Associating multiple business contacts to an account

[RK]

Hi,
Is there a way to associate multiple business contacts to an account,
without actually embedding them into the account?

For example, suppose there is an account called "Company ABC".
I know I can have its employees as business contacts.
However, I would like to have other contacts associated with this company,
who work for someone else, such as a vendor who supplies to many different
companies.

Having all internal and external contacts associated with my project in one
place would be very helpful.

Thanks.





I know that you can have business contacts in an account.

 

[Clinton Ford [MSFT]]

One way to accomplish this is to create a new Business Project with links to all relevant Accounts and Business Contacts.

--
Visit team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/bcm
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
Hi,
Is there a way to associate multiple business contacts to an account,
without actually embedding them into the account?

For example, suppose there is an account called "Company ABC".
I know I can have its employees as business contacts.
However, I would like to have other contacts associated with this company,
who work for someone else, such as a vendor who supplies to many different
companies.

Having all internal and external contacts associated with my project in one
place would be very helpful.

Thanks.





I know that you can have business contacts in an account.

 

[RK]

Hi,

I tried for a quite a while, but I couldn't figure out how to create a new
Business Project. Please advise.

Thank you.

RK

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

RK,

You can have 1 other business contact working for another company associate
(link to) only 1 Account at at time in BCM. Once any business contact is
linked to an Account record (regardless of which company that individual
business contact works for) it cannot be simultaneously linked to any other
Account record at the same time. This is what is referred to as a "one-to-
many" data base relationship vs. a "many-to-many" relationship.

MS has maintained this built in limitation with BCM since its beginnings and
this is something that I have complained about for a long time and have come
to believe is done intentionally in supportive compliment as incentive to
migrate frustrated users to their more full CRM application. This restricted
linking design limitation is the #1 reason that I cannot use BCM any more.

A lot of confusion for new users with BCM lies in differentiating between the
"Company" field of a business contact and the Account record which is also a
company or other organization but doesn't have to be the same as the company
field of the individual Business contact record. This difference between the
Business Contact Record and the Account Record as linkable data object items
needs to fully appreciated in order to determine BCM's potential as a small
business CRM solution. There are many other alternatives to BCM whose design
DOES enable "many-to-many" db linking capability.

-THP

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Follow up to my previous post:

If your business relationship linking requirements are simple and basically
fit within the limited design intent of BCM, this add-in will work for you
nicely as a standard "Customer Manager" with integrated Accounting, etc. In
contrast however, if your real world needs are to close sales opportunities
that involve more than 1 supportive person (s) then BCM will frustrate you
because it won't work like other SFA CRM solutions do. While you can attempt
to utilize the new Project feature of BCM 3.0 this is in my opinion kind of a
lame workaround that really doesn't address this critical built-in design
restriction of BCM.

Again to summarize: If you are a self employed person with basic customer
management needs, BCM could work fine for you. If you are the typical sales
person you may need something with more fully featured linking capability
built in.

I can recommend a very simple to use Outlook centric solution at:
www.avidian.com.

I do not work for Avidian nor have I any financial interest from this
recommendation.

Best wishes,

-THP

RK,

You can have 1 other business contact working for another company associate
(link to) only 1 Account at at time in BCM. Once any business contact is
linked to an Account record (regardless of which company that individual
business contact works for) it cannot be simultaneously linked to any other
Account record at the same time. This is what is referred to as a "one-to-
many" data base relationship vs. a "many-to-many" relationship.

MS has maintained this built in limitation with BCM since its beginnings and
this is something that I have complained about for a long time and have come
to believe is done intentionally in supportive compliment as incentive to
migrate frustrated users to their more full CRM application. This restricted
linking design limitation is the #1 reason that I cannot use BCM any more.

A lot of confusion for new users with BCM lies in differentiating between the
"Company" field of a business contact and the Account record which is also a
company or other organization but doesn't have to be the same as the company
field of the individual Business contact record. This difference between the
Business Contact Record and the Account Record as linkable data object items
needs to fully appreciated in order to determine BCM's potential as a small
business CRM solution. There are many other alternatives to BCM whose design
DOES enable "many-to-many" db linking capability.

-THP

Hi,
Is there a way to associate multiple business contacts to an account,

[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]

I know that you can have business contacts in an account.

 

[RK]

Thank you for your reply, mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com.

I agree with you that the limitation of being able to use a contact in only
one account is a severe limitation. Definitely, for me this makes the
software not very useful.

As an engineer, when I work on a project, many parties are involved: the
client and its employees for sure, but also government officials, vendors,
sub-contractors, independent contractors, etc. All these other people also
show up in my other projects. In fact, this is the reason why I thought I
will use BCM, because as the number of clients increases, it has been
becoming more and more complicated trying to keep track of whom I'm dealing
with for what project. Just yesterday, I revealed details of a project to a
vendor unintentionally because I confused him with another vendor (luckily no
harm was done).

So, even though I have a very small business, this feature is still critical.

Thanks for the reference for another software (avidian).

Also, I will see if this Business Project idea that the previous responder
helpfully gave can work before I try the other software. I have BCM 2.0, so
I don't know if I can upgrade to BCM 3.0 in the first place (I have Office
2003).

RK

P.S. I didn't fully grasp what you were trying to say in the last paragraph
of your first post. I already know that the Account Name and Company Name of
contact can be same or different. Were you trying to suggest that somehow I
can create an account name with a modified label so I will be able to do,
although in a clumsy way, what I would like to do?

Follow up to my previous post:

If your business relationship linking requirements are simple and basically
fit within the limited design intent of BCM, this add-in will work for you
nicely as a standard "Customer Manager" with integrated Accounting, etc. In
contrast however, if your real world needs are to close sales opportunities
that involve more than 1 supportive person (s) then BCM will frustrate you
because it won't work like other SFA CRM solutions do. While you can attempt
to utilize the new Project feature of BCM 3.0 this is in my opinion kind of a
lame workaround that really doesn't address this critical built-in design
restriction of BCM.

Again to summarize: If you are a self employed person with basic customer
management needs, BCM could work fine for you. If you are the typical sales
person you may need something with more fully featured linking capability
built in.

I can recommend a very simple to use Outlook centric solution at:
www.avidian.com.

I do not work for Avidian nor have I any financial interest from this
recommendation.

Best wishes,

-THP

RK,

You can have 1 other business contact working for another company associate
(link to) only 1 Account at at time in BCM. Once any business contact is
linked to an Account record (regardless of which company that individual
business contact works for) it cannot be simultaneously linked to any other
Account record at the same time. This is what is referred to as a "one-to-
many" data base relationship vs. a "many-to-many" relationship.

MS has maintained this built in limitation with BCM since its beginnings and
this is something that I have complained about for a long time and have come
to believe is done intentionally in supportive compliment as incentive to
migrate frustrated users to their more full CRM application. This restricted
linking design limitation is the #1 reason that I cannot use BCM any more.

A lot of confusion for new users with BCM lies in differentiating between the
"Company" field of a business contact and the Account record which is also a
company or other organization but doesn't have to be the same as the company
field of the individual Business contact record. This difference between the
Business Contact Record and the Account Record as linkable data object items
needs to fully appreciated in order to determine BCM's potential as a small
business CRM solution. There are many other alternatives to BCM whose design
DOES enable "many-to-many" db linking capability.

-THP

Hi,
Is there a way to associate multiple business contacts to an account,

[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]

I know that you can have business contacts in an account.

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

RK,

You can name a BCM Account Record anything you like even if the name of the
Account is different than the name of any of the companies that your business
contacts have in their Business Contact record company name fields. What you
still cannot do however is link a Business Contact Record to more than 1
Account record at a time regardless of whatever any of these records are
named or also whatever the company names happen to be. BCM makes a
distinction between an Account Record name and the name of a company where a
Business Contact works. The Account record can be the same name as the
company but it doesn't have to be. Allowance for different names of these
BCM records (Account & Business Contact) is a separate matter from the issue
of how they are restrictively allowed to be linked to each other. I hope
this clarification does not remain confusing.

Another frustrating manifestation of this limited linking restriction is with
each BCM Opportunity record. You will notice that on each Opportunity record
in the designated field you can ONLY choose to link either 1 Business Contact
record or 1 Account record to the opportunity not both. Once only either 1
or the other of these data object items are linked to the Opportunity record,
you cannot link any additional records of either kind (Business Contact or
Account). This design feature forces you into a "one-size-fits-all" usage
situation that just does not square with reality in the real world of almost
any and all business activity (small or large) that I am aware of.

MS BCM has a lot of "Shuck & Jive" marketing nonsense about the intended
purpose of BCM being uniquely designed for the specific needs of small
business users, etc. This is just a distracting smokescreen to obscure and
apologize for a very glaring design oversight in my opinion.

Here is another link to an Outlook-centric alternative that may also better
suit your needs: www.mxcontact.com.

-THP

Thank you for your reply, mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com.

I agree with you that the limitation of being able to use a contact in only
one account is a severe limitation. Definitely, for me this makes the
software not very useful.

As an engineer, when I work on a project, many parties are involved: the
client and its employees for sure, but also government officials, vendors,
sub-contractors, independent contractors, etc. All these other people also
show up in my other projects. In fact, this is the reason why I thought I
will use BCM, because as the number of clients increases, it has been
becoming more and more complicated trying to keep track of whom I'm dealing
with for what project. Just yesterday, I revealed details of a project to a
vendor unintentionally because I confused him with another vendor (luckily no
harm was done).

So, even though I have a very small business, this feature is still critical.

Thanks for the reference for another software (avidian).

Also, I will see if this Business Project idea that the previous responder
helpfully gave can work before I try the other software. I have BCM 2.0, so
I don't know if I can upgrade to BCM 3.0 in the first place (I have Office
2003).

RK

P.S. I didn't fully grasp what you were trying to say in the last paragraph
of your first post. I already know that the Account Name and Company Name of
contact can be same or different. Were you trying to suggest that somehow I
can create an account name with a modified label so I will be able to do,
although in a clumsy way, what I would like to do?

Follow up to my previous post:

[quoted text clipped - 54 lines]

 

[Clinton Ford [MSFT]]

Business Projects are one of the many new features available in BCM 2007. Business Projects represent a set of Project Tasks to be
completed on behalf of a linked Account or Business Contact. Business Projects also let you to store a list of related Accounts and
Business Contacts. And just like Business Contacts, Business Projects can be assigned to a database user for tracking and reporting
purposes. Business Projects can automatically track e-mail by subject line, so related information is easy to find.
--
Visit team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/bcm
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
Thank you for your reply, mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com.

I agree with you that the limitation of being able to use a contact in only
one account is a severe limitation. Definitely, for me this makes the
software not very useful.

As an engineer, when I work on a project, many parties are involved: the
client and its employees for sure, but also government officials, vendors,
sub-contractors, independent contractors, etc. All these other people also
show up in my other projects. In fact, this is the reason why I thought I
will use BCM, because as the number of clients increases, it has been
becoming more and more complicated trying to keep track of whom I'm dealing
with for what project. Just yesterday, I revealed details of a project to a
vendor unintentionally because I confused him with another vendor (luckily no
harm was done).

So, even though I have a very small business, this feature is still critical.

Thanks for the reference for another software (avidian).

Also, I will see if this Business Project idea that the previous responder
helpfully gave can work before I try the other software. I have BCM 2.0, so
I don't know if I can upgrade to BCM 3.0 in the first place (I have Office
2003).

RK

P.S. I didn't fully grasp what you were trying to say in the last paragraph
of your first post. I already know that the Account Name and Company Name of
contact can be same or different. Were you trying to suggest that somehow I
can create an account name with a modified label so I will be able to do,
although in a clumsy way, what I would like to do?

Follow up to my previous post:

If your business relationship linking requirements are simple and basically
fit within the limited design intent of BCM, this add-in will work for you
nicely as a standard "Customer Manager" with integrated Accounting, etc. In
contrast however, if your real world needs are to close sales opportunities
that involve more than 1 supportive person (s) then BCM will frustrate you
because it won't work like other SFA CRM solutions do. While you can attempt
to utilize the new Project feature of BCM 3.0 this is in my opinion kind of a
lame workaround that really doesn't address this critical built-in design
restriction of BCM.

Again to summarize: If you are a self employed person with basic customer
management needs, BCM could work fine for you. If you are the typical sales
person you may need something with more fully featured linking capability
built in.

I can recommend a very simple to use Outlook centric solution at:
www.avidian.com.

I do not work for Avidian nor have I any financial interest from this
recommendation.

Best wishes,

-THP

RK,

You can have 1 other business contact working for another company associate
(link to) only 1 Account at at time in BCM. Once any business contact is
linked to an Account record (regardless of which company that individual
business contact works for) it cannot be simultaneously linked to any other
Account record at the same time. This is what is referred to as a "one-to-
many" data base relationship vs. a "many-to-many" relationship.

MS has maintained this built in limitation with BCM since its beginnings and
this is something that I have complained about for a long time and have come
to believe is done intentionally in supportive compliment as incentive to
migrate frustrated users to their more full CRM application. This restricted
linking design limitation is the #1 reason that I cannot use BCM any more.

A lot of confusion for new users with BCM lies in differentiating between the
"Company" field of a business contact and the Account record which is also a
company or other organization but doesn't have to be the same as the company
field of the individual Business contact record. This difference between the
Business Contact Record and the Account Record as linkable data object items
needs to fully appreciated in order to determine BCM's potential as a small
business CRM solution. There are many other alternatives to BCM whose design
DOES enable "many-to-many" db linking capability.

-THP

Hi,
Is there a way to associate multiple business contacts to an account,

[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]

I know that you can have business contacts in an account.

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

I am just speculating here so bear with me.

Was the original BCM Opportunity Record originally designed in an
unintentionally restricted manner such that we are now somewhat "stuck
within" its limitations? The reason I ask is because when you get right down
to it, by definition, an "Opportunity" development process is just an
expanded set of subsequent tasks grouped together on a record with the
intended goal to "close" a potential sales transaction. The development and
record of each Opportunity process is a "PROJECT." While not all business
projects have to be business opportunities it is accurate to say that all
business opportunities are by definition business projects. The Opportunity
represents a sales process "project" to be completed often in stages at a
"project"-ed future date.

Why does the newly added BCM v.3 Project Record (whose form is designed from
a similiar Outlook Task Record data object) have additional multiple linking
functionality and yet the all important BCM Opportunity Record (also derived
from the Outlook Task Record object) that originally existed from previous
versions still does not allow this in BCM version 3.0? Is this an oversight?

My questions are not hostile. I am trying to make sense out of the
redundancy and unnecessary differences between these 2 BCM Record items
(Opportunity & Project).

I think it's great that there is now an additional means of tracking projects
in BCM with its complex set of Tasks, Contacts, & Accounts linking capability.
I just don't know why the BCM Opportunity Record (also a project) features
seem to have been neglected or left behind in this regard because the
Opportunity data object form is also an Outlook Task object in its origins.

I would love to see both the BCM Opportunity & Project Records coexist and
allow for equal functionality among each other.

-THP

Business Projects are one of the many new features available in BCM 2007. Business Projects represent a set of Project Tasks to be
completed on behalf of a linked Account or Business Contact. Business Projects also let you to store a list of related Accounts and
Business Contacts. And just like Business Contacts, Business Projects can be assigned to a database user for tracking and reporting
purposes. Business Projects can automatically track e-mail by subject line, so related information is easy to find.
Thank you for your reply, mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com.

I agree with you that the limitation of being able to use a contact in only
one account is a severe limitation. Definitely, for me this makes the
software not very useful.

As an engineer, when I work on a project, many parties are involved: the
client and its employees for sure, but also government officials, vendors,
sub-contractors, independent contractors, etc. All these other people also
show up in my other projects. In fact, this is the reason why I thought I
will use BCM, because as the number of clients increases, it has been
becoming more and more complicated trying to keep track of whom I'm dealing
with for what project. Just yesterday, I revealed details of a project to a
vendor unintentionally because I confused him with another vendor (luckily no
harm was done).

So, even though I have a very small business, this feature is still critical.

Thanks for the reference for another software (avidian).

Also, I will see if this Business Project idea that the previous responder
helpfully gave can work before I try the other software. I have BCM 2.0, so
I don't know if I can upgrade to BCM 3.0 in the first place (I have Office
2003).

RK

P.S. I didn't fully grasp what you were trying to say in the last paragraph
of your first post. I already know that the Account Name and Company Name of
contact can be same or different. Were you trying to suggest that somehow I
can create an account name with a modified label so I will be able to do,
although in a clumsy way, what I would like to do?

Follow up to my previous post:

[quoted text clipped - 54 lines]

 

[Luther]

I am just speculating here so bear with me.

Was the original BCM Opportunity Record originally designed in an
unintentionally restricted manner such that we are now somewhat "stuck
within" its limitations? The reason I ask is because when you get right down
to it, by definition, an "Opportunity" development process is just an
expanded set of subsequent tasks grouped together on a record with the
intended goal to "close" a potential sales transaction. The development and
record of each Opportunity process is a "PROJECT." While not all business
projects have to be business opportunities it is accurate to say that all
business opportunities are by definition business projects. The Opportunity
represents a sales process "project" to be completed often in stages at a
"project"-ed future date.

Why does the newly added BCM v.3 Project Record (whose form is designed from
a similiar Outlook Task Record data object) have additional multiple linking
functionality and yet the all important BCM Opportunity Record (also derived
from the Outlook Task Record object) that originally existed from previous
versions still does not allow this in BCM version 3.0? Is this an oversight?

My questions are not hostile. I am trying to make sense out of the
redundancy and unnecessary differences between these 2 BCM Record items
(Opportunity & Project).

I think it's great that there is now an additional means of tracking projects
in BCM with its complex set of Tasks, Contacts, & Accounts linking capability.
I just don't know why the BCM Opportunity Record (also a project) features
seem to have been neglected or left behind in this regard because the
Opportunity data object form is also an Outlook Task object in its origins.

I would love to see both the BCM Opportunity & Project Records coexist and
allow for equal functionality among each other.

-THP

Business Projects are one of the many new features available in BCM 2007. Business Projects represent a set of Project Tasks to be
completed on behalf of a linked Account or Business Contact. Business Projects also let you to store a list of related Accounts and
Business Contacts. And just like Business Contacts, Business Projects can be assigned to a database user for tracking and reporting
purposes. Business Projects can automatically track e-mail by subject line, so related information is easy to find.
Thank you for your reply, mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com.

I agree with you that the limitation of being able to use a contact in only
one account is a severe limitation. Definitely, for me this makes the
software not very useful.

As an engineer, when I work on a project, many parties are involved: the
client and its employees for sure, but also government officials, vendors,
sub-contractors, independent contractors, etc. All these other people also
show up in my other projects. In fact, this is the reason why I thought I
will use BCM, because as the number of clients increases, it has been
becoming more and more complicated trying to keep track of whom I'm dealing
with for what project. Just yesterday, I revealed details of a project to a
vendor unintentionally because I confused him with another vendor (luckily no
harm was done).

So, even though I have a very small business, this feature is still critical.

Thanks for the reference for another software (avidian).

Also, I will see if this Business Project idea that the previous responder
helpfully gave can work before I try the other software. I have BCM 2.0, so
I don't know if I can upgrade to BCM 3.0 in the first place (I have Office
2003).

P.S. I didn't fully grasp what you were trying to say in the last paragraph
of your first post. I already know that the Account Name and Company Name of
contact can be same or different. Were you trying to suggest that somehow I
can create an account name with a modified label so I will be able to do,
although in a clumsy way, what I would like to do?

"mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com" wrote:

[quoted text clipped - 54 lines]

I know that you can have business contacts in an account.

An Opportunity is an expected sale to one Account and the associated
Business Contacts are people at that Account. That's the way it was
explained to me back in v1 days. Some sales will be more complex,
involving more parties, but the deliberate intent was to design
something that would be simple to most small business users, who would
otherwise track their sales information on paper. The design was not
intended to build something that would satisfy every sales
requirement.

BCM users have created and tracked millions of Opportunities. In that
sense, Opportunties have been successful. Rather than break the
usefulness of Opportunties by making them more complex, and
potentially confusing users with simple requirements back to using
paper, BCM v3 leaves Opportunites alone. In v3, it looks like BCM has
decided to expand its supported scenarios with Projects. Their usage
data and user feedback will indicate the success of the design of
Projects, or if and how the design of Projects need to change.

Tim:
"I just don't know why the BCM Opportunity Record (also a project)
features seem to have been neglected or left behind in this regard
because the Opportunity data object form is also an Outlook Task
object in its origins.I would love to see both the BCM Opportunity &
Project Records coexist and allow for equal functionality among each
other."

Why have two objects that do the same thing? Because internally the
objects both derive from the same Outlook object? I think that's a
computer technology centric point of view. It apppears that the
primary intent behind the design BCM Opportunties and Projects is to
support specific business activities with specialized tools. I think
that's the path to successful applications, rather than the
alternative you've championed, that BCM should surface all the
features available in Outlook and Sql Server (e.g. support for many-to-
many relationships you've demanded for years). Small businesses
already have Outlook and Sql Server available to them, but they don't
use them because of their complexity and the know-how required to
orchestrate them into useful tools and business processes. BCM has set
about doing that for them, starting by making the most common tasks
simple, and tackling more refined scenarios with each release.

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Maybe I am being misunderstood in terms of my advocacy. Opening the door up
to allowing a few more functional BCM features does not in the same instance
then have to translate into creating an overly complicated unusable
application. I value BCM's simplicity and would advocate its preservation
wherever possible. It is bizarre to me that where the need is exactly alike
(to link multiple contacts) between the new BCM Project Record and the older
BCM Opportunity Record there is an unexplainable difference in the ability to
do so other than perhaps someone has not yet gotten around to it.

On the other point: Opportunities don't only occur just at the Account level
in the manner of Business to Business (B to B). There are any number of B to
P (personal) sales that also occur. If BCM is set upon only tracking sales
to a Business organization entity it would seem even more imperative to allow
multiple linking among other involved Business Contacts that are usually
necessary to get a deal to close. Business entities are not the influencers
and don't make sales decisions...people do.

Keep BCM simple but tweak a few important changes in BCM and MS will have a
real winner on its hands. It is so close to being so much more useful and it
certainly has made progress since v1.

Believe it or not I am its biggest cheerleader.

-THP

I am just speculating here so bear with me.

[quoted text clipped - 80 lines]

- Show quoted text -

An Opportunity is an expected sale to one Account and the associated
Business Contacts are people at that Account. That's the way it was
explained to me back in v1 days. Some sales will be more complex,
involving more parties, but the deliberate intent was to design
something that would be simple to most small business users, who would
otherwise track their sales information on paper. The design was not
intended to build something that would satisfy every sales
requirement.

BCM users have created and tracked millions of Opportunities. In that
sense, Opportunties have been successful. Rather than break the
usefulness of Opportunties by making them more complex, and
potentially confusing users with simple requirements back to using
paper, BCM v3 leaves Opportunites alone. In v3, it looks like BCM has
decided to expand its supported scenarios with Projects. Their usage
data and user feedback will indicate the success of the design of
Projects, or if and how the design of Projects need to change.

Tim:
"I just don't know why the BCM Opportunity Record (also a project)
features seem to have been neglected or left behind in this regard
because the Opportunity data object form is also an Outlook Task
object in its origins.I would love to see both the BCM Opportunity &
Project Records coexist and allow for equal functionality among each
other."

Why have two objects that do the same thing? Because internally the
objects both derive from the same Outlook object? I think that's a
computer technology centric point of view. It apppears that the
primary intent behind the design BCM Opportunties and Projects is to
support specific business activities with specialized tools. I think
that's the path to successful applications, rather than the
alternative you've championed, that BCM should surface all the
features available in Outlook and Sql Server (e.g. support for many-to-
many relationships you've demanded for years). Small businesses
already have Outlook and Sql Server available to them, but they don't
use them because of their complexity and the know-how required to
orchestrate them into useful tools and business processes. BCM has set
about doing that for them, starting by making the most common tasks
simple, and tackling more refined scenarios with each release.