Groups vs. Companies

[Kiersten_K]

We have recently restructured some of our teams in our company. Currently, we have only ever had 1 business in Workfront. As part of the restructure, some teams have been combined over 2 separate businesses and Workfront will now be a shared service for both businesses. The problem we are running into is that a few teams have 1 manager that oversees both business teams. For example, a Copywriter manager is now overseeing Business A and Business B.

I have looked at the Companies feature but am not sure it will work for my use case given the rules around managers.

Has anyone used Groups to help differentiate the teams and what they are able to see in the system but have them all in 1 overarching group versus having companies? Also, if there are any pros/cons that can be shared that would be awesome.

Thank you in advance for any advice!

[RandyRoberts · Accepted solution]

Hi, We have 9 different agencies under a single umbrella in our instance.

We use groups and sub-groups to define the agencies. We use Companies to define clients (internal agencies are also defined as clients since we sometimes bill each other and ourselves for internal work, making us the client).

We have the Umbrella agency as a company and all users are members of that company. We have the agencies broken out as groups and each employee is a member of their agency's group.

When projects are created, the company field is whomever is getting billed for that job, (the client) aand the Group is the agency doing the work (the billing).

[Kiersten_K]

Thank you, Randy! This is very helpful!

[ChristyPo]

Thank you Randy, this is helpful to me too!

We are going through a transition where our 1 group is now splitting into 2 groups but we will be billing the lots of the same internal divisions (agencies). Do all 9 of your agencies use the same Company, or does each agency have it's own set of Companies to bill to?

For Example: Events Group and Marketing Group both do work for Agency A:
 
Events Group has a project, Company Field = Agency A

Marketing Group has a project, Company Field also =  Agency A

OR 
Events Group has a project, Company Field = Agency A Events

Marketing Group has a project, Company Field = Agency A Marketing 

[RandyRoberts]

In our instance, each group is an agency and each company is a client contract. An agency can be a group AND a company since sometimes one agency bills another agency and in turn that agency re-bills the client.

Each user is a member of the main umbrella company, in our case HCG. Each user is a member of an Agency/Group as well (Groups are Agencies). This allows us to assign permissions based on agency/group but keep everyone under the same umbrella/company.

[ChristyPo]

Thank you!