Like many other companies we are using Maximizer to collate and manipulate sales lead information. As discussed previously in this BB applying different UDFs at both the company and contact level can make searches for merges fairly complex, typically:

Find the candidate companies
Retrieve the contacts for those companies
Search within the results for the required contacts (eg contact type = sales/marketing etc)
Merge to / export the final contact records

This is all well and good for our 'main' databases, in which we average 2-3 contacts per company; however it is very difficult to export/merge info when you need a name, address, and UDFs from both the contact AND company records. (example: all sales managers at a selection of companies, showing the 'sales region', which is a Company-level UDF)

Now our issue: for certain applications - typically exporting data, handling 'unqualified' leads with very little data - we find it better to handle the contacts as Individuals. This dramatically reduces the data entry time, complexity of searching, allows all UDFs to be exported with the contact info etc. As 'leads' become more qualified prospects, then customers, we of course convert them to proper Company/Contact records.

After our last show someone kindly entered 150+ of these basic records as Company/Contacts instead of Individuals, then recorded lots of info in Company UDFs etc. Is there any way to 'flatten' a Company/Contact record back in to an Individual??? (if necessary via Transfer, Export/Import etc)

Any suggestions welcomed!

Regards

JD.

Hi James,

if you've not added lots of notes/documents then Export/Import is the easiest way to fix this. Otherwise I'm afraid its probably re-entry and then combine entries one by one!

You can convert the other way Ind->Company+Contact more easily.

I suggest you just list all the contacts on these records export them and re-import. Of-course you'll loose UDFs on the company.

If your crafty you can export the company and contact data seperatley, join it in access using the ID re-export and then import the flattened file.

Regards,

Ian Wallace

Hi Ian

Thanks for the advice - I guess we'll have to export the contacts and companies separately and do an external join, as you suggest. There's too much info stored in the company UDFs to re-key - its a real pain that reporting, exports etc don't let you pull contact details out with related company UDFs! (I guess this will be a regular issue for us, as we send more and more info out to external telemarketing, mailing houses etc)

Regards

James.