XCRL--THE FUTURE OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS There are many enterprise platforms that offer customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Until now, however, there has not been an available standard for describing customer relationships using XML. The aim of the extensible Customer Relationships Language (xCRL) is to provide a consistent approach for sharing customer relationship information. OVERVIEW The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) accepted the xCRL language on submission from MSI Business Solutions Pty. Ltd. as a solution for describing customer relationships using XML. OASIS maintains several Technical Committees (TCs) that are responsible for providing various standards. The Customer Information Quality (CIQ) Technical Committee is developing the xCRL standard because of its relevance to other standards the group works on, such as the extensible Customer Information Language (xCIL) and the extensible Name and Address Language (xNAL). The xCRL specification references both xCIL and xNAL elements to provide a consistent approach for standard relationship components. THE DETAILS xCRL provides a standard approach for describing various types of customers, customer relationships, and contact management. A relationship can be built from one person to another person, such as a child to his parent. Relationships can also be built from person to organization; a person who works for a company, for example, has a person-to-organization relationship. The final type of relationship is an organization-to-organization relationship, such as when a large company buys a smaller company. The smaller company becomes a subsidiary of the larger company, forming an organization-to-organization relationship. Each xCRL document contains the xCRL root element and one or more RelationshipRecord elements. Each RelationshipRecord defines a particular relationship between customers. The RelationshipRecord's Customer element identifies the first customer. The RelationshipWithCustomer element, which also defines the type of relationship between the two customers, defines the customer relationship. The RelationshipRecord's Customer might actually be multiple customers (e.g., when a married couple purchases a home mortgage). In this case, the Customer element is not used. Instead, the JointCustomer element is used. JointCustomer is a container that holds multiple Customers. Using JointCustomer, you can build relationships between groups of customers and other customers. In addition to the Customer (or JointCustomer) element, the RelationshipRecord element contains a RelationshipWithCustomer element. The RelationshipWithCustomer element is comprised of several subelements and a few important attributes. The attributes help to define the type of relationship (such as person to person), the relationship title (such as "Doing business as"), the relationship nature (such as spouse or beneficiary), and a unique customer identifier. The RelationshipWithCustomer element also contains a Customer (or JointCustomer) element that describes the "other" customer in the relationship. The Role element defines the role of the customer (if it is a person) within the organization (i.e., a decision-maker, a decision-influencer, etc.). Also within the RelationshipWithCustomer element are the ContactHistory and UpdateHistory elements. ContactHistory is a container for multiple contact records. Contact records are either in free-form using the ContactInfo element or in a more structured form using the ContactDetails element, which contains individual elements such as the contact date, time, people involved, and description. The UpdateHistory element is a container for tracking updates to customer information. Like the ContactHistory container, UpdateHistory supports either free-form information using the LastUpdateInfo element or structured data using the LastUpdateDetails element. LastUpdateDetails includes information such as the updated date and time, the person who committed the update, and a description. AN EXAMPLE The following example of a customer relationship illustrates the use of the xCRL tags. TechRepublic is a subsidiary of CNET, so we can model this relationship using what we've learned so far. Here is the information for CNET: CNET Networks, Inc. 235 Second Street San Francisco, CA 94105 Here is the information for TechRepublic: TechRepublic 9900 Corporate Campus Drive, Suite 1500 Louisville, KY 40223 TechRepublic KY Louisville Corporate Campus Drive 9900 1500 40223 CNET Networks United States CA San Francisco Second Street 235 94105 SUMMARY The extensible Customer Relationships Language allows organizations to better manage their customer relationships. It also provides a standard format for sharing relationship information. Find out more about xCRL by visiting the OASIS Web site. http://www.oasis-open.org/ Brian Schaffner is a senior consultant for DMR Consulting, a Fujitsu company. He provides architecture, design, and development support for DMR's Telcom360 group. ----------------------------------------