Subject Area Concepts A Channel is an identified, named, defined set of functions, states, touch points and media that define how parties interact in the buying and selling of goods and services as well as conducting conversations (social media) related to retail products and services. A Touchpoint is the interface of a product, service or brand with customers, non-customers, employees and other stakeholders before, during and after a transaction respectively. A Channel entity instance may be referenced by a number of different transaction/conversation oriented entities including: •CustomerCorrespondence - uses a channel to exchange requests and responses with the retailer; •RetailTransaction - uses channel to exchange information needed to capture and settle customer sales/returns; •RegistrationEvent - uses channel to capture KeyCustomer information provided as part of a registration process; •ConversionEvent - uses channel to effect a consumer state transition (i.e. a ConsumerConversionState); •ChannelRewardDerivationEligibility - uses channel as one determinant in deriving reward points earned or redeemed; and •PartyAffiliation - uses channel to mediate the affiliation relationship. The concept of Channel is supplemented by the ProcessChannel, Process, BusinessDomainProcess and BusinessDomain entity types. Collectively these four entities link each channel to one or more business processes. A Channel is used to carry out some task or activity and these entities identify, name and describe the nature of that task or activity. When mapping a sequence of business processes it is useful to map each to a channel to analyze customer-channel usage in terms of what they want to do. This information is important in helping retailers fine tune the way they use channels to interact with customers. This use of channel and channel relations applies to retailers and their suppliers and is an area for further exploration and development for ARTS. This list of different entities that use channel as a conduit for conducting conversations will be expanded in future releases of the ARTS Data Model. |