Building and maintaining relationships with the Contacts at your key prospects and customers is an essential element of effective Key Account Management. This article will help you understand the relationships between account records and contact records by using Account Hierarchies and Contact Org Charts. In your Contact Org Charts, once you have the organizational structure in place, you can then enrich the information by using “Account Roles”, indicating the “Strength” of the relationships, showing how Contacts “Influence” each other and by adding Comments. We will cover:

An Account Hierarchy shows you accounts that are related to each other via a Parent Account, giving you a global view of a company and its subsidiaries, for example ⤵

Below you will find a Pipeliner video that provides a great explanation of Accounts Hierarchy in Pipeliner ⤵

The Org Chart shows the individual Contacts that you know of at a specific Account and how they are distributed in teams and who they report to. You can assign Account Roles to each person to show how each one impacts the relationship you have with the Account as well as indicate the strength of the relationship and any additional influences that you know of ⤵

Accounts Hierarchies define the hierarchical relationship between the two accounts. Your Pipeliner Admin can create the relationships you need to track from the Admin Module.

Enter the Admin Module — from the Pipeliner CRM Application, click on the App Switcher in the top left corner ⤵

NOTE: Only Administrators will see the Administration menu.

Click on "Common Lists". The default Accounts Hierarchies that we added to get you started will show in the list. You can edit these by clicking on one to select and then updating the relationship in the panel on the right or add a new one by clicking on "Create New" ⤵

Enter your Parent level, for example, "Holding Company" and then the Child, for example, "Subsidiary" ⤵

Click “Save” — your users will now be able to use the relationship in the Accounts area in the Pipeliner App.

In the Web App, click on the "Accounts" menu. Open up the Account record you want to work with.

On the Detail screen of the Account, you're looking for a field that is (by default) labelled Parent Account. Select "Click Here to Add" to search for an existing record that is the parent to the one that you have selected or or "Create” to add a brand new Account record ⤵

NOTE: It’s good practice to always use the “Click here to Add” option to search to see if the Account already exists so you don’t create a duplicate. If you type the name and find that the company is not already in Pipeliner, you’ll still be able to create it directly from your search by clicking on the Create New Account {company name} option that will display ⤵

Select the relationship between the Current Account and the Parent Account that you've added e.g. Corporate — Subsidiary ⤵

"Save" and then click on the "Org Chart" tab. You'll see the relationship you just set up with the current Account highlighted in green so you can see where it fits in the chart ⤵

You can continue working on your Account Hierarchy from here. Click on “Add Account” to add another new (or existing) Account to your chart; select “Fit View” to fit your screen size or “Zoom In” or “Zoom Out”.

NOTE: The Configure button applies to Contact Org Charts and shows Influences (or not if you switch it off).

Clicking on an Account card in your Account Hierarchy will open up the preview pane on the right-hand side ⤵

You can “Open” the selected Account or manage the Account by adding “New” items — for example, a new Contact or Document.

Change the relationship by clicking on the dropdown next to the current selection ⤵

Add notes to give additional useful information about the relationships shown in the Account Hierarchy by adding them to the “Comments” box ⤵

From the selected card, as well as Account Name, you can see the Account Class of the selected Account and its logo and address (if added).

In addition, you can open the "Contact Org Chart" ⤵

Open up the Feeds for this Account by selecting Show Interactions with this Account ⤵

See a list of all Opportunities associated with this "Account" by clicking on “Show Opportunities where this Account has participated” ⤵

Finally, the “Show Comments” icon informs you that there are Comments to view in the preview pane ⤵

Add additional Accounts to your Account Hierarchy using the “Add Account” button and choosing between “New” or “Existing” or by clicking on the "+" symbol on an Account card ⤵

From an individual Account’s Account Hierarchy, you’ll see the immediate parent account and any “sub” accounts but not any separate branches. Make sure you move to the record at the top of the chart to see the full hierarchy ⤵

You can also access additional options by selecting the card and clicking on the three dots icon. “Add (an) Account” to the Hierarchy beneath the current one, “Replace” the current Account with a new one, “Change Parent” to reorganise the structure or “Remove” the selected Account from the Account Hierarchy completely.

You can see a "List View" of related Accounts from the Accounts tab within your selected record. This view shows you the hierarchy of the Accounts and you can also manage and update the relationship from the dropdown on the right hand side. Your selected Account is always labelled as “Current” so you know where it sits within the organizational structure ⤵

Select an "Account" from the "List" to open up the Preview Pane on the right hand side and to access additional menu buttons ⤵

Clicking on the “View Account Hierarchy” button opens up the organizational chart view in a separate window ⤵

Hover over an Account in your Account Hierarchy and then click on the “Open Org Chart” icon to open the Contact Org Chart ⤵

You’ll then see all the Contacts included in the Org Chart for that Account.

“Fit View”, “Zoom In”, “Zoom Out” and “Configure” work the same as they do for the Account Hierarchy. Choose “Back to Account Hierarchy” to return to the Accounts view ⤵

If there are Contacts linked to the Account who have not yet been added to the Org Chart, you’ll see “Missing Contacts” with a count — for example, 5 as shown below and can see which Contacts they are by clicking on the down arrow.

Hover over a Contact to see options to add them to the Org Chart ⤵

“Add as Manager”— select this option and you’ll then be prompted to “click to connect” a Contact who reports to the Contact you’re adding to the Org Chart. Your selected Contact will be inserted into the Org Chart above the Contact you connect to.

“Add as Employee” — select this option and you’ll then be prompted to “click to connect” a Contact who the Contact you’re adding to the Org Chart reports to. Your selected Contact will be inserted into the Org Chart below the Contact you connect to.

“Add as Individual Card” — this option allows you to add an “independent” individual to the Org Chart — one outside of the hierarchical structure but who you know has “Account Roles” that you want to track or “Influences” on other Contacts ⤵

You can also add Contacts by clicking on the “Add Contact” button and selecting from “New” or “Existing” or by clicking on a Contact card and selecting the "+" symbol to add a Contact below the one you have selected.

Click on a Contact card and select the three dots icon to make changes to your Org Chart ⤵

Once you have the organizational structure in place, you can then enrich the information by using “Account Roles”, indicating the “Strength” of the relationships, showing how Contacts “Influence” each other and by adding Comments.

“Set Relationship” — indicates the strength of the relationship with that particular Contact using traffic light colours ⤵

“Add Account Role” — specify what role(s) this Contact has that are relevant to your organisation. You can assign multiple roles to each Contact ⤵

NOTE: Account Roles are created by your Pipeliner Admin in the Admin Module.

“Add Influence” — show who influences who from your company’s perspective using Positive (Green) and Negative (Red) and then click on the second Contact card to create a line of influence ⤵

A Contact can influence multiple other Contacts ⤵

You can also access this information by clicking on a Contact card from your chart to open up the preview pane on the right-hand side. Remember you can update certain information directly by using the pencil symbol next to fields such as "Phone Number" or "Job Title".

Scroll down to see, add or update “Account Roles”, “Relationship”, “Influences” and to add additional Comments to help describe the Contact and their position in the Organization ⤵

NOTE: Click on the down arrow next to any listed Influences to add specific detail.

“Show Interactions with this Contact” will directly open up the Feeds related to this person so you can see past and future activities, emails, linked documents, messages etc ⤵

“Show Opportunities where this person has participated” opens up a list of all Opportunities that this Contact has ever been linked to ⤵

Like all such drill-down lists in Pipeliner, you can customise the fields that display and also select records and perform mass actions such as Export, Create Emails or running Automatizer processes ⤵

“Show Comments” displays when there are Comments to read in the right-hand pane ⤵

You can also see and understand the status of these relationships from the Contacts tab. Along with an overview panel that can be used to filter Contacts based on Relationship or Account Role, inline editing for Account Roles and Account Relationships is also supported in the Contact List View as well as in the sidebar.

You can also access in Automatizer processes and update using Bulk Update.

You need to have update rights to all the Accounts and Contacts that you want to include. This means you need to be the Owner or have been added as an Editor. Alternatively, you may be based on a user role that gives you update rights.

NOTE: If you can't update, you'll need to speak to your Pipeliner Admin about your user role.