I know that much of Hubspot’s CRM is very focused on sales and typical company relationships, and the buzz on this community is centered around this also, but my concerns are related to my work with a Native Band here in Canada. We’re the largest one in B.C. and so my work on creating forms and even in ticket management is almost entirely centered on these familial and not company relationships.
I’m wondering also if there are any addons that might help in achieving my goals here.
For example, with the existing taxonomy, if I’m working at billyjoejimbob.com and everyone who signs up with our newsletter and so on can be thought to be in the same company, and I can even designate a different company with a parent/child relationship for that using the same designation.
However, I have a native band whose PRIMARY means of understanding themselves IS by familial relationships instead. And since this is essentially “a country” with every type of governmental service available from education to health care to Child and Family Services, I NEED a way to manage these relationships robustly, and with features oriented on those, like security, “aging out” (i.e. after a certain period or by express request), parents stop being the primary access the child has to care or services and the information should be hidden from them, whereas for some time it’s accessible.
So, if I’m to be successful, even at filling out a form for a school, I’m asked to, based on the form to fill out at least 4 different types of relationships for a single child:
1. Parents (probably the ones filling out the form)
2. The Child themselves
3. Emergency Contacts
4. Siblings
So, structurally, I’m trying to figure out how best to approach this.
As I’ve thought about this, my thinking has evolved:
1. Create a Child Record, and attach separate custom Properties for the Parents/Guardians
2. Rearrange the form assuming we’re prioritizing the Parent/Guardian and add their data FIRST and then later have a separate form for the Child/Children.
3. Add Properties to the Contact, so I can explicitly add every possible relationship that can be had by each person, and then use those fields to fill in the Relationships based on the available Properties fields; but I NEED to be able to establish those relationships and their lookups in the existing CRM to see if this person is already there. This is made much more complex by the fact that there are SO many similar names in native bands.
I ask all this since I know that we’re going to be increasingly using Hubspot for CRM things (starting with Covid-19 helpdesk) and I know we want to be able to set up security for teams/departments and consider other security features in the light of these relationships. In many aspects of our “governance”, we’re required by law to do so, as would be for example the case in Health Care.
Perhaps there is a custom way to configure Hubspot for Healthcare that I need to look at for Best Practices?
In a way, I wish I could have this power as we give right now in Hubspot to Companies; to designate a robust series of relationships in an ad hoc manner or for a given group.
If I can’t solve this issue, where I can be able to, within Hubspot, properly browse Familiar Relationships, then this tool will not be as useful for us as it could be.
From a Hubspot sales standpoint, I’d say that many First Nations across the U.S. and Canada also think about their CRM in this way, and likely don’t use CRMs because they are TOO company-focused rather than family-focused.
It’s true that we’re also decidedly NOT in the “sales & marketing” business and rather like a government with an intense Service focus. Perhaps there’s another ‘flavor’ of Hubspot more focused on this type of thing?
It’s also true that as a result of this, we’re not as flexible or competent at communications as we need to be due to the lack of segmentation between service teams and their clientele, not to mention integration with our existing custom database applications, which is something else we’ll need to address if we move forward with Hubspot as our primary CRM.