While it can be generally said that Salesforce has changed the very concept of Customer Relationship Management, it is also true that each industry has its own challenges and requirements when it comes to building stronger relationships with its clients and employees. These challenges are unique to each company and as such, often demand tailored solutions.

Salesforce CRM in its standard form comes with certain general elements. One of these – Account Hierarchy – offers the user an overall view of the Account hierarchy in a company formed by the main account holder (parent account) and the associated accounts (child accounts). In the standard Account Hierarchy, on the main page view, the user is only able to view the parent and associated accounts, he/she cannot edit any of the records directly from this page view. Even the smallest change requires the user to navigate to an internal page to edit the information; and even then, he/she can make limited changes.

The Standard Account Hierarchy package has the following limitations:

       
• The main Account Hierarchy page cannot be edited or customized
       
• A limited number of columns are displayed and the headers cannot be sorted, edited or changed
       
• The associated (child) accounts cannot be edited from the main Account Hierarchy page

For a company, these limitations can prove to be challenging in terms of access and user interface. Taking this fact into account, AppShark designed a customized Account Hierarchy package which allows users to customize their account hierarchy page in Salesforce to suit their specific business requirements. The custom made package by AppShark provides a global, complete view of a company, its customers, partners and subsidiaries. Under AppShark’s Account Hierarchy package, the user can:

       
• Edit/customize the main Account Hierarchy page view to suit the user’s specific needs
       
• View and edit columns in the hierarchy, add custom columns as per requirements and specify  the order in the which the columns are to be displayed
       
• Edit an associated account from the hierarchy view itself
       
• View the detailed page view for any associated account and edit each record
       
• See the selected account which is highlighted in the hierarchy

The package consists of a custom Visual force component that provides a comprehensive view of all the different hierarchical levels – from the highest to the lowest level - associated with a parent account. The Visual force component can be embedded in the standard account detail page and adapted to support the user’s specific business requirements.

The most distinguishing feature of our customized package is that while the standard account detail page only displays the hierarchy, our Account Hierarchy page allows a user to directly edit any account within in the hierarchy itself. The user can also choose to navigate to an account by clicking on the account name. The columns on the main page view or associated account page view can be customized to suit the user’s requirements. Each column header can be changed; new headers can be created using custom settings. The order in which the columns have to be displayed can also be changed. In short, the user can choose the information to be displayed.

In simple words, the customized Account Hierarchy package designed by AppShark allows a company to connect with their clients and employees on a deeper level, build stronger relationships and networks within internal teams and with customers, and encourages enhanced collaboration between teams.

You can check out our Account Hierarchy package on AppExchange.