Patent ID: 7958161

Claim:
A method comprising: providing a set of business entities and a set of business processes that operate on the business entities from a customer relationship management (CRM) application; creating a set of universal configuration options (UCOs), wherein the creating comprises at least one of decomposing a business entity of the set of business entities, wherein the decomposing the business entity yields at least two universal business entities, and decomposing a business process of the set of business processes, and each of the set of business entities and business processes existed prior to the creating; presenting the set of UCOs; receiving a selection, wherein the selection identifies one or more selected UCOs of the set of UCOs; and automatically configuring a tailored CRM application, wherein the automatically configuring facilitates management of aspects of a customer relationship by a company associated with the tailored CRM application, and the automatically configuring comprises utilizing the one or more selected UCOs, creating the tailored CRM application by modifying a base CRM application according to the one or more selected UCOs, granting a privilege of a plurality of grantable privileges, based on the selected UCOs, and establishing a differential cost assessment scheme, wherein the customer is assessed costs based on which of the plurality of grantable privileges is granted.