Mult Accounts wiht an Oppotunity

[Guest]

OK BCM is REALLY close to being useful for me. I have several issues, but
the one that is KILLING me right now is this.

I have Accounts created for both partner companies, and customers. When I
have an opportunity I wnat to be able to associate BOTH the partner working
with me, AND the customer for whom the work is for. Anyone have a good
solution for associating multiple accounts wiht a given opportunity?

MIke

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Being restricted to linking 1 and ONLY 1 Business Contact or Account record
to the BCM Opportunity record is the most clueless and unforgiveable design
oversight (among many others). This huge limitation reflects a tremendous
disconnect between the design team and the real world of users who engage in
the reality of sales activity everyday. PLEASE FIX THIS IN THE NEXT RELEASE!!


The only clunky work around that I have been able to create and live with is
to do the following:

Permanently link an Outlook task record to the Opportunity and then use the
linked Contacts field at the bottom of the Task record to display whoever
else (either Business Contacts or Accounts) you need to manually link to the
opportunity. You can label the subject field of this constantly linked task
record "Additional linked Business Contacts" so that it will more easily
display in your Opportunity History list. The navigation through this linked
satellite task record is not very graceful but is does enable you to
associate multiple Business contacts and/or Accounts to an Opportunity record.


It is hard to take BCM seriously as an effective small business sales tool
with goofy limitations like this that have existed for over 4 years. If the
BCM Project record can have a section available for linking additional
Business Contacts, the BCM Opportunity record can and certainly should also
include this!!

Prior to designing the next BCM release, I would strongly recommend locking
the entire BCM design team into a room together for a whole week and require
them to play around with every other competitive entry CRM tool available.
This would not require that all other competitive features be added to BCM
but at least the team could detect a certain pattern among a few key features
and perhaps conclude differently about what gets added to the next release.

It's time to get a clue guys!

-THP