Account
Overview
Accounts represent an individual or business with which a company has some form of relationship. Accounts can be customers, partners, suppliers, or any other type of business entity.
How Are Accounts Used?
Accounts are used to track and manage business relationships. They serve as the backbone for all types of relationships (customers, partners, vendors, etc) in a Salesforce instance. In the Salesforce data model they are central to both opportunity and relationship management.
From an opportunities perspective they allow sales teams to manage and track revenue. From a relationship perspective they allow the business to track and manage key communications and interactions.
What is the Benefit?
Accounts can be used to segment business, track campaign effectiveness, and provide an understanding of who your best and most profitable customers are. Customizing this object will often serve as the baseline for any reports or dashboards created throughout the organization.
You can also create Hierarchies which generate Parent/Child Relationships. Using campaigns you can lean into analytics showing what marketing activities have the greatest impact for your customers.
From a service perspective, you can associate Cases and keep track of service issues, ensuring problems are resolved within SLA timelines. Additionally, there is a teams feature which allows you to define roles and responsibilities to split Management functions. You can also define Opportunity teams to split revenue calculations against won Opportunities.
Variations
Person Accounts
Person Accounts are a specialized type used to represent individual people rather than organizations or businesses. They combine elements of both an Account and a Contact, allowing users to manage individuals as if they were accounts without having to create separate records.
When to use Person Accounts
In B2B scenarios, contacts generally depict a person you are connecting with at a Business level.
In B2C, often the person is the customer, therefore the Person variant becomes relevant.
Financial Services are an example where the client is both your customer and someone you speak with on a regular basis, in turn needing this capability.
Similarly in healthcare and non-profits the patient or donor is who you are engaging. Using Person Accounts in the right situation dramatically enhances the user experience.
When creating leads, standard required fields (like Company) are removed, and do not inhibit lead creation or cause unnecessary data capture.
Who is Impacted?
Sales Teams
Sales teams will utilize accounts to relate new and existing business to the correct customers. Utilizing feed tracking the teams can also relate emails, calls and meetings to customers as they occur or are planned for the future. Sales teams can also forecast revenue they own and see the pipeline by customer.
Sales Managers
Managers of sales teams forecast sales by team through grouping. They can report on activities to ensure reps stay engaged and are actively managing books of business.
Developers/Admins
Developers and Admins together can work with Accounts to drive automation, increase efficiency of outreach and ensure customer retention stays high.