Best way to group companies

[stannisb]

Hello,

I have 5,000 companies.

These companies are customers of about 30 other companies I have.

And in some cases, some of the 5,000 companies can technically be customers of more than 1 of the 30 other companies.

I have a fieldon each of the 5,000 companies that does identify their relationship to the other 30 companies. However, it is not dynamic and I wonder to how to create easy views for the sales team.

For instance: Look up all comapnies (of the 5,000) that are customers of 1 of the 30.

Any input would be appreciated.

Thank you,

[wdman]

hi there,

I have a similar issue where I just want to be able to easily assign companies to groups to manage sales areas. grouping contacts allows this easily but if there is no contact for a company the company is effectively an orphan in this system.

I must not understand how to use act properly as I dont get why companies cannot be grouped. most companies I have worked manage their customers by company not individual especially where there are more than one contact which is usually the case. I just dont get why this is missing from act as it seems so elimentary.

please let me know if you found a way to sor this out?

cheers

[stannisb]

We ended up adding a field called Company Type and assigned each company to a type.

We tought the sales staff to then query on Company Type to see "their companies".

Hope this helps.

[mscott821]

So, for  clarification for other readers:

You cannnot create groups of companies, only contacts.

As far as whether this is a strength or weakness of ACT!, it should be noted that many CRM/contact management tools offer NO grouping at all.