We had an interesting example today at De Goede Woning. The case was brought up by one of the teammanagers that visited the project group this week to see where we were and what we were doing.

In one appartment building a number of customers rent an appartment that includes a care package, that is supplied by a welfare organization. The teammanager wanted to remove the mandatory aspect of these elements of the contacts. Luckily for her she remembered that one of her colleagues mentioned this specific customer group as well. This brought her to investigate what other contacts they had with this customer group and she found out that:

• One colleague was in contact with a part of the group of customers discussing a rather hefty additional charge for heating and services of the previous year. As this was quite an amount special arrangements had to be made with some customers.
• An other colleague was arranging a meeting with the welfare organization that delivered the case package. A committee representing the customers had complained about the quality of the care package and she just started the investigation. One of the customers related was spokesperson for this committee.
• A third colleague was buy arranging a project where part of the appartments would be renovated.

In the information system they use to do their transactions nothing of this was to be found as this focuses purely on rents and directly related activities. The question "hwere do you live" is all important, not the question "who are you". And most of this stuff matters if you want to change the care contracts!!!!

Luckily the teammanager discussed and investigated prior to contacting the customers, but she really wanted to see this on a central place in her system. And of course we could show her how this can be achieved in CiviCRM, using the relationship types. A good session that gave me plenty of energy!

Erik