Supercharge anything and everything related to Account Hierarchies, from reporting, to displaying the data of your choice, as well as automated mapping.
Highlights
- Create, edit, and visualize multiple Account Hierarchies for the same Company.
- Expose the standard or custom fields your teams need to see in the hierarchy.
- Tailor user permissions to allow hierarchy visibility or access in addition to Salesforce sharing mechanisms.
- Produce detailed Salesforce Reports and Dashboards with rollup data and KPIs from the entire hierarchy.
Building Account Hierarchies in Salesforce using the Parent Account field is the out-of-the-box, widely used method; however, it’s a manual exercise which limits you to one hierarchy per Account. Companies can choose to spend time building offline files to import the data, create custom fields, or invest in building complex custom automation and tailored BI reporting – but what if there was another, much faster way?
Traction Complete’s flagship product, which is 100% native to Salesforce, aims to transform everything you know about Account Hierarchies, starting with visualizing the data from Accounts and related records, in one place. Complete Hierarchies does much more than that though, offering your organization the possibility to use any third-party data that includes hierarchical data, such as Dun and Bradstreet, to automate the hierarchy building and scale as your database increases and needs change.
This in-depth overview will showcase the main Complete Hierarchies features, ideal use cases, and setup effort, as well as how fast your users can (and will) adopt this new suite of functionalities.
Features
Organizing Accounts in Salesforce based on the hierarchical relationship between them may seem simple at first, but it’s not that easy. However, it is one of the processes that can boost productivity, reveal untapped revenue opportunities, and enhance your team’s Salesforce experience if done right.
Complete Hierarchies is here to help you adapt the experience of Account Hierarchies to your very own business requirements, teams, and exceptions. In this post, we’ll dive into:
- How hierarchies can be set up and the underlying attributes that help create a tailored experience for each persona.
- What the Complete Company custom object is and how it can be used to roll up information from within the hierarchy.
- How the hierarchies are exposed to users and what functionalities are available to make use of right within the hierarchy view.
Complete Company
Complete Hierarchies doesn’t need to leverage the out-of-the-box Parent Account field in Salesforce (unless you decide to). The limitations that arise when using that lookup field can become a thing of the past!
Complete Company is a custom object which is included within the managed package, acting as the ultimate umbrella or master container for your Account Hierarchies.
Complete Company can be enabled at each Hierarchy Definition’s level, meaning Accounts can be part of many hierarchies. The Complete Company Id will be stored in a lookup field on each Account to ensure that all Accounts that are part of the same hierarchy will also be linked to the same Complete Company record.
The Complete Company object has a many-to-many relationship with Accounts, linked to both the:
- Complete Company Members Object: This is a junction object linking Complete Company records with Account records. This allows Accounts to be associated with many Hierarchy Definitions. y.
- KPI Object: This is a related record associated with the Complete Company object. It contains historical snapshots of your Complete Company for accurate point-in-time reporting.
Hierarchy Settings
Chances are that as soon as the managed package is installed, the Complete Hierarchies Setup page is where you will navigate. While it may seem that there are many options to choose from, as you tailor your experience you’ll navigate through each feature-packed tab in no time.
Create Your Hierarchies
This is the tab where the actual setup begins. Here, you can start to create the multiple hierarchies your company will be using. Whether you are using information from a data provider or other identifiers, as long as there is common criteria available the hierarchy can be built.
There are a few hierarchy types you can choose from during the creation process:
- Connect: Compatible with D&B Connect.
- Custom: Used for other data providers such as ZoomInfo or Clearbit.
- Domain Group: Based on the domain field which comes with the Complete Hierarchies package and is calculated based on websites and Contact emails.
- List: Ideal for Territory or Country hierarchies, when Accounts are grouped under one Account or based on a field value.
- Native: Based on the out-of-the-box Salesforce hierarchy using the ParentID field.
Depending on the type you select, different Hierarchy Identifiers will be available for selection. Below is an example of the D&B Connect object, which unlike any of the others, contains the Headquarters identifier that D&B usually provides. Identifiers serve the purpose of automatically finding the Global Ultimate and Parent Accounts.
Within the Hierarchy Builder tab, you can:
- Trigger and schedule the automation which builds the hierarchy itself (i.e. creating and updating the Complete Company records).
- Control the batch size.
- Filter the subset of the Accounts that the process should run on.
- View progress whenever a batch is running.
Optionally, you can make use of Hierarchy Filters to create different versions of the same hierarchy, for example, if your users only need to see Customer Accounts rather than all the Accounts that belong to the same hierarchy.
Hierarchy Grouping on the other hand is a newer feature which can be used to bucket Accounts by one or multiple fields within the hierarchy view – just like you would in a report. Note that the actual tier hierarchy view is not maintained as a result of groupings, as parents and children may fall into different groupings.
This tab controls some of the automation settings, but as you will see below there is also a Hierarchy Builder functionality accessed from a Lightning Web Component that can be used to either augment data or split hierarchies when needed.
Profile Settings & Display Fields
As soon as at least one hierarchy exists, the Profile Settings is the next tab you should navigate to. While Global Settings will be set up out of the box and you can proceed, the true persona-based customization using Profiles is a significant differentiator. This is sure to help you tailor fields and available actions based on the running user.
Regardless of how many hierarchies you choose to create, they can be added and removed from each Profile’s Display Fields Settings. Sales users may only see a couple of the hierarchies, while Admins can see all.
In addition to the hierarchy selection, you can go even further and pick and choose which fields will appear in the table for each Profile, thus ensuring that users see exactly the information that is relevant to them. The records in the hierarchy can also be filtered so that the view is limited to certain records only.
When it comes to the Display Settings, there are quite a few to choose from. Selecting settings for each individual Profile gives the advantage of being able to control which groups of users will be able to conduct certain actions – such as data export, inline editing, or even the possibility of viewing all records (regardless of their Salesforce permissions) granted using the “Show Records for All Users” Display Setting.
Custom Rollups on Complete Company
The Complete Company object comes with rollup fields, such as the amount of won Opportunities in the hierarchy. However, you can continue enhancing the functionality by creating new fields based on the information your team needs to see and report on at the hierarchy level, no matter how complex the hierarchy may become over time.
Custom rollups can be created as custom fields first, then for the calculation the rest of the magic will happen in the Rollup Settings. You will have to select the object to be rolled up and can go as far as three levels deep.
In the example below, the field is on the Account, but it could also be a related record such as Contracts. When ready, you can schedule or immediately execute the calculation from the Rollup Action button. All rollup calculations use Batch Apex for processing to keep resource consumption at a minimum.
Keep in mind that there are a few types of rollup to choose from when creating these, respectively:
- SUM
- COUNT
- COUNT_DISTINCT
- AVG
- MAX
- MIN
If you would like to benefit from this rollup functionality on other objects as well, be them standard or custom, the Complete Hierarchies package also allows you to extend this functionality to wherever Salesforce rollups may be needed. With Any Object Rollups, you could rollup Lead or Opportunity information onto the Account without having to go through the hassle of building the automation yourself.
Embedded Hierarchy View
It’s now time to add the Lightning Web Component included in the package on the Account Record Page. Regardless of how much or little data a certain hierarchy has, the users will still be able to benefit from the view and functionality.
Additionally, you can choose a default hierarchy, and even then, fields can be reordered. Due to the component’s size, the main or top sections would be the best place to expose this.
If this is one of the options you enabled in the Display Settings, then in-line editing will be available for all Account fields, including Record Ownership. Additionally, the hierarchy can be exported as a CSV or printed as a PDF.
Hierarchy Builder can easily be accessed from this page for manual intervention.
Different Hierarchies for Different Use Cases
Working with the additional hierarchies you have set up is intuitive for both admins and end users. While you set them up as mentioned in the Hierarchy Definitions section above, when looking at an Account, choosing which hierarchy to focus on is literally a click of a button.
The drop-down allows users to easily switch between the different available hierarchies based on the specific view they need to work on. Of course, each individual hierarchy will have its own settings, actions, fields, and filters. For example, while the D&B Connect hierarchy is helpful from a legal entity perspective, perhaps a custom one is needed for the sales team and whitespace penetration, containing Companies which may not be necessarily legally linked.
Display Related Record Tabs
I’m sure you are familiar with how an Account Hierarchy looks in Salesforce when using the ParentId field and the standard out of the box Account Hierarchy view. Weren’t there times when you wished you didn’t have to go through the Account, then through the related lists, in order to access an Opportunity, only to go back to the hierarchy afterwards?
The Lightning Web Component now embedded on your Account Record Page can also display related object tabs alongside the Account Hierarchy one. Not only that, but you can actually pick and choose the objects and fields, once again based on Profile. Additionally, related objects don’t only refer to the objects that have a lookup to the Account for example, you can go even further by choosing to display grandchildren records as well if you’d like.
Any combination of child objects you choose to display can be configured in the Complete Hierarchies Setup – Opportunities, grandchildren such as converted Leads, and even Account Team Members. Once the Profile and Object are selected, it’s then up to you which fields are to be displayed for each of them.
You also can filter the list of related records as needed, and even add filter logic. Moreover, highlights can be created with a color of your choice in order to draw attention to particular rows or cells when the user is viewing the list on the embedded component. Once ready, the child objects can be added to the Hierarchies of your choice from the Hierarchy Definitions tab.
Below is an example of an Opportunity list, and as you can see they are grouped based on the Account they belong to in the hierarchy. A green row highlight is also set for certain Opportunities to ensure they are reviewed or that action is being taken accordingly.
Depending on your established process, there also are some additional Child Settings available in Setup, referring to record creation, record access, and the tab name. In the eventuality that filters are applied, it would be ideal to also name the tab accordingly so that the users know exactly what they’re looking at.
Inline Child Record Creation is also a possibility depending on the Object you choose to display, and can be enabled or disabled here. However, the “Show Records for All Users” and “Show Display Fields for All Users” should be used with caution, as they overwrite the Salesforce permissions and will display all the data to said Profile, regardless if they usually have access to it or not. While in certain scenarios these can be a great way to ensure seamless collaboration, they might provide more access than needed.
Reporting
With Complete Hierarchies, you don’t have to worry about the Account Hierarchy limitations of the out-of-the-box functionality as you can continue building Reports and Dashboards directly in Salesforce without compromising on the metrics or having to build custom fields on the Account.
As the Complete Company record has information about the entire hierarchy, and the Complete Company Members and KPIs store information about particular Accounts, historical information, and key data points, you can seamlessly visualize the data in no time.
Below is an example of a potential insights Dashboard you could put together in order to display critical information about an entire hierarchy on one single page. Your teams will now know what the activity and close rate is, as well as how the pipeline looks at all times.
Use Cases
Of course, every tool has to cater to various use cases, and while some of them are obvious and expected, others may be great additions to further enhance your team’s productivity. Complete Hierarchies is no exception, as while it can automatically reflect the settings you choose within the Setup and based on data you have, there are situations where further review and manual input may be preferred.
The Hierarchy Builder available as a button on the Lightning Web Component can be a powerful tool when it comes to controlling the hierarchies outside of any automations. In a real world scenario, it would surely be a favorite tool for Data Stewards in charge of tailoring company hierarchies without considering D&B or suggestions from a specific data provider.
Once an individual Account or part of an existing hierarchy is dragged from the hierarchy onto the Workspace, it becomes its own global ultimate record, meaning that it will be now treated as a separate hierarchy with a separate Complete Company record. This way, the internal decisions and exceptions made within your organization can easily be transferred into Salesforce, and further reflected into hierarchy views and Reports.
Alternatively, if you want to keep the same hierarchy as a starting point but only add additional Accounts that you deem to be part of the hierarchy, this can be done by simply searching for a specific Account and dragging it into the visualization. The intuitive drag-and-drop experience also applies to related records, meaning that if you decide that the users are allowed to, they can re-parent Opportunities or Contacts which may not have been created at the right level in the hierarchy.
Thinking about data quality, every Salesforce Admin has most likely built something to prevent potential duplicate data. Based on the D&B DUNS number, the Duplicates column within the Hierarchy view will highlight duplicates, and the ability for users to click on this and merge the Accounts can easily be enabled in Setup.
Additionally, if your organization is already using the out-of-the-box Duplicate and Matching Rules, you can also leverage the Suggested tab to easily spot duplicates while manually editing a particular hierarchy.
Impact
Following the deep-dive into the features included in the Complete Hierarchies package, it should not come as a surprise that this application can be a significant game changer into how your organization is handling everything related to Account Hierarchies. Eliminate many out-of-the-box limitations and empower users—including operations, data & analytics, and sales teams—to have all of their critical information organized and actionable in a single place.
Setup
The setup effort for Complete Hierarchies can be as simple or as complex as needed, all depending on how intricate your internal Account Hierarchy setup should be. Complete Hierarchies is a managed package that you will have to install from the AppExchange listing.
There are two permission sets available to open up the access: Complete Hierarchies Admin and Complete Hierarchies User. As you might have guessed, users who will be making setup changes, creating hierarchies, and defining fields to be displayed to users, will need the Admin permission set. The end users of the Lightning Web Component embedded into the Record Page should have the Complete Hierarchies User permission set assigned.
After the managed package installation and permission set assignment, it’s all about the settings available under the Complete Hierarchies Setup tab from the Traction Complete App. To get started in just a few minutes with a basic configuration, follow this step-by-step guide which covers every stage, from installation to reviewing the Hierarchy Roll-Up Summary Report.
Support
With several articles and guides to choose from on each topic, the Knowledge Base, blog, and webinars will help answer most of your questions – especially on how Traction Complete could be the answer to several use cases within your organization.
If you have more specific questions pertaining to your company’s requirements or scenarios, don’t hesitate to reach out to the team at Traction Complete.
Pricing
Starting at $15/user/month, the price and licensing mechanism is based on the number of users in your org. Additionally, discounts for nonprofits are available – you can find out more by emailing contact@tractioncomplete.com.
Summary
Whether you’re considering a change in the Account Hierarchy process and currently exploring solutions or you are just getting started on this journey, Complete Hierarchies could help your organization obtain the comprehensive hierarchy view everybody would like to see in Salesforce.
If this overview has piqued your interest, be sure to book a demo with Traction Complete to learn more about Complete Hierarchies, or any of the other products in their suite including Complete Leads, Complete Clean, and Complete Influence.