B2B Containers in Connections

4 min

Connections and identifiers

In Customer Journey Analytics, you pick a common identifier, known as Person ID, to connect your event data with other datasets like profile dataset and lookup datasets. This type of connection is known as a person-based connection which facilitates person-based reporting and analysis.

In Customer Journey Analytics B2B Edition, you can select between a person-based connection or an account-based connection. An account-based connection facilitates account-based reporting and analysis.

For a person-based connection, you select Person as the primary identifier. You can then configure and set up your connection, data view and workspace projects for person-based reporting.
For an account-based connection, you select Account as the primary identifier. You can then optionally add additional containers for Global Account, Buying Group and Opportunity. Based on whether you add a Global Account or not, your primary identifier is an account identifier or a global account identifier.

Containers

In Customer Journey Analytics containers are generated as part of the configuration of a connection and data view, and provide data structure and scope. Containers store groups of identifiers to sequence all event timestamps by unique identifiers. That storage facilitates quick and performant execution of functionalities like segmentation, attribution, and visualizations.

B2B containers

In Customer Journey Analytics B2B Edition, an Account container is added to the list of generated containers. And you have the option to configure the generation of additional containers, like Global Account, Buying Group, and Opportunity.

The hierarchy and relationships between the containers is predetermined. Opportunity, Buying Group and Person are all sibling containers of the Account container. In that hierarchy the Session container between the Person container and Event container is generated based on how you define a session in the Session settings in your data view. Additional session containers, for example between the Account container and Event container, are currently not generated and supported. See the table below for a description and basic usage of the B2B containers.

B2B container	Description Basic use case
Account	A company that is a customer or potential customer of your business. The company could be a subsidiary or division of a larger organization. Account represents the organization that you are selling to and want to track at that organization level.
Global Account (optional)	The top parent company of a group of related companies. A global account has no parent company, but may have subsidiaries or divisions belonging to the global account. When you have the Global Account container configured in your connection, an account that has no parent or subsidiaries should be listed in both the account field and global account field.
Opportunity (optional)	A collection of products and services that are sold together. An opportunity often involved various stages in the sales cycle up until the closure of the sale. You would use data to measure the opportunity progression through the sales funnel. For example, a report that provides details on the top opportunities that moved from stage 3 to stage 4.
Buying group (optional)	A collection of people within an organization that is involved in the decision-making process to purchase a product or service. You would use buying group data to track buying groups through campaign management. For example, build an audience segment of key buying groups. You most likely want a lookup from the buying group to profile data, so you can report on the people in a buying group.
Person	An individual, often identified by a unique e-mail address that has interacted with the company. You would use the profile data to identify people who work for an account. For example: target all the people at an account that have signed-up for a conference.