New contact type for Position or Office - CRM

Proposal for new Contact Type = Position/Office

I have come to this through various constraints faced when dealing with the positions (elected or employed) that people hold, especially in regard to what happens when the person in that role changes - and how we track the information.

This proposal deals with several problems namely

when a person leaves a role but stays on database for other reasons
when a person leaves a role and the 'new person' has not been identified
when a role exists and we don't (yet) know the person in that role
when a person holds several roles, each with unique contact details, and each has its own unique data/information needs
when we want to keep track of our engagement with a 'position' regardless of who holds it currently

Example A
We send out information on Education issues to all School Principals. We do not have a complete list of names (and it is not a priority to have the personal names). Current approach requires some fake names being set up then screened out when doing mailings.

Example B
A person has three roles, personal as Member, work and as an elected official (or NPO role). In each role they need different information sent to the relevant addresses/emails. Can't do this unless we set person up as duplicate records or some other convoluted hack.

Example C
We have an ongoing dialogue with the CEO of a company. The CEO changes but we would ideally have the Activity History relate to the position - and have that show who was in the role at any point in time.

SUGGESTION
Set up a new 'contact type' which is for a Position/Office (examples would include Mayor of City, President of Country, Minister (political), Chair of Organisation, CEO of Company, Principal of School, local secretary of the branch of a national organisation etc)

This new Contact Type then has a relationship to the Individual specified as well as one to the Organisation. The latter would rarely change, the former would change each time a new person takes on that role.

EXAMPLE
Busy Lizzie is a member of our organisation and also is Chair of the Board of an NPO and is employed as CEO for a company.

Busy Lizzie's personal contact details are in the Individual contact and are used for membership info and internal communications.

The CEO's contact details are in the new Position/Office contact type (and note that the address and phone tend to stay same when the person moves on, and often they have a generic email address) - and this is linked by relationship to the Company's Organisational record which has the Organisations contacts (such as main switchboard etc)

The contacts for her as Chair of the NPO are in the new Position/Office contact type - and this is linked by relationship to the NPO's Organisational record (which has the address contacts for the organisation head office).

When Busy Lizzie ceases as CEO she remains in database both because she is a member and due to being the Chair of an NGO. (Tough all these arguments also hold if she isn't a member of course)

Her personal contact details stay as is.

The CEO Position/Office contact details stay as is. (But records that Busy Lizzie was the former CEO from date X to date Y) And our contact/activity history with this position is maintained.

If the new CEO (Lazy Leo) is known then a new Individual is entered and 'takes over' the relationship to the Position/Office of CEO.

And hey presto most things still work (personalised work email address and mobile being the two elements that are most likely to change).

The information that the CEO is down as needing doesn't have to be shifted from Busy Lizzie to Lazy Leo - it stays as part of the CEO record.

The information that the Chair of the NGO needs stays the same (until Lizzie steps down from this at which point it transfers to new Chair when that individual inherits the 'relationship' to the Position/Office contact).

The custom data relating to Lizzie stays the same.

And if we don't find out immediately who is the new CEO, the information can still be sent - just without a First/Last name.

Despite being long-winded, I dare say I have glossed over and ignored some complexities. Eg can 'positions' sign up as participants? I can see advantages as to why the should since the sign up may be done while Person X is in the role, but the person holding the position changes before the Event. Can the Position be a member (well do reps of organisations become members due to their role - I suspect so and think this has been discussed as something to sort out elsewhere. This solution might fix that issue too.

Overall though this seems to add a new element of stability of information by creating the links for some data to the 'Position/Office' rather than to the Individual.