Still, very difficult to follow your ideas here without reading a structured outline of what is needed and what is doable. Please don't only blame it on my intelligence.
When setting up a party relationship module, the first thing we may want to consider is: NATURE 1. Legal entity. 2. Natural person. These two objects can have three main relations between each other. RELATION A. Active relation (ongoing) B. Passive relation (from the past) C. Future relation (back to the future) These relations again can be tagged by endless characteristics. CHARACTERISTIC i. Client ii. Supplier iii. Forwarder iv. Employee v. Authority vi. Franchise-Partner vii. Agent viii. Consortium etc... >From my point of view, as business models tend to be so different, I would propose to have everybody create his own characteristics fitting to business requirements. You can then combine as much as you like. Besides, one of the most crucial parts is whether the solution is easy and comfortable to handle during operations, as every CRM module depends on the user's ability and will to nurture the system and benefit from it. When I get a phone call from a person introducing him/herself with name and company, I must be able to type this into the computer within seconds to get an overview of who this contact is and what I should be doing and consider. If the system does not allow this, the best architecture will not be used and the data pool will not grow after implementation as it costs more time than helps. Cheers, Denis
