HubSpot Ideas

MethodCall

Real-World Relationships Between Companies, Contacts, and Locations

Core Premise
In a theoretically ideal/perfect CRM, the data that the CRM contains would be a perfect mirror of the relationships/events that exist/take place in the real world. That is to say, the CRM's data/structure would be abstracted from the real world as little as possible or, in the case of an idyllic CRM, would not be abstracted at all.

 

Of course, No CRM is ever going to be perfect for every use case (as every business's use case is going to be at least slightly different) but there is one major abstraction present that, if removed, would enable HubSpot CRM to serve the vast majority of use cases much better than it currently does or, in some cases, serve those use cases at all.

 

Feature Request 

IMHO, HubSpot CRM needs to treat companies, contacts, and locations as three completely independent top-level objects that all have many-to-many relationships.

  • A company should represent an incorporated entity in the real world.  In HubSpot, any company should be able to have any number of child companies and any child company should be able to have any number of parent companies. A company should be able to define any number of contacts as POCs for that company.
  • A contact should represent a human being in the real world.  In HubSpot, any contact should be able to have any number of companies for which he is listed as a point of contact and (independently of who he is a contact for) have any number of companies defined as employing him (every contact doesn't actually work for the company/companies he reps!).
  • A location should represent a real-world physical place.  Any location should exist as a top-level object (as opposed to being an attribute of a company). Any location should be able to define any contact(s) as POCs for that location (and any number of contacts.  Any location should also be able to define any number of companies as its owners/controllers.

This would be reasonably trivial to implement from scratch (make ALL the junction tables!) but, I imagine, it will be significantly harder to modify the existing code. That said, the existing structure should map to the new structure perfectly, so it should be entirely possible to migrate existing accounts to the new structure without user input.

 

My Use Case

Like many other others, my business manufactures products that we wholesale to retailers. Our relationships with these retailers varies from simple (single incorporated entity/single location/single contact) to complex (multiple incorporated entities/multiple locations/multiple contacts) and, right now, there is no practical way to implement my business's sales operations in HubSpot CRM.
(I am aware of the Parent Company/Child Company "workaround". That workaround does not provide the functionality my business needs.)

 

As an example, my business sells product to an LLC that has four retail locations around Texas. We have a single point of contact (the LLC's owner) that we go through to get product into three of those stores. Each of those three stores also have a store manager that we talk to for setting up in-store events. For the fourth store, we go through the store manager for sales and in-store events. If I was going to try to implement that in HubSpot CRM, my sales people would have to check all five of those companies for communication history every time we want to interact with this one LLC and there's no way for me to make crystal clear what person they should be contacting. That's bonkers and, more importantly, far too messy for day to day use. We just aren't going to do that. My sales guys are fantastic...but that workflow is not reliable enough for me to use it for my business. This isn't even an uncommon use case for my business. Off the top of my head, I have at least ten companies that are set up like this.

 

Bonus Value-Add

Simpler use cases don't really even need "companies".  A lot of small business really only deal in locations and contacts, like a residential landscaping company or an independent residential snow removal service might, this new structure would work fantastically for that use case, as well.

 

Bonus suggestion
When implementing this new structure, please consider that any of these top-level objects could have their own unique properties.  Companies, Contacts, and Locations could ALL have their own websites, phone numbers, etcetera regardless of their relationships.

60 Replies
VagaeNatus
Key Advisor

This is the best thing hubspot can do.

JoelatOptio
Participant

This would take HubSpot CRM one step closer to being an enterprise CRM platform.

mattwilliams7
Member

Bumping please, this is essential.

jpeeks
Member

Is this under implementation Hubspot? We are new to Hubspot (July 2018) and need this functionality for our Dealerships who have multiple retail locations.

MatthiasM
Member

For my company we urgently need this capability as well.  Most of our customers are bigger companies with multiple locations around the world and they are at times tightly connected and sometimes they are not.  Especially when they are tightly connected you need that functionality.  ALso if you want to do cross selling it would be really good to see prople that wwe have in CRM that are in similar groups but different locations/Subsiduary/divison  within the same Parent company

Mayayo
Member

 We encounter the same issue. At this time we have no way to implement our sales for a day to day use, making it really hard to maintain the upkeep of the CRM as its confusing to our sales team and impossible to create a reliable workflow that can save some of the manual labor. 

 

Ken_S
Member

Came to a full stop early in preparing for migration:

businesses have multiple locations those locations may have multiple contacts which are unique to the location. Segmenting is essential.

In addion to others who have chimed in on this topic, we'd love to see a solution.

@HubSpot Support: Any status update on this?

samanthahow
Member

This idea has my vote! Would love to be able to record a relationship between companies that doesn't fit the Parent/Child model. In our case a Supplier to a Company and that relationship type.

lvcole
Participant

PLEASE DO THIS!!  We really need this. 

HubSpotMaster
Key Advisor | Diamond Partner

Is this still not on the roadmap?

jpeeks
Member

Hubspot.....could you respond to this thread?

You've just updated the Contact UI and it's great! Thank you! Now, please update this functionality!

Gretchen
Participant | Platinum Partner

Hi HubSpot, What's the update here? Also have clients with companies with multiple locations and need this functionality.

jefmorgan
Member

We have used hubspot for marketing for more than five years, salesforce as our CRM. WE are having huge issues with hubspot moving contacts from one account to another, and in some cases creating duplicates. This proposed solution looks like it would correct the issues. You have my vote!

 

Secondary note: If hubspot does not figure this out by the time our contract renews we will be moving on.

Scott71
Member

I am shocked that this was not seen as an issue when whoever designed Hubspot. Seems they are hellbent on having the domain as the uniquue identifier which seems to me the issue here. 

I have many accounts with one domain and multiple locations who have different contacts associated at each of those locations. 

Show me one fortune 500 company who doesn't have this need if you were to enter them into Hubspot CRM. 

Please take some action on this major flaw. 

Thank you. 

 

jennieh
Member

Thank you for bringing this issue up! We are in the same boat as others on here. Any update, HubSpot? Thank you!

kreiner2006
Participant

You've got one more group that is in desperate need for this feature. Would like to know if this in the roadmap, if it is not, it drastically changes how we will utilize Hubspot. 

dschroed
Participant

Hi HubSpot,

any update on this - Roadmap Status  or at least feedback on soemthing from 2017?!

 

 

Currently struck, how I need to handle such scenarios - or even do not handle them at all 😕

 

 

Frisco
Member

Wow. I own businesses that would benefit from this feature and I was looking for how to manage multi-site companies. For example, I have one client with 21 locations.

 

I'm an also amateur programmer. That this is not resolved as suggested by the members responding here is a disappointment.

 

I am shocked and numb. I guess I'll figure out my own work-around.

 

HubSpot: brugh

Bankableadmin
Participant

This would be amazing! Really hope this development is considered even though it was originally proposed a couple years ago. @RachelAppleman  or someone at hubspot could we get an update if this is in the features roadmap? 

Maxahmus
Participant

This is an absolute no brainer.. Nearly half of my customers have more than one location. If this feature is added i would submit that just like our business grows one location at a time so will Hubspots. The ones that need this feature are the companies that are obviously experiencing success  - we just need the ability to better upport these companies as they grow one location at a time. Under the current method it makes things hard to track. Id love to know  - how many locations i work with. How many companies I truly have and when i support these location in companies i can easily go to the company first and then select the location.. 

 

All in all - just would love to see this implemented for my business.