Link a contact to two different organizations

Valentine_6004
Valentine_6004 Member Posts: 5 VERIFIED MEMBER
5 Up Votes First Comment
edited November 2023 in Ideas and Product Feedback #1

Hello everyone, is there a way to link a contact to two different organizations?

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  • Inês Batata
    Inês Batata Posts: 2,027 VERIFIED MEMBER
    2500 Comments Third Anniversary 25 Likes First Answer
    edited February 2022 #2

    Hi @Valentine !

    You can connect two organizations to one another (see Related Organizations) but each Person can only be linked to an Organization at a time in Pipedrive.

    A workaround for this is to create an organization-type custom field in People and list the secondary Org there, but keep in mind the Person will still not show up as linked to it.

    Can you tell us a little more why you need to link a Person to more than one Organization?

  • Bernd Auer
    Bernd Auer Member Posts: 349 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Fourth Anniversary 100 Up Votes 100 Comments 25 Likes
    edited August 2021 #3

    Hi @Valentine !

    You can connect two organizations to one another (see Related Organizations) but each Person can only be linked to an Organization at a time in Pipedrive.

    A workaround for this is to create an organization-type custom field in People and list the secondary Org there, but keep in mind the Person will still not show up as linked to it.

    Can you tell us a little more why you need to link a Person to more than one Organization?

    Many persons do several businesses/ are working for several organisations.

  • Haley Peloquin
    Haley Peloquin Member Posts: 9 VERIFIED MEMBER
    5 Up Votes First Comment
    edited September 2020 #4

    Hi @Valentine !

    You can connect two organizations to one another (see Related Organizations) but each Person can only be linked to an Organization at a time in Pipedrive.

    A workaround for this is to create an organization-type custom field in People and list the secondary Org there, but keep in mind the Person will still not show up as linked to it.

    Can you tell us a little more why you need to link a Person to more than one Organization?

    this would be great if the organization didnt have to be the same as the organization the contact works for. For example: Kim Jones works for Disney Channel. You want her linked to this and that as her primary organization to link her name...but you want her "secondary" organization, and her to be linked to Cinderella because that is what she is managing. If that makes sense. VS right now we are having a Kim Jones with Disney, Kim Jones with Cinderella.. etc.

  • Inês Batata
    Inês Batata Posts: 2,027 VERIFIED MEMBER
    2500 Comments Third Anniversary 25 Likes First Answer
    edited September 2020 #5

    Hi @Valentine !

    You can connect two organizations to one another (see Related Organizations) but each Person can only be linked to an Organization at a time in Pipedrive.

    A workaround for this is to create an organization-type custom field in People and list the secondary Org there, but keep in mind the Person will still not show up as linked to it.

    Can you tell us a little more why you need to link a Person to more than one Organization?

    Thank you for you detailed example @Haley Peloquin , it's very helpful for us!

    Unfortunately, right now there are no concrete short term plans to make these improvements. With many customers and requests and with limited development resources we need to prioritise and make choices what to deliver first. 

    We will make sure however our team will consider your suggestion but we can never make any promises.

    Speaking of which, here’s how to stay on top of what’s coming down the line:

     

  • Philipp Riederle
    Philipp Riederle Member Posts: 21 VERIFIED MEMBER
    10 Comments 5 Likes
    edited February 2021 #6

    +1 

    We have several contacts active in multiple organizations. Please do add this functionality!

  • Sam_31522
    Sam_31522 Member Posts: 3 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment
    edited February 2021 #7

    Any update on when this will be developed?

  • Natalia Sosnina
    Natalia Sosnina Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    yes please add! Multiple organizations would be great

  • Matěj Kříž
    Matěj Kříž Member Posts: 105 VERIFIED MEMBER
    100 Comments 25 Likes Second Anniversary Photogenic

    Good news: you are not alone - see this:

    Bad news: Pipedrive doesn't consider this feature essential for CRM. (Get it? I don't.)

    For Pipedrive is hard core problem to implement this. That's probably why it hasn't done anything in the few years that users have been begging it for this feature.  

  • Shoreppadan
    Shoreppadan Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    Hi!

    Is there an improvement planned for this request?

    I cannot understand that your developers and project managers missed that when designing the database

    It makes sense to have a bidirectional relationship n to n (merise or uml)


    It will really be more useful.

  • magnushammar
    magnushammar Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    Feature Suggestion: Multi-Organization Linking for Individual Contacts

    This is very common for my clients use case as described below. While workarounds are possible with custom fields, the limitation seem artificial. The example is but one example of the benefits of adding this flexibility. The limitation of the current 1:1 relationship seem very arbitrary.

    Feature Suggestion: Multi-Organization Linking for Individual Contacts

    Current situation:

    It's very common for our sales team to be contacted by individuals from subsidiaries, who do not know that there is a framework agreement with the holding company, and a contact that is responsible for purchasing decisions to apply rebates, etc.

    Perhaps this is only a common problem here in Sweden, stemming from our tradition of having very flat/independent corporate structures, where almost anyone can take the initiative to order our products.

    Current workflow:

    1. Check if the company contacting us is a subsidiary

    2. Navigate to the holding company

    3. See if there is a contact tagged as procurement officer (CPO) or a just a registered rebate (note)

    4. Look for a note or tag that states that this holding company is responsible for procurement decisions for the subsidiary.

    Suggested solution:

    Make it possible to link a Contact to multiple Organizations.

    New workflow:

    1. Check if the subsidiary company contacting us has a linked contact in a holding company with the title CPO.

  • darrenc
    darrenc Member Posts: 7 VERIFIED MEMBER
    5 Up Votes Photogenic First Comment

    The problem articulated here is also related to not being able to have a head office -> branch structure.

    E.g. Head office has a health and safety manager that is responsible for the 20 branches. We now have to have 21 company records to account for this, plus use the related person field to say that the H&S manager is the same H&S manager across the whole organisation. It's a clumsy solution compared to how other CRMs handle it.

  • Brand2
    Brand2 Member Posts: 41 VERIFIED MEMBER
    10 Comments 5 Likes Name Dropper First Answer

    Any updates on this?

    Find it interesting that pipedrive does not think this is a relevant feature.

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 65 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic

    This is an absolute must have!!

    I have clients where a manager works across multiple subsidiaries.

    Once again a standard function in nearly every other CRM that Pipedrive has missed!!

    Really starting to regret the move from Hubspot now

  • magnushammar
    magnushammar Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    I knew this would come back to bite me. I just sat through a meeting with my client that wanted to solve the problem with them trying to link a person to more than one organization. I explained that it is not possible and that they have to use the related organizations as a workaround. I got a blank stare in return and then a comment that boiled down to WHAT! He really didn't like the related organizations workflow workaround. Pipedrive is awesome but with a few sunspots, this being a big one.

  • Misty
    Misty Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    I agree, this is a very important feature we're missing. I work with owners who operate multiple businesses. Please add this functionality.

  • MK
    MK Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment First Anniversary

    +1

    Please add this functionality.

  • JB04
    JB04 Member Posts: 4 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Photogenic First Comment

    Could we please get an update from PipeDrive regarding adding this functionality? Is it on the roadmap, being considered, or not being considered at all? It was mentioned that you can "link" Related Organizations. However, the organizations aren't always related to each other. For example, we work with many HR/Payroll consultants who work with multiple unrelated businesses. We can create Org profiles for all of their clients (which is necessary to keep their projects separated) but have absolutely no way to link that person to all of their clients… so we end up with dozens of Orgs with no contact person. It's a functionality that other platforms offer, so it is possible to do.

  • Brand2
    Brand2 Member Posts: 41 VERIFIED MEMBER
    10 Comments 5 Likes Name Dropper First Answer

    You guys are going to catch a stroke thinking Pipedrive will fulfill any of these customer needs. They are going AI, have cut staff and dont really care.

  • E Bodenstein
    E Bodenstein Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Second Anniversary First Comment Photogenic

    This would be a huge help. A lot of my contacts work for more than one organization. Also, people who are contacts but also involved in charity work

  • Brand2
    Brand2 Member Posts: 41 VERIFIED MEMBER
    10 Comments 5 Likes Name Dropper First Answer

    They are not going to do it period. Pipedrive does what they want to do and have no interest in making this happen. Best to do what I have been doing and work on finding a CRM that has these features as many of them do.

  • mts_gb
    mts_gb Member Posts: 4 NEW MEMBER
    First Comment Photogenic

    We have been evaluating Pipedrive as our business' backend and while we like it overall, the above limitation was shocking. For our use case, our Contacts can be part of many different 'Organizations', since they are contract workers and are constantly circulating between one or more contracting organizations. So we do want to be able to track this in Pipedrive and have the correct associations between a Project, Deal, etc. and a specific Organization, which would then capture the appropriate group of contractors.

    We can't use the Organizations aspect of Pipedrive properly for our cases without this functionality.

    Also, is this the main ticket for upvoting this request? I'm surprised it's only been upvoted 7 times atm.