Geschäftsprozessmodelle

Business Process & Domain Modeling

When to Use

Use when designing, extending, or reviewing CRM and ERP modules, business entities, document lifecycles, or operational workflows.

Core Discipline: Ubiquitous Language & Bounded Contexts (Eric Evans)

Never treat an ERP or CRM system as a collection of flat CRUD tables where any column can be overwritten at any time. Model the actual business process, actors, invariants, and document lineage:

1. Keep Distinct Domain Concepts Separate

Even when two entities share similar attributes (customer name, line items, total amount), they represent different legal and operational commitments with distinct lifecycles:

• CRM Entities:
  • Lead / Prospect: Unqualified or inbound inquiry before qualification.
  • Account (Company / Organization) vs. Contact (Person): An Account is a legal/business entity; Contacts are people associated with one or more Accounts (with roles like Decision Maker, Billing Contact, Technical Buyer).
  • Opportunity (Deal): A qualified potential sale tracked through pipeline stages with expected value and close date.
• Commercial & ERP Document Chain (Quote-to-Cash):
  • Quote / Proposal: A time-bounded commercial offer to a customer.
  • Sales Order: A confirmed commitment to deliver goods/services at agreed prices and terms.
  • Fulfillment / Shipment / Service Delivery: Physical or operational execution (often partial or split across multiple deliveries).
  • Invoice / Credit Note: The legally binding accounting/billing document (coordinated with the billing/invoicing subsystem).
  • Payment / Settlement: Actual cash movement and reconciliation.

Never collapse Quote, SalesOrder, Fulfillment, Invoice, and Payment into a single table or a single status column!

2. Document Lineage & Historical Price/Term Immutability

• Snapshotting Commercial Terms: When a Quote or SalesOrder is created from the Product/Price Catalog, copy the agreed unit_price, currency, tax_rate, unit_of_measure, sku_code, and product_name_snapshot onto the document line item (order_lines).
• Never Retroactively Recalculate Finalized Documents: Updating a product's catalog price today must never alter the price or total of already-issued quotes, confirmed orders, or historical invoices!
• Explicit Document References: Maintain foreign-key lineage (quote_id $\rightarrow$ sales_order_id $\rightarrow$ shipment_ids[] / return_ids[] $\rightarrow$ invoice_ids[]) so every business transaction can be traced end-to-end from initial quote to final delivery and settlement.

3. Build for the Actual Bottleneck (Goldratt's Theory of Constraints)

• Scope CRM/ERP features to the concrete workflow problem at hand—never build a speculative "universal workflow engine" or full enterprise ERP suite when the business needs a clean quote-to-order flow.