Restructure Companies and Contacts in ACT!

[#1]

The current Companies part of ACT! looks and feels like an afterthought. Many users also find it both confusing, not knowing where to enter their data, and awkward in having to potentially flip between two screens to fill out a record. I believe this could be better implemented.

The good points about Company View I see as:

• It allows you to quickly see contacts who are in that company.
• It allows you to see the relationships between parent companies and divisions.
• It allows you to see all the notes and history created in any contact record who is in that company.

The problems / limitations are:

• Users are confused whether they need to fill in the company level information or not.
• Companies don't get created automatically.
• You can't mailmerge company information, therefore to do this you have to link required fields to the contact record and remember to update the link, which is messy.
• Updating the linked records frequently causes problems by erroneously over-writing the contact level data.

I would propose that ACT!is restructured as follows:

• Company level information gets entered on the "Contact level" view only.  In practice, this would not necessarily take up additional screen space. Perhaps an additional pane would be required, and we already have the SDK Middle Pane app which potentially could be adapted for this purpose. 
• The Companies Detail View would be retained in all it's functionality except that it now becomes read only. All the information at company level is pulled from the contact level records. 
• I would then also be inclined to have Opportunities linked directly to the Company name rather than a contact record ( when creating a new Opp you just select which of the contacts are to be associated with it.

The benefits would be:

• Entering data is now intuitive; it all goes on the "main screen" .
• You don't have to manually put contacts into Companies with all the confusion that entails.
• Contacts are also automatically linked, so that chore goes away.
• You can mail-merge any field on the screen, including Company level information.
• Company view would automatically show combined Notes, Histories, Activities, and Opportunities

I think this would make ACT! more intuitive, easier to operate, less prone to errors and omissions, and increases the funcionality and clarity of the software.

Jeff

[#2]

Great ideas, Jeff...and comments below.  Would like to make sure that the associating of contacts (in addition to linking) does not go away!

• Company level information gets entered on the "Contact level" view only.  In practice, this would not necessarily take up additional screen space. Perhaps an additional pane would be required, and we already have the SDK Middle Pane app which potentially could be adapted for this purpose. 
  ++How would you handle company record address information when the linked contacts are at different company locations? 
  
• The Companies Detail View would be retained in all it's functionality except that it now becomes read only. All the information at company level is pulled from the contact level records. 
  ++Same issue as above
  
• I would then also be inclined to have Opportunities linked directly to the Company name rather than a contact record ( when creating a new Opp you just select which of the contacts are to be associated with it.
  ++Yes, that's a great idea.
  
• You can mail-merge any field on the screen, including Company level information.
  +++But some contacts may be at different addresses...see above.
  
• Company view would automatically show combined Notes, Histories, Activities, and Opportunities
  ++And Documents and Secondary contacts, please.

[#3]

• Company level information gets entered on the "Contact level" view only.  In practice, this would not necessarily take up additional screen space. Perhaps an additional pane would be required, and we already have the SDK Middle Pane app which potentially could be adapted for this purpose. 
  ++How would you handle company record address information when the linked contacts are at different company locations? 
  
  ++++  In some ways we have that issue now when you update the links. You would have to be able to record the "Head Office" address in the "Company" part of the record and a local address in the "Contact" part of the record. You would also need a drop-down or two to be able to define hierarchies of Companies and Divisions.
  
• The Companies Detail View would be retained in all it's functionality except that it now becomes read only. All the information at company level is pulled from the contact level records. 
  ++Same issue as above
  
  ++++ The Head Office address comes from the "Company" Part of the record. Individual contact addresses could be seen in the Contact list.
  
• I would then also be inclined to have Opportunities linked directly to the Company name rather than a contact record ( when creating a new Opp you just select which of the contacts are to be associated with it.
  ++Yes, that's a great idea.
  
• You can mail-merge any field on the screen, including Company level information.
  +++But some contacts may be at different addresses...see above.
  
  ++++ Retaining the Contact level address fields gives you the choice of mailing addresses.
  
• Company view would automatically show combined Notes, Histories, Activities, and Opportunities
  ++And Documents and Secondary contacts, please.
  
  ++++ Agreed !!!

++++ Jeff

[#4]

Good ideas here - Thanks!

[#5]

I see this was initialised some time ago now, however would like to add:

The biggest issue I have is that the Branch layer is missing from Companies. I am using Divisions to cover both divisions and branches. Most of the big corps I deal with look like this: Parent Coy/Divisions(Subsidiaries)/Branches. I have contacts in both branches and company head offices (= divisions).  In many cases the parent companies are not active in the day to day running of the subsidiaries but I need to show the whole group structure to be able to identify sister companies in a (Corporate)Group.

1. It would be great to be able list each layer in alpha order on request e.g. All Companies or All Divisions or All Branches as in the Company Detail window. The problem is that many Parent Company names bear little resemblance to the Division (Subsidiary) names, so can be difficult to find a Company (i.e. Division) in the current All Companies tree structure.

2. Why doesn't the New Secondary Contact automatically pick up the Company name from the Primary contact, at least in a drop down?

3. Totally agree that Opportunities only attach to Companies, with option to link to (multiple) Contacts.

Message Edited by GrahamS on 03-03-2010 12:21 PM

[#6]

Quote: "The problems / limitations are:

• Users are confused whether they need to fill in the company level information or not."

++ I do agree about this confusion. In our company many users tend to edit the content of fields that are actually linked to the above company layer (still) in the contact layer. And since we use ACT! for at least 10 years but only introduced the company layer 1 1/2 year ago, I do understand their confusion. I would already appreciate a warning whenever a company-contact-linked field of a company-contact-linked record is edited in the contact layer (instead of the company layer). Or even better, make these linked fields 'read-only' in the contact layer for all contacts that have a link to a company record. Otherwise their changes will be lost whenever anyone edits the company record later on. (To prevent this data loss, I have to run some sql comparison queries periodically, and edit the data in the right layer, which is time consuming).