Platform Foundation

The Foundation layer is the bedrock of HotCRM. It provides the shared data objects and services that every business cloud relies on — Sales, Marketing, Service, Revenue, and HR. By centralizing customer data, interaction history, and organizational context, Foundation ensures a true Customer 360 view across your entire organization.

Customer 360

Account Management

The Account is the cornerstone of your CRM — it represents every company, organization, or household you do business with.

• Company Profiles: Store name, industry, annual revenue, employee count, website, and phone with unique account numbers
• Account Types: Classify accounts as Prospect, Customer, Partner, Competitor, or Other for targeted workflows
• Account Hierarchy: Model parent-child company relationships for enterprise organizations (e.g., Acme Corp → Acme West Division → Acme Portland Office)
• Account Health Score: AI-calculated health metric based on deal activity, support history, and engagement
• SLA Tier Management: Assign service tiers (Gold, Silver, Bronze) that cascade to Service Cloud SLA policies
• Owner Assignment: Assign account owners with territory-based and role-based access controls
• History Tracking: Full audit trail on every field change for compliance and accountability

Contact Management

Contacts are the individuals you interact with — buyers, influencers, decision-makers, and champions.

• Contact Profiles: First name, last name, email, phone, title, department, and mailing address
• Decision-Maker Mapping: Flag contacts as decision makers with influence level (High, Medium, Low) and relationship strength tracking
• Contact Levels: Classify by organizational level — C-Level, VP, Director, Manager, Individual Contributor
• Account Linking: Every contact belongs to an account, with cascade rules to maintain data integrity
• Multi-Channel Reach: Store phone, mobile, email, and social media handles for omni-channel outreach
• Activity Feed: See every email, call, meeting, and note associated with a contact in chronological order

Interaction Timeline

A unified, chronological view of every customer touchpoint across all clouds.

• Activities: Log calls, emails, meetings, tasks, notes, SMS messages, demos, proposals, and lunches
• Call Tracking: Duration, type (Inbound/Outbound), result, and AI-generated call transcription
• Email Integration: Full email thread capture including subject, body, from, to, CC, and attachments
• AI-Powered Insights: Automatic sentiment analysis, key point extraction, and action item generation from every interaction
• Meeting Intelligence: AI transcription with follow-up task creation and summary generation

Task Management

Advanced Task Engine

A powerful task system that goes beyond simple to-dos.

• Priority & Status: Track tasks by priority (High, Normal, Low) and status (Not Started, In Progress, Completed, Waiting, Deferred)
• Kanban Board: Visual drag-and-drop board for managing tasks across workflow columns
• Subtasks & Dependencies: Break complex tasks into subtasks with blocked-by and blocks relationships
• Time Tracking: Estimated hours and actual hours for workload management
• Recurring Tasks: Set up tasks that repeat on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence
• Checklists: Embed checklist items within a task for step-by-step completion
• AI Suggestions: Intelligent recommendations for task priority and estimated duration

Notes & Documentation

Rich note-taking with AI intelligence.

• Markdown Support: Full Markdown rendering for rich-text notes up to 32,000 characters
• @Mentions: Tag team members in notes to notify them of relevant updates
• Polymorphic Linking: Attach notes to any object — Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Leads, Cases, Contracts, Quotes, Tasks, Campaigns, or Products
• Pin & Private: Pin important notes to the top of a record; mark notes as private for personal reference
• Tags & Search: Tag notes for categorization with full-text search across all notes
• AI Summarization: Automatic summary generation, sentiment analysis, and keyword extraction

Assignment & Routing

Assignment Rules

Automate the distribution of records to the right team members.

• Lead Assignment: Route new leads to sales reps based on territory, industry, company size, or round-robin
• Case Assignment: Direct support cases to the appropriate queue or agent based on skills and availability
• Rule Criteria: Define complex matching criteria using any combination of fields
• Load Balancing: Distribute work evenly across team members based on current workload

Identity & Security

Protect your data with enterprise-grade access controls.

• Single Sign-On (SSO): Integrate with your identity provider for seamless authentication
• Role Hierarchy: Control data visibility based on your organizational chart — managers see their team's data, executives see everything
• Permission Sets: Granular access control for objects, fields, and actions
• Field-Level Security: Hide sensitive fields (salary, SSN) from unauthorized users
• Audit Logging: Complete record of who changed what, when, and from what value

Cross-Cloud Integration

Foundation objects are referenced by every business cloud:

• Sales Cloud → Accounts and Contacts are linked to Opportunities, Activities, and Leads
• Marketing Cloud → Campaigns target Contacts and Leads from the Foundation layer
• Service Cloud → Cases are opened against Accounts and Contacts
• Revenue Cloud → Quotes, Contracts, and Invoices reference Account records
• HR Cloud → Employees can be mapped to Account relationships for customer ownership tracking

Key Foundation Objects

Why Foundation Matters

Without a strong foundation, your CRM becomes a collection of disconnected silos. HotCRM's Foundation layer ensures that:

• Every cloud shares the same customer data — no duplicate records, no conflicting information
• Every interaction is captured once and visible everywhere — Sales, Service, and Marketing all see the same timeline
• AI has full context — predictive models work best when they can see the complete picture across all touchpoints
• Reporting is unified — slice and dice data across clouds without complex data warehousing