Relationship Intelligence is a valuable organizational asset that maps the intricate connections between individuals and companies, using various relationship types to highlight key links such as board membership or professional acquaintance. The system captures current relationships—including their strength and relevance through features like InterAction IQ and "Who Knows Whom"—while also allowing users to organize and maintain historical relationships and categorize them for enhanced reporting and strategic decision-making.
Relationship Intelligence Overview
Relationship Intelligence is a strategic asset that maps the complex connections between people, companies, experiences, and expertise. This capability empowers professionals to use their networks effectively—identifying opportunities for revenue growth, gaining competitive advantage, and enhancing client service.
Managing Relationships with InterAction
InterAction enables you to establish and manage associations between contacts across various scenarios, such as person-to-person, company-to-company, or mixed interactions. For instance, you might record that a board member represents a company, that one professional knows another, or that one company is a subsidiary of another. Each association is defined by a relationship type (for example, Board Member, Knows, or Subsidiary) and automatically creates reciprocal information (such as a Parent Company for a Subsidiary).
Key Functional Areas
InterAction organizes relationship data into several functional areas:
- Key Relationships: Identify and highlight the most critical connections (e.g., key client contacts or management relationships) that drive organizational success.
- Who Knows Whom: Capture and display personal connections, showing which colleagues are familiar with specific contacts.
- Relationship Strength: Indicate the depth or quality of each relationship, with options to flag when a connection is considered strong.
- InterAction IQ Information: Leverage automated insights by tracking interactions (like meetings, emails, and calls) to assess and update relationship strength.
- Organizing Relationships with Categories: Group relationships by meaningful classifications (such as Service Relationships or Corporate Structure) to improve reporting and strategic analysis.
- Former Relationships: Retain historic relationship data to provide context for ongoing business connections and network mapping.
For details about viewing and creating relationships, see the following:
- Viewing the Relationships for a Contact
- Entering and Editing Your Own Relationship with Contacts
- Create a Relationship Between Two Contacts
- Finding Connections Between Contacts with the Relationship Map
Key Relationships
Certain relationships hold more strategic value for your organization. For example, each client might have a designated key contact with whom you maintain regular communication. These relationships are flagged as “key” to ensure they are easily visible and prioritized in your organization’s contact overview.
The Key Relationships view displays only those relationships that have been marked as key—from the Company/Person Overview or the Related People, Companies, and Organizations page.
Your organization defines key relationships by configuring specific relationship types as “Key Types.” For instance, common key relationships typically include a Key Client Contact or a Relationship Partner/Relationship Managed By. Create a Relationship Between Two Contacts). Because these definitions can be customized, you should refer to your organization’s specific configuration when assigning a key relationship. To designate a relationship as key, create a new relationship and select one of the configured key types (for more detailed instructions, see Create a Relationship Between Two Contacts.
Who Knows Whom
Often, the most valuable relationships are those between your organization’s members and external contacts. InterAction’s Who Knows Whom™ feature gathers and displays these connections, allowing you to easily identify familiar contacts and add further details about each relationship as needed. See Entering and Editing Your Own Relationship with Contacts.
Viewing Who Knows Whom
When viewing Who Knows Whom, you can quickly see the network of connections between your colleagues and external contacts. For an individual contact, the interface displays “My Co-workers who Know this Person.” For a company, it shows both “People My Co-workers Know” and “People I Know.” InterAction determines which contacts are considered employees using the Our Personnel contact type.
Who Knows Whom in the Web Client
[A] Who Knows Whom for a person: Viewing your co-workers who know a contact.
[B] Who Knows Whom for a company: Viewing your co-workers who know people at the company.
[C] Who Knows Whom for a company: Viewing the people you know at a company.
Creating Who Knows Whom Relationships Automatically
InterAction can be configured to automatically create Who Knows Whom™ relationships, streamlining the process of capturing known contacts. For example, if you add a contact from the Firm List to your personal list—or vice versa—the system can automatically establish that connection to indicate your familiarity with the contact. Default settings can be adjusted to control the automatic creation of these Knows/Known By relationships; for more information, refer to Relationship Settings.
Relationship Strength
You can indicate how valuable or actionable a relationship is by setting its strength. A strong relationship is tagged with the word Strong in red bold text.
Indicating Relationship Strength
[A] To indicate a strong relationship, select the option such as "I know this contact well."
In many cases, you may need to set the strength manually—for example, differentiating between a close acquaintance and someone you have only met a few times. Additionally, your organization might configure certain relationship types to be automatically designated as strong or not based on their characteristics.
Professional Relationships
Certain relationships may be designated with a specialized professional relationship type, which allows for more detailed strength measurements to reflect the level of the business connection. Note that your organization may use a different term for these relationships. Additionally, you can only create a professional relationship between yourself (or on behalf of a proxy) and another contact.
Displaying a Professional Relationship in InterAction
[A] The specialized Professional Relationship captures additional details about the connection's strength. For example, a strong professional relationship may be marked by a connection strong enough for Allison Tarnoff to schedule a meeting with Sara.
For detailed instructions on creating these professional relationships, see Create a Professional Relationship Between Yourself and a Contact.
Note that if the strength of a professional relationship is reduced to 0, the system will automatically delete the relationship. Additionally, you can only edit or delete professional relationships that you created or are set for a user for whom you are a proxy, and these relationships cannot be converted to former relationships.
InterAction IQ
In addition to the manual strength indicator, your organization may utilize InterAction IQ to automatically gather and evaluate relationship data. This tool is separate from the manual "Strong" indicator and is not directly editable. The IQ score appears in the IQ column, offering an at-a-glance assessment of relationship strength.
How InterAction IQ Works
Data Collection: InterAction IQ monitors scheduled events (such as email messages, meetings, and phone calls) in both Microsoft Outlook and InterAction. It uses metadata from these interactions—not the content—to gauge relationship strength.
Automatic Updates and Creation: Depending on your organization’s configuration, InterAction IQ can update existing relationships or even create new ones based on the insights it gathers.
Displaying the IQ Score: The calculated relationship strength is shown in the IQ column on various pages, and you can also view it in the Relationship Information section of a contact's overview page. In Microsoft Outlook, these scores appear on the Related Contacts tab within the Contact Details dialog box.
Interpretation of Scores: The specific meaning of an IQ score depends on your organization's settings. Generally, higher scores (e.g., a level of five) indicate a stronger relationship. InterAction IQ calculates these levels based on multiple factors derived from your interaction data.
If InterAction IQ is not in use or if the display of scores has been disabled, the IQ column will still be visible, although it will not contain any data.
For further details on how InterAction IQ factors into your relationship management process, please refer to your organization's configuration documentation or user guide.
Organizing Relationships with Categories
Each relationship type is assigned a category, which groups together connections with similar significance. For example, the Service Relationship category aggregates relationships involving service providers and their clients (such as consultants, bankers, and legal counsel).
Key Uses of Categories in InterAction:
Filtering Views: Categories are the primary criterion for filtering relationship lists on the Person/Company Overview and Related People, Companies, and Organizations pages. For instance, all relationships classified under Service Relationship appear under the Receivers/Providers of Services filter on the Person/Company Overview page.
Reporting: Your organization can leverage relationship type categories to organize and filter data in reports, making it easier to analyze connection trends.
Special Processing: Some categories are pre-configured for specific purposes. For example, the Company Structure category is used to identify which contacts should appear in a company’s Corporate Structure profile.
Relationship type categories are distinct from any you may assign directly to your contacts.
Former Relationships
Even after a relationship concludes, retaining a record of its existence can still be valuable. Instead of permanently deleting a relationship, you can mark it as a "former relationship," which is particularly helpful when using the Relationship Map. For example, an individual currently serving on a company's board might be connected to someone who previously served in that role. In such cases, preserving this historical relationship can be important for a comprehensive view of your network.
You can convert a current relationship to a former relationship by editing its details. Additionally, if you attempt to delete a relationship that supports the former option, InterAction will prompt you to mark it as former instead. If the former designation is not applicable to a particular relationship type, the option to set it as former will not be available.