A distinguishing feature of a CRM system versus a Contact Manager, like Microsoft Outlook, is the addition of a Company entity. The idea is that you can track company (or often called an Account) information separate from the contacts that work at the company.
In my 20+ years of work with CRM systems, I think NetSuite has done a great job in the way they have organized the management of this information. This article is to help outline their approach and to help you gain maximum organizational effectiveness with your contact data.
Companies, Individuals, Customers & Vendors
A NetSuite Customer or Vendor can be generalized as a Company. But it also can be an Individual. When you setup a Customer, you can specify if it is one of two types: Company or Individual. The same thing can be said when you setup a Vendor. Let’s see if we can keep this straight with an example.
Customer Example
Record: 1
Name: ABC Company
Type: Customer
Record: 2
Name: David Cohen
Type: Individual
Vendor Example
Record: 3
Name: Pacific West Utility Company
Type: Company
Record:4
Name: Joe Carpenter
Type: Individual
Notice how both records 1 & 2 are customers, but they are distinguished by type. The same thing can be said for records 3 & 4 for vendors.
Other Relationships
NetSuite does a nice trick when you specify that a Customer or Vendor is of type Individual. It will create a copy of that record as a Contact and then link it, one-to-one, through the “Other Relationship” mechanism. If under General Preferences you have the “Show Individuals as Contacts” turned on (default), you will see these individuals in your contact list as a Contact (Individual Relationship). If this switch is off, you will only see the individual as a Vendor or Customer and not as a contact. In our experience, having this switch off limits the potential of how this contact can participate fully in relationships.
The Other Relationship also lets you specify Customers as Vendors and vice versa irrespective if these are of type Individual or Companies. This is pretty flexible but can understandably be confusing if you are not accustomed to organizing your records in this manner. Nonetheless, this appears to be one of the better implementations I have witnessed in the 20+ years of my professional career doing this type of work.
Attached Relationships
Finally, there is one other relationship mechanism between contacts and customers & vendors that bring it all together. A contact can belong to any other organization (customer or vendor and its derivatives like leads) while holding a user defined role. With this feature, you can develop a full network relationship to capture how an individual participates in relationship with all your other leads, customers, and vendors. For example, the CEO of ABC Company can also be an Influencer at XYZ Firm.
Marty Zigman
Holding all three official certifications, Marty is regarded as the top NetSuite expert and leads a team of senior professionals at Prolecto Resources, Inc. He is a former Deloitte & Touche CPA and has held CTO roles. For over 30 years, Marty has produced leadership in ERP, CRM and eCommerce business systems. Contact Marty to set up a conversation.
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Best explanation I’ve found! If your customers are always companies, but you want to track leads that are people before you have the company details, would you recommend the ‘individual’ lead option then converting the lead to a company later?
Hi Mark,
These are good questions. I think we need to remember that there are always people holding roles behind every organization. If I knew that the majority of the leads were companies, I would default to Company. You might consider the option to create a linked contact record. This is how we do it in our firm, and it works reasonably well.
Marty