CARUSO: Customer Care and Relationship Support Office∗

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an inherent business strategy for companies big and small. The technology has reached a point where it is truly enabling the way enterprises manage their customer relationships. The goal of the EU funded project CARUSO is the design of a software toolkit that facilitates the building and maintaining of high quality business-to-business and business-to-customer relationships. CARUSO is designed to allow a multi-dimensional way of looking at markets, customers, suppliers, products, personnel, internal and external information, communication and action flow. This will be accomplished by the following core features: front-office application builder with customer care and marketing desk, basic technologies comprising a general communication server, intelligent information, document and contact access, unified messaging, and a customizable user interface. Emphasis will be put on exploiting existing tool packages as much as possible. The CARUSO toolkit is targeted at European Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) and allows them to optimize their business operations to the mutual benefit of both the supplier and the consumer.