Working with Account Hierarchies in CaliberMind

What Are Account hierarchies?

Account Hierarchies are a critical component of most enterprise B2B CRMs. They help and manage and represent the complex structure of a multi-tiered organization. For example, different brands, physical locations, SaaS orgs, or by business function are just some of the variety of ways businesses may set up their CRM. In some cases, CaliberMind customers have multiple CRMs, and wish to establish unified Master Customer IDs across all systems. An Account Hierarchy is the strategy used to organize “companies” for reporting and operations.

Some Considerations:

• Your CRM may have many levels of parent accounting.
• Each level in the hierarchy should have rules such as:
  • Primary key: Is it website? DUNS #? Primary Address? Product Line?
  • What makes a Grandparent, vs Parent, vs Child
  • Where opps are created in the hierarchy
  • Where contact are placed in the hierarchy
• Some CRM teams enforce rigid rules and other teams don’t enforce this. Work with your Revenue Operations team on a plan / policy.

How Does CaliberMind Work With Account Hierarchies?

For “standard” attribution to work, each contact and opp wanting to get attribution should be at the same hierarchy level. Note– that custom models and mappings can be implemented to “flatten” hierarchies and break these rules in CaliberMind. Also, customers with multiple CRMs are an exception. However the most popular setup is as follows:

In this Example Hierarchy:

• Level 1 = NestlePurina (Grandparent)
• Level 2 = Purina (Parent)
• Level 3 = Puppy Chow (Grandchild)

1. Contacts on the Parent or Grandparent Accounts are not “attribution eligible” for Opps attached to the the Grandchild Account.
2. Similarly, contacts at the child or grandchild levels are not attribution-eligible for opps a the HQ or Grandparent level.
3. Using “Contact Roles” Contacts at different accounts can be manually added to Opportunities, thus unlocking attribution and traversing the hierarchy.

Customer Hierarchy Scoping Questions:

Here are some questions that will help determine the design and level of effort to implement a non-standard account hierarchy.

• Which CRM accounts are in scope for the project?
• What makes a Grandparent, vs Parent, vs Child?
  • Is there a primary key: Is it website? DUNS #? Primary Address? Product Line?
• Where are opps are created in the hierarchy?
• Where are contacts in the hierarchy?
• Should contacts on different levels of the hierarchy get attribution for opps on other levels? When?
• Are there contact role requirements in the attribution model?
• Are lead and contact duplicates intentional? Should email-based touches be intentionally duplicated?
• Are leads in scope for the attribution model or only contacts? Is there a reliable methodology or rules that could be provided to automate matching them to an account?
• Are some accounts in the hierarchy too granular and can be ignored/rolled up?
• Should contacts at accounts getting rolled up be “Reparented” in the model?