, work orders, and communication workflows.

3. Core Data Model (tSM-focused)

4. TMF General Alignment

CRM concepts in tSM align to TM Forum party/customer/account/address concepts. Mapping is semantic and integration-specific, not strictly field-by-field. TMF APIs are intentionally extensible, so practical implementations usually combine base TMF entities with operator-specific extensions, registries, and workflow behavior.

tSM concept	Typical TMF concept	API family
Customer	Customer and customer account context	TMF629 Customer Management
Person	Party individual/organization	TMF632 Party Management
PersonRole	Party role	TMF669 Party Role Management
Account	Account	TMF666 Account Management
CrmAddress	Geographic address	TMF673 Geographic Address Management

For Lead and Campaign, operators usually apply implementation-specific CRM models and integrate them with TMF product and customer flows (commonly TMF620/TMF622/TMF629) according to business process design.

Practical guidance:

• use TMF concepts as integration language between domains and systems,
• keep tSM CRM data model authoritative for in-platform process orchestration,
• apply controlled extensions (chars, code tables, process logic) for operator-specific rules.

5. Technical Documentation Map

• Customer
• Account
• Lead
• Person
• Campaign
• Retail Customer Blueprint

6. Related Documentation

• CRM Module Detail
• Ordering Module
• Inventory Module
• TMF629 Customer Management (TM Forum)
• TMF632 Party Management (TM Forum)
• TMF666 Account Management (TM Forum)
• TMF669 Party Role Management (TM Forum)
• TMF673 Geographic Address Management (TM Forum)