Representing partnerships/working group membership for companies

[ACunnell]

We work with the public sector and would like to be able to represent working groups/partnerships within the CRM.

One option could be to create a company record to represent the partnership, and then set the member companies as children of this record, but the problem is that these partnerships are sometimes quite informal and don't have their own domain.

I could just create a Partnership property, but that wouldn't enable me to track activity, make notes etc against the partnership in its own right.

Any thoughts?

[ACunnell]

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, Karsten, that is very helpful. I will follow your first suggestion.

Sometimes it is helpful just to know that we are not missing the 'correct' solution!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @ACunnell ,

You could actually create companies without the Company domain name. By default, HubSpot wants you to input that information but you can disable this requirement under Settings > Objects > Companies > Choose property fields for new companies. That way, you could add partners as child companies without a Company domain name.

By default, HubSpot isn't very good at managing relationships that incorporate multiple companies, partnerships or indirect sales. Companies are not meant to be associated with each other in HubSpot.

At this very moment, the only good solution for this would be custom objects – not available in the Professional subscription, unfortunately, only in Enterprise. Your partners could be such a custom object.

As far as easy (albeit insufficient) workarounds go, you can pin notes to the top of any record and include links to its related records. For example, on the company record of company 1, you pin a note including the links to the records of company 2. This relationship will not reflect in any tool (list, workflow etc.) but it helps you at least navigate.

Aside from that, I would recommend that you share your post also in the HubSpot Ideas section. The product team can then review the request.

Best regards!