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Difference between a Primary contact and a contact RRS feed

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    What is the difference between a Primary contact and a contact?

    I want to understand whats the functional purpose of a Primary contact?

    Why a primary contact can be aoosciated as primary contact for more than one account whereas a contact can be associated with an account only once..

    Wednesday, July 18, 2012 9:04 AM

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    See the contacts list as the list of all employees or contact-persons of a specific company. If you save a business-address, an email-address or a telephone-number for a contact, that information is specific for a relation between person AND company (cause the business-address, email-address, business-phone, etc.) would change if you want to contact the same person, but regarging another company. So it wouldn't make many sense to relate a contact with more than one company.

    Additional, you can add activities (phonecalls, emails, letters,...) to a contact. This activities will get rolled up to the parent-record. If there would be more related parent-companies / parent-contacts then each activity should be rolled-up to each related record? That would imply, that a conversation with one of your contacts, regarding the products of the related company A would get shown at company B. Doesn't make sense, does it?

    The primary contact does not have to work at the selected company. As i said, i you work with partners, and you want to contact a customer, it's good to know, who is you primary-contact of all your partners for a specific customer. But each employee of your partners can support many customers.

    Other example: In Germany if become insolvent an "insolvency administrator" is choosen for your company and he is the one and only primary contact for your company. But he can, of course, be the insolvency administrator for many companies.

    In Both examples it makes sense to have a primary contact that can be related to many companies, but is not an employee of that company. This is why the primary contact is not listed as a contact in the contacts-list.

    If you want to relate a contact with many companies, cause he is a consultant / influencer / etc. than use the connections and connect the contact A as Role "influencer" with company 1 as Role "affected company".

    So usually you use the contact-list as a list of all employees, the primary-contact as the mostly contacted person when you do not know which contact to call or when you want to "contact the company" (what is not possible, cause you cannot call a company, you ever speak with real-persons) and build the relationship-network via the connections.

    • Proposed as answer by Thomas Rehm Thursday, July 19, 2012 6:21 AM
    • Marked as answer by Rajan.Panchal Thursday, July 19, 2012 5:07 PM
    Thursday, July 19, 2012 6:21 AM

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    Hi,

    you can use it, for what you want.
    If you want to choose a primary contact for that company, than you will allways assign one contact only one time.
    You could also choose a contact, that does not work in this company as primary. This way, you will have some records that a selected multiple times.

    Think about reseller business: You are providing a service, a partner sales this for you to his customers. In this case you could save the contact from your partner as the primary contact of all his customers. But thats just one possibility ;)

    Kind Regards,
    Thomas Rehm

    • Proposed as answer by Thomas Rehm Wednesday, July 18, 2012 10:59 AM
    • Unproposed as answer by Rajan.Panchal Wednesday, July 18, 2012 6:35 PM
    Wednesday, July 18, 2012 10:59 AM
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    I am still not clear..whats the purpose of primary contact and how it is different from the contacts and also why a contact can be associated with an account or contact only once while a primary contact cannot be associated with more than once.. whats the functional purpose of such restrictions?

    Over an above a primary contact is not visible in the contats lists as well unless you add it to contacts lists


    Wednesday, July 18, 2012 6:32 PM
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    Primary contact is a point of contact for that account or company in the crm. Rather than contacting the Account we can directly contact the Primary contact. Since a primary contact can be only for one account and he cannot work for another account thats why the restriction.

    If my response answered your question, please "mark the response as an answer" and also "vote as helpful". Regards, Hari. www.crm2011byhari.blogspot.com

    Thursday, July 19, 2012 5:45 AM
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    See the contacts list as the list of all employees or contact-persons of a specific company. If you save a business-address, an email-address or a telephone-number for a contact, that information is specific for a relation between person AND company (cause the business-address, email-address, business-phone, etc.) would change if you want to contact the same person, but regarging another company. So it wouldn't make many sense to relate a contact with more than one company.

    Additional, you can add activities (phonecalls, emails, letters,...) to a contact. This activities will get rolled up to the parent-record. If there would be more related parent-companies / parent-contacts then each activity should be rolled-up to each related record? That would imply, that a conversation with one of your contacts, regarding the products of the related company A would get shown at company B. Doesn't make sense, does it?

    The primary contact does not have to work at the selected company. As i said, i you work with partners, and you want to contact a customer, it's good to know, who is you primary-contact of all your partners for a specific customer. But each employee of your partners can support many customers.

    Other example: In Germany if become insolvent an "insolvency administrator" is choosen for your company and he is the one and only primary contact for your company. But he can, of course, be the insolvency administrator for many companies.

    In Both examples it makes sense to have a primary contact that can be related to many companies, but is not an employee of that company. This is why the primary contact is not listed as a contact in the contacts-list.

    If you want to relate a contact with many companies, cause he is a consultant / influencer / etc. than use the connections and connect the contact A as Role "influencer" with company 1 as Role "affected company".

    So usually you use the contact-list as a list of all employees, the primary-contact as the mostly contacted person when you do not know which contact to call or when you want to "contact the company" (what is not possible, cause you cannot call a company, you ever speak with real-persons) and build the relationship-network via the connections.

    • Proposed as answer by Thomas Rehm Thursday, July 19, 2012 6:21 AM
    • Marked as answer by Rajan.Panchal Thursday, July 19, 2012 5:07 PM
    Thursday, July 19, 2012 6:21 AM
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    Hi,you are saying incorrect -  the restriction is not on the primary contact.. a primary contact can be associated with multiple account.. but a normal contact cannot be asoociated with more than one account/contact.
    Thursday, July 19, 2012 5:01 PM