Towards a first ontology for customer relationship management

This paper presents some results of an ongoing project aimed at modeling the main concepts related to Customer Relationship Management (CRM). More precisely, the paper presents O-CREAM, a CRM ontology based on DOLCE and on two DOLCE-based modules, DnS (exploited for modeling roles and for handling reification) and OIO (exploited for modeling business knowledge by means of information objects). The project relies on the belief that all the actors involved in CRM could benefit from an ontological investigation of this field, aimed at providing a core set of formally described concepts and relations, useful both for describing CRM processes and for specifying the functionality of CRM applications. In particular, a well-formed CRM ontology would support communication and interoperability both in intra-organization and in inter-organization CRM processes. The paper discusses in details the axiomatization for the sale and customer relationship concepts, as well as for the corresponding business knowledge items (i.e., sale and customer records). It concludes by sketching a possible concrete exploitation of O-CREAM.