Overview of Organizations

Organization records provide a complete view of all activity for an organization and all the contacts, incidents, opportunities, and tasks associated with that organization.

Perhaps you have multiple customers from one organization. For example, a sales representative might have an opportunity that involves engineers, purchasing agents, and support managers from one organization. In those situations, it is vital to have a complete overview of all activity within the organization. An organization is a business entity with an organization record in the knowledge base. Organizations can refer to companies, divisions of companies, government agencies, educational institutions, or nonprofit associations.

Organization records are an optional way of consolidating customer information, but if you have several individual customers who belong to one organization, maintaining that information in an organization record is an efficient and effective way to group data. For example, if you work for a cell phone company that provides products and services only to individual consumers, you do not need organization records in the knowledge base. If, however, you sell to business accounts that distribute cell phones to their employees, it makes sense to group all of those employees (each with an individual contact record) under the organization they are associated with. This links the data associated with each of the contacts to the organization, providing you with a single-source view of all activity within the organization.

By definition, an organization can have an unlimited number of contacts. A contact, on the other hand, can be associated with only one organization. Organizations can be structured in a hierarchy that enables you to add subsidiaries, divisions, or regional offices to accurately reflect all areas of the organization.

The customer portal in B2C Service can be configured so contacts can view all incidents associated with their organization. When contacts view other incidents, they can often find answers to their questions, which reduces the number of incidents they submit.

When your knowledge base contains organization records, you can track a specific organization’s incidents and see trends or problem areas. You can view all of the incidents for the organization from the organization record without having to select each contact individually. Likewise, you can view all opportunities, tasks, attachments, and notes associated with the organization, and view all changes that have been made to the organization record using the audit log.