Firm Hierarchy Overview

Use the Firm Hierarchy feature to allow users to create a hierarchy of records in the hubs for displaying parent and subsidiary relationships between multiple firms.

When you have firms or agencies that should be associated in a hierarchical relationship, you can create, view, and report firm data at both an individual and rolled-up level. This information gives you a better understanding of things like profitability or opportunity award ratios for all firms in a hierarchy.

For example, you have a conglomerate named Smith Associates. There are two divisions: Johnson Enterprises and Hanneke Media. Each of these businesses also have affiliated divisions. You could set up the firm hierarchy with Smith Associates as the parent firm, and the other two businesses as levels two and three with their related businesses as sub-levels:

Smith Associates

• Johnson Enterprises
  • Esson Corp.
    • Smith, Inc.
• Hanneke Media
  • Westwood Technology
  • Milton Technology

When you configure Firm Hierarchy, you set up the number of levels of the hierarchy and a label for each level. After you set it up, the following happens within the DPS application:

• When a record is created in the Firms hub, an associated hierarchy can be established.
• If a firm record is part of a hierarchy, the blue Hierarchy icon displays on the Firms form in the Firms hub. Click this icon to view the hierarchy.
• A toggle button displays on the Opportunities, Projects, Contacts, and Activities tabs and grids in the Firms hub. You can use this toggle to view either the selected firm or this firm and all lower levels of the hierarchy.

• Each level of the hierarchy is added to the Sorting/Grouping tab of reports where firm hierarchy is supported and a Parent field displays on the Sorting/Grouping tab in Reporting, which allows you to sort and group by parent. For example, If your administrator configured firm hierarchy to have 2 parent levels: Parent Group and Parent then you would see options on the Sorting/Grouping tab of reports for Parent Group and Parent. The Hierarchy lookup displays on the General tab of the Opportunity List, Opportunity Forecast, Opportunity Hit Rate List, Firm List, and Project List report options, which allows you to select a firms from a hierarchy. When you make any selection, DPS includes all records for the entire hierarchy.

  For example, if you choose Esson Corporation from the Hierarchy lookup, the report includes Esson Corp. and the entire hierarchy associated with Esson Corp. (both parent records and children of Esson Corp.). This means that if you have Johnson Enterprises as the parent to Esson Corp., who is in turn the parent to Smith, Inc.:

  • If you select Johnson Enterprises in the hierarchy lookup, the report returns all firms associated with Johnson Enterprises, Esson Corp, and Smith, Inc.
  • If you select Esson Corp. in the hierarchy lookup, the report includes complete details on Esson Corp. and Smith, Inc. You cannot choose Smith, Inc., because it is not the parent of another record.