How to handle multiple accounts for one opportunity?

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Posted on by Community Member Microsoft Employee

Our Business scenario goes like this:

We are a Sales and manufacturing Company and deal with Contractors(EPC) directly and not with End users.

So we will be sending out quotes to multiple contractors, but I am confused how to handle this at the Opportunity level?

We do have an End User field defined at the Opportunity name, but the Opportunity-Account Relaionship we want to maintain with the Contractors themselves, many related fields in the Opportunity will be captured from the Contractor.

I want to know if any of you has a similar business scenario as ours and how you have implemented it.

Currently they are filling the most preferred Contractor name as the Potential Customer field in Opportunity, and at the end they will update it to the actual contractor name who won the project. is there any better way?

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Community Member Microsoft Employee on at

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RE: How to handle multiple accounts for one opportunity?

Hi Wayne i am currently working on a project at university using cm where i am trying to create something similar, without any development. Would you be able to explain in further detail how i could go about doing this?
Wayne Walton 13,726 on at

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RE: How to handle multiple accounts for one opportunity?

One alternative, depending on your reporting needs would be to have a unique opportunity for each Contractor, and then connect the opportunities. You would then "close as lost" all the opportunities that didn't get won, and just win the contractor that you actually closed with.

That would be more overhead, but might be more reportable, depending on your needs.

If you have more details about what business goal you're looking to achieve, we could definitely offer different suggestions for Opp management.
Community Member Microsoft Employee on at

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RE: How to handle multiple accounts for one opportunity?

Thanks Aileen and Wayne, They are really helpful.

I would still welcome any different suggestions to pick the best one which suits our business processes.
Aileen Gusni 44,522 on at

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RE: How to handle multiple accounts for one opportunity?

Hi Sameera,

Either you use Connection Roles, or you can create manual Many to Many Relationship.

By creating one more entity level in between Opportunity and Account.

So, create a Opportunity Contractor entity, lookup to Opportunity and Account, add new field: Contractor Status (can be Option Set or lookup field to master Contractor Status)

Here the field you can fill: the Most Preferred Contractor, the Second preferred, Won Contractor, etc.

So by default 1 Opportunity can have more than 1 Account or Contractor, which CRM can handle.

Then, in the end add the Won Contractor or modify one create a workflow to auto populated Potential Customer to this Won Contractor.

Hope this helps!

Thanks.
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Wayne Walton 13,726 on at

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RE: How to handle multiple accounts for one opportunity?

The easiest thing to do is to use Connections. Then you can connect various accounts to the Opportunity and also describe each one's relationship to the Opp. Preferred, Secondary, etc.