BlueCRM: A New Trend of Customer Relationship Management Systems

Mohammed Alawairdhi, Hongji YangSoftware Technology Research LaboratoryDe Montfort University, United Kingdom

{owairdi,hyang}@dmu.ac.uk

Mousa AL-AkhrasKing Abduallah II School of Information Technology

The University of Jordan, Amman, 11942, JordanMousa.akhras@ju.edu.jo

Abstract

In this paper a new proactive Customer RelationshipManagement system (CRM), BlueCRM, is proposed. Theproposed system employs Bluetooth as an automatic identi-fication token in addition to its common use as a communi-cation channel. The system offers a low-cost proactive CRMsystem which is the future trend of such systems. The imple-mentation of the prototype system comprises two sides: adatabase management program and an intuitive user inter-face in the software side. In the hardware side there area Bluetooth-enabled device and a Bluetooth dongle. Thearchitecture encloses an important advantage over the pre-vious solutions due to its feasibility and ease of deployment.Furthermore, the architecture can be flexibly implementedeither as a stand-alone or as integrated part of an existinginformation system.

1. Introduction

Since the seminal work of Mark Weiser on ubiquitouscomputing [19], more focus has been put by researcherson taking advantage of these technologies in assortedapplications fields including the commercial and businessdomain. Ubiquitous technologies available nowadayssuch as wireless communications, positioning services,and sensor network technologies doubtlessly will havean immense impact on various areas of business. RadioFrequency Identification (RFID) [10] for instance hasbeen used for years in commercial applications such assupply chain management. Recently, CRM systems [13]are becoming one of the business functions that its scopehas been expanded via utilising the existing ubiquitoustechnologies.

After the thriving of e-CRM [16] which began to use theInternet to change the ways in which the business reach outto their customers through Web sites people access fromPCs at home or at work. Later, the concept of mobile CRM

(mCRM) [17] which uses mobile medium such as mobilephones or PDAs for managing customer relationshipswas presented. Today CRM systems trend is to work ina proactive manner to provide customers with the rightservice in the right time and in the right location which arecalled in some literature, collectively, as ubiquitous CRM(uCRM) systems and Proactive CRM systems in others.

In response to this new trend, a number of prototypesolutions have been introduced in this field [1, 14]. Theseprototypes attempt to provide proactive customer serviceby tracking the customer’s location within the businesspremises using RFID [10], Automatic Identification (Auto-ID) [8] and sensor technology. However, most of theproposed solutions were mainly geared toward mid-sizedand large scale businesses because of the high expenditureand complexity involved in their deployment.

Due to the apparent need for research that not onlyconcentrates in applying ubiquitous computing in largebusinesses, in this paper, a prototype for a cost-effectiveproactive CRM system employing Bluetooth for sensingwhich can be exploited by both small and large businessesis proposed. The proposed system architecture lays thefoundation for future research in the area of Bluetooth vi-able applications and the next-generation of CRM systems.

In contrast to previous solutions, the proposed archi-tecture is considerably less expensive, feasible, and easierto deploy as explained in the system description. It doesnot require any floor space reconstruction or highly-skilledcomputer specialists in order to deploy and operate thesystem. The system enables the tracking of customers’location once they switch on their Bluetooth-enableddevices in a diameter of 10 meters around the business’ssite. Dissimilar to the systems that use RFID whicheither requires the customer to carry an additional cardor require the businesses to replace their existing cardswith RFID-enabled ones. Moreover, the system use isnot limited to business domain, but also it is applicable in

12th IEEE International Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems

1071-0485/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/FTDCS.2008.23

226

a variety of environments such as exhibitions and museums.

This paper is organised in the following manner: thenext section describes the system architecture in detail.In section 3 the BlueCRM prototype implementationis explained, section 4 discusses the main features andadvantages of the proposed system architecture, while inthe section 5 two working scenarios and an analysis of thescenarios are presented. Section 6 highlights some of therelated work. Finally, conclusions are drawn and futurework is represented in section 7.

2. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

As depicted in Figure 1, the architecture is composed ofthree main parts: hardware, software and communication.

Figure 1. Architecture of BlueCRM system

2.1. Hardware

Making the hardware requirements needed to implementthe system simple and ubiquitous is an important featureof the proposed architecture. Therefore, the essential hard-ware is classified as: business requirements and customerrequirements.

In the business side only a desktop or a laptop computerequipped with a Bluetooth dongle (internal or external) isrequired. Any desktop or laptop computer with an averageprocessing power to run a small database application anda web application is adequate to run the system. Thiscomputer needs to have Bluetooth connectivity to enablecommunication with other Bluetooth devices, such asPDAs or mobile phones within a range of approximately 10meters. This is the only needed requirements if the system

is intended to be used as a stand-alone system in a smallbusiness environment. Nevertheless, the system can alsobe integrated with existing CRM or Enterprise ResourcePlanning (ERP) systems in large scale business enterprises.

In the customer side the only needed hardware is aBluetooth-enabled device such a PDA or a mobile phone.The customer’s Bluetooth device will act only as an identi-fication of the customer identity and is not required to storeany information or to be involved in any computations.The Bluetooth device can identify the customer becausethe address for the Bluetooth device is unique and no twoBluetooth devices can have the same address. Accordingly,the Bluetooth-enabled device does not need to have highcomputational power or additional non-volatile memory[2, 4].

2.2. Software

Similar to the hardware components, the softwareelements are low-cost, easy-to-implement, and ubiquitousparticularly if the system is planned to be integrated withan existing CRM system. Basically, in a stand-alonedeployment, there are three essential software parts ofthe architecture: database, interface application, and aBluetooth device scanner.

The database is the repository for the customer datawhich may vary in size and content based on the type ofbusiness and the type of service intended to be provided tothe customer. Regardless of the size of the database, thecustomer Bluetooth device address has to be one of thefields in the customer record and may act as the primarykey for the customer’s record.

When a Bluetooth device such as a mobile phone entersthe range of the Bluetooth, this initiates the database to lookfor the customer’s data using the primary key (Bluetoothdevice address). Consequently there is a strong relationbetween the mobile device location and the databaseapplication.

The interface application is also dependent on the targetbusiness type. For instance, it can be as simple as searchingfor the user name using her or his Bluetooth device addressand viewing the customer name as soon as she or hebecomes in a 10 meter range from the location of a smallbusiness’ shop such as a Pizza shop. Conversely, theapplication can be a sophisticated system which may usedata mining techniques to derive and analyse informationthat assist in offering special services for a VIP customer ina large-scale bank.

227

The Bluetooth device scanner is the core and themost important part of our system architecture. This isbecause we used the Bluetooth in a new and differentdimension from the conventional uses of Bluetooth, suchas synchronizing information, transferring photos or ringtones between mobile phones, or connecting a printerwithout cables. We use the Bluetooth in the context ofsensing and Auto-ID to determine the proximity of thecustomer from the business location in order to provide aproactive CRM. This is accomplished by taking advantageof the Bluetooth discovery protocol and the Bluetoothunique 48 bit device identifier (BD ADDR) assigned toa specific manufacturer by the IEEE [2], such addressmay look like (00:0e:6d:5f:6f:5c). Bluetooth scanningsoftware role in the system is to continuously search fornew Bluetooth devices that have been placed in the “dis-coverable” mode and obtain the device physical address.The obtained address is used as the keyword to search thecustomer database to find a matching customer record.Figure 2 depicts our CRM system scanning for new devices.

Figure 2. Running BlueCRM system scanningfor new devices

Bluetooth scanning is nothing new, as Linux and Win-dows scanners have been available for a few years and mostof the Bluetooth scanning function is handled by operatingsystems Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) anddrivers.

All the software components described in the systemabove are easy to implement and do not need highly-skilledprogramming experience.

2.3. Communication

The system can operate in two communication modes:connection mode and connectionless mode. In the con-nection mode the system sends a welcoming message tothe customer mobile via the Bluetooth OBject Exchange(OBEX) communications protocol [2], a screenshot of oursystem in connection mode is depicted in Figure 3. In theconnection mode the customer’s information are also dis-played in the CRM application interface inside the businesspremises. On the other hand, in the connectionless modeno messages are sent and only the customer’s informationwill be displayed by the CRM application interface. Thesoftware continuously looking for new customers and whena Bluetooth device is detected, the database is searchedfor the address to retrieve the other information in thecustomer’s record.

Figure 3. Running BlueCRM system in con-nection mode

3. IMPLEMENTATION

On the client side, no software was needed as all theused software was on the server side. On the server side,the CRM system proposed in this paper was implementedusing Visual Basic.Net 2005. The Bluetooth discoveryand communication was implemented utilising Bluetoothlibrary provided by third-party, Franson Technology AB[3], the library is called BlueTools. The software and hard-ware layers of the proposed system are depicted in Figure 4.

Using the Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) providedby Franson, different services are implemented. Firstly, aBluetooh manager was instantiated to manage all Bluetoothoperations. Different network objects to represent different

228

Visual Basic ApplicationBlueTools LibraryBluetooth DriverBluetooth dongle

Figure 4. Layers of the proposed system

Bluetooth connection devices (dongles) could be instanti-ated. This is the VB.Net code that declares the managerand the network:

Dim m manager As ManagerDim WithEvents m network As Network

The WithEvents keyword used in the network decla-ration signal the fact that some events could occur to thenetwork object (m network), such events include:

• DeviceDiscovered: Occurs when a new Bluetooth de-vice is discovered.

• DeviceDiscoveryStarted: Occurs when the discoveryprocess for a new Bluetooth device is started.

• DeviceDiscoveryCompleted: Occurs when the discov-ery process for a new Bluetooth device is completed.

• DeviceLost: Occurs when an already discovered de-vice is lost.

• Error: Occurs when an already discovered Bluetoothdevice is lost either due to disabling the Bluetooth con-nection or due to moving out of range.

The manager and the network object are initiated asfollows:

’ get bluetools managerm manager = Manager.GetManager()’get first network donglem network = m manager.Networks(0)

Network objects could be used to discover devicesasynchronously. Each discovered devices is then added tothe list upon discovery. The discovery process is performedperiodically based on a timer

’Start looking for devices on the’networkm network.DiscoverDevicesAsync()

When a new device is discovered, a service discoveryphase started to figure out the available services on the

newly discovered device.

For the purpose of sending a welcome message to thecustomer in the connection mode, therefore during servicediscovery if the newly discovered device supports Blue-tooth OBject Exchange (OBEX) communications protocol[2], a new object is instantiated to perform the required filepush operation. The declaration and instantiation for theOBEX object is performed as follows:

Dim WithEvents m objectPush AsObexObjectPush

’ create an ObexObjectPush object’ connected to the ServiceStreamm objectPush = New ObexObjectPush(-1)

The push is performed using the following code:

Create a new FileStream objectDim fileStream As FileStream

’Instantiate the new FileStream objectfileStream = New FileStream(FileToPush.Text, FileMode.Open,FileAccess.Read)

’Perform the push operation for theselected filem objectPush.PushFileAsync(fileStream,Path.GetFileName(FileToPush.Text),m streamCurrent)

Upon device discovery and when the customer detailsare to be displayed either in the connection or the connec-tionless mode, the Bluetooth device address (BD ADDR)is used to retrieve the rest of customer’s details.

These details are then displayed including theBD ADDR, mobile brand and customer’s name, andbalance if required. Other information can also be retrievedif needed.

To get the BD ADDR from the device we can write thefollowing code:

device.Address.ToString()

To get the mobile brand we can write:

discovery.Discovery.ToString()

The rest of details are retrieved from the database.

229

4. SYSTEM FEATURES

In this section we bring the focus to three importantfeatures of our proposed CRM system which are cost,deployment and privacy. These features can play anessential role in making the decision whether to implementa CRM system in business or not, particularly in the case ofsmall-sized business.

Business owners normally need to consider four majorcost factors when implementing a CRM system: hardware,software, deployment, and maintenance. In our system thecost of these components is enormously decreased in com-parison with previous systems such as RFID-based systemas a consequence of the following reasons. First, the onlyadditional hardware device required for the system is theBluetooth dongle which costs less than 10 pounds. Second,free open source database and development programmingtools can be used to construct the system. Third, neitherthe implementation nor maintenance of the stand-alonesystem does require a high level of programming skills.Hence, a single programmer can develop and maintain theentire system. Finally, the cost of deployment is nearlyzero as there is no redesigning or upgrading in the physicalinfrastructure inside or outside the business space.

In contrast to many available designs, our design doesnot require any modification in the business physical spacein order to deploy the system. Moreover, the design doesnot add any burden to the customers by asking them tocarry additional cards or tokens. Instead, the proposeddesign requires only a Bluetooth dongle attached to a PCinside the business shop and a Bluetooth-enabled devicesuch as a mobile phone, which makes the deployment ofthe system simple and feasible.

Privacy in ubiquitous computing has been a hot topicfor sometime now and many researchers has addressed thisissue [12]. In our system the privacy has been consideredtoo and resolved using a primitive method. As mentionedabove, the system only detects the Bluetooth devices thatare set in the discoverable mode. Therefore, customerswill not be detected and tracked unless they switch theirdevices into discoverable mode. Accordingly, there is notany threat to the customers’ personal privacy without theirawareness.

5. SCENARIOS

The proposed system architecture can be put in use insmall business domains as well as in large business do-mains. The following are two example scenarios that

demonstrate the practical deployment of the system in bothdomains.

5.1 Small business scenario

Mohammed is a frequent customer to a laundry servicesshop in his neighbourhood. The laundry shop uses Blue-CRM as a stand-alone CRM system. As a loyal customer,the shop decides to provide him with a more personal ser-vice, so the shop adds his information including his mobileBD ADDR to the shop’s CRM database. In a later day, Mo-hammed is approaching the laundry shop to collect his laun-dry as usual, once he arrives to the shop’s parking space, thesystem detects his arrival and alerts the laundry worker. Theworker then prepares his laundry and takes it to him whilehe is waiting in his car. This scenario is applicable in simi-lar small businesses such as fast-food shop or coffee shopsin which in-car service or collection service are normallyoffered.

5.2 Large business scenario

Comparable to the previous scenario of a small business,the BlueCRM system can assist in improving the serviceand cater to VIP clients in large businesses such as a bankby integrating with its existing CRM or ERP systems. Atthe bank, upon the arrival of VIP customers to the parkingarea, the system sends them a greeting message and iden-tifies them to bank personnel before they pass through thebuilding’s door. This allows more time to the bank person-nel to greet the VIP customers by name at the entrance be-fore directing them to sales associates without making themwaiting in a queue. In a similar manner, customers with dis-abilities can be offered assistance to get into the building assoon as they arrive to the bank’s parking lot.

6. RELATED WORK

As a consequence of the level of maturity and stan-dardisation the ubiquitous technologies achieved recently,the ubiquitous computing is gradually becoming the thrustin commerce that follows the e-business [7]. Variousareas of business currently adapt the ubiquitous comput-ing and more will rise in the near future, ranging fromassets management, inventory tracking, and CRM [9].In the CRM field, Schloter and Aghajan [14] proposed aprototype for a real-time CRM system that relies on thedistribution of RFID readers all over the business and spaceand providing the customers with RFID-fitted cards. Thesystem tracks the customers and collects information aboutthe customers’ presence or persistence using different timesto be used as marketing information. Yang and Rhee [20]proposed a model of ubiquitous CRM (uCRM) utilizing

230

RFID technique for managing the customers by collectingthe customer data, and storing them under the ubiquitousenvironment, and acquire the information of customersin real time. Another prototype example is the Metrofuture store [1]. In Metro future store, an RFID-basedshelf and shopping cart content tracking system is used totrack the inventory electronically and to allow customersto check-out without a cashier. Similarly banks launchedpilot programs for RFID-enabled bank cards in the UnitedStates and Europe that aim to provide more personalisedservice to their customers [15]. However, most of theexisting designs and prototypes face some obstacles likethe complexity of implementation and the high cost ofdeployment.

In a similar manner Bluetooth as a ubiquitous technol-ogy, was also utilised in number of applications outer itsordinary usage as a communication channel. In access con-trol, for instance, Corner and Noble [6] used Bluetooth tech-nology as an authentication token that provides the authen-tication to laptops or doors in the concept of transit authen-tication. LockItNow, likewise, is a shareware program [5]that locks and unlocks a Microsoft Windows desktop us-ing a Bluetooth-enabled device. Bluetooth was also usedin other applications such as cooperative content sharing,BlueTorrent [11], and in indoor location services systems[18]. However, in this paper, Bluetooth is presented as anAuto ID token in a proactive CRM system which is consid-ered a novel dimension of practice for this technology.

7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

Emerging technologies associated with ubiquitouscomputing enable contemplating innovative approachesthat will expand and alter present CRM operations. Thesimplicity of the system architecture we propose in thispaper in which we employed the Bluetooth in a new anddifferent dimension from the conventional Bluetooth usesoffers a handy tool to the small-sized organizations whichallows them to provide personal services to their clients.Although the demonstration of the proposed system wasmerely focused on the business applications, the proposedsystem can be widely adopted in all environments whereAuto-ID technologies are commonly used.

As a future work, the prototype will be enriched in twofold. First, on the software side additional use scenarios willbe considered such as promoting new services or productsto regular customers based on their profiles. Moreover, an-other prototype to integrate the system with existing ERP isplanned. Second, on the hardware side the system will bescaled to handle using multiple Bluetooth dongles insteadof a single dongle. In addition, testing, analysing, and eval-

uating the new prototypes using the appropriate metrics willbe conducted under different use scenarios.

References

[1] The metro store of the future.

[2] The Bluetooth specification, v.1.1, 2001.

[3] Franson Technology AB.

[4] A.K. Arumugam, A.R. Nix, P.N. Fletcher, S.M.D. Ar-mour, and B.S. Lee. Scenario Driven Evaluation andInterference Mitigation Proposals for Bluetooth andHigh Data Rate Bluetooth Enabled Consumer Elec-tronic Devices. Consumer Electronics, IEEE Transac-tions on, 48(3):754–764, Aug 2002.

[5] BluetoothShareware.com. LockItNow! v1.2.

[6] Mark D. Corner and Brian D. Noble. Zero-interactionAuthentication. In MobiCom ’02: Proceedings of the8th annual international conference on Mobile com-puting and networking, pages 1–11, New York, NY,USA, 2002. ACM.

[7] E.Fleisch and C.Tellkamp. The Business Value ofUbiquitous Computing Technologies. UbiquitousCommerce, January 2005.

[8] M.Dierkes E.Fleisch. Ubiquitous Computing: WhyAuto-ID is the Logical Next Step in Enterprise Au-tomation. In Auto-ID center, January 2004.

[9] Andrew Fano and Anatole Gershman. The Future ofBusiness Services in the Age of Ubiquitous Comput-ing. Commun. ACM, 45(12):83–87, 2002.

[10] Klaus Finkenzeller. RFID Handbook: Fundamen-tals and Applications in Contactless Smart Cards andIdentification. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York,NY, USA, 2003.

[11] Sewook Jung, Uichin Lee, Alexander Chang, Dae-KiCho, and Mario Gerla. BlueTorrent: Cooperative Con-tent Sharing for Bluetooth Users. percom, 0:47–56,2007.

[12] Marc Langheinrich. Privacy by Design - Principles ofPrivacy-Aware Ubiquitous Systems. pages 273–291.Springer, 2001.

[13] Patrica Ramaswamy. Harvard Business Review onCustomer Relationship Management. Harvard Busi-ness School Press, Boston, 2002.

231

[14] C. Philipp Schloter and Hamid K. Aghajan. Wire-less RFID Networks for Real-Time Customer Rela-tionship Management. In EUC Workshops, volume3823 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages1069–1077. Springer, 2005.

[15] R. Sedgewick. Real-Time CRM: A Competitive Ad-vantage Today, A Competitive Imperative Tomorrow?Customer Interaction Solution, 22(8), Febraury 2004.

[16] Charles A. Shoniregun, Adebola Omoegun, DiepriyeBrown-West, and Oleksandr Logvynovskiy. CaneCRM and Trust Improve eC Customer Base? InCEC ’04: Proceedings of the IEEE International Con-ference on E-Commerce Technology, pages 303–310,Washington, DC, USA, 2004. IEEE Computer Soci-ety.

[17] Jaakko Sinisalo, Jari Salo, Heikki Karjaluoto, andMatti Leppaniemi. Managing Customer RelationshipsThrough Mobile Medium — Underlying Issues andOpportunities. In HICSS ’06: Proceedings of the 39thAnnual Hawaii International Conference on SystemSciences, page 112.2, Washington, DC, USA, 2006.IEEE Computer Society.

[18] S. Thongthammachart and H. Olesen. Bluetooth En-ables in-door Mobile Location Services. Vehicu-lar Technology Conference, 2003. VTC 2003-Spring.The 57th IEEE Semiannual, 3:2023–2027 vol.3, April2003.

[19] Mark Weiser. The computer for the 21st century.pages 933–940, 1995.

[20] Seungjeong Yang and Jongtae Rhee. Propose of U-CRM System Displaying Powerful Efficiency in RFIDComputing Environment. In MUE ’07: Proceedingsof the 2007 International Conference on Multimediaand Ubiquitous Engineering, pages 190–195, Wash-ington, DC, USA, 2007. IEEE Computer Society.

232