Importing Companies, Contacts - Deduplication

[mwille64]

I need to import travel agent company and contact records. The procedure as such is clear. I have some questions on how to import data in such a way that the deduplication and contact to company link works correctly.

In a situation where a travel agent has multiple branches in several different countries, but the company mail domain is the same for all (e.g. london.office@xyz.com, greece.office@xyz.com, how can I ensure that the import creates muliple company profiles and that imported contacts (anna@xyz.com at London branch, peter@xyz.com at Greece branch) are linked to their respective branch company records?

The thing is that this is the norm, not the exception.

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @mwille64,

Because companies will be created based on the domain, it is not possible to have multiple location based companies created based on one domain.

@AM8, @AlexanderData, @willsmith do you have any suggestions for @mwille64?

Thank you,
Jenny

[mwille64]

That is quite obvious a pretty bad limitation, somewhat completely ignoring the fact that there are companies of a certain size that indeed do have different locations, but one mail domain. 

Anyway, is there somehow a workaround for this scenario or a way to organise such companies and contacts in a reasonable fashion?

For example, can contacts - though being linked to just one company (e.g. headquarters) - be organised by branch / location. Can we avoid to record the branch details (address, phone number, etc) for each contact? 

What about contacts with multiple email addresses? Do we need to create multiple contacts (each counting)?

[MFrankJohnson]

There are, of course, other workarounds. However, the workaround best suited for your use case will depend on additional context.

Example: You may be able to simply use a custom 'Branch Office' contact property to identify which branch office each contact works out of.

Pros and cons of various workarounds will depend on context within which your organization intends to use the data.

Good luck on your project.

#nlmtu

[MFrankJohnson · Accepted solution]

Agreed, @jennysowyrda ...

The best we've been able to come up with for the use case of multiple branch locations using the same root domain is to use dummy domains for the child companies and associate the contacts manually (or via the API).

- see image

HubSpot Dummy Branch Office Subdomains

- see Imports not recognizing URL/domain name

You may download our test .csv file here.
- see One domain name 5 companies

Obviously, less than ideal. And certainly non-trivial at scale. However, there are good migration services available to help.
- see Import Parent Child Relationships for Companies and Contacts

AND, since HubSpot released the CRM Associations API (early 2019), much of the heavy lifting around company creation with parent-child association building can be done via migration services (or custom code).
- see CRM Associations API

[mwille64]

As our main operations will run on Force.com and Force.com allows linking contacts to multiple companies, companies having multiple mail domains and contacts having multiple mail adresses, we will have a big challange to synchronise those contacts that have to be present in both platforms.

Anyway, thanks for the hints.