Contact and company are two of the most important object types in the Inova application. Each provides an overview of past and ongoing interactions between your company and another organization or individual person, serving as a hub of related information and linking multiple opportunities and business relationships. 

Companies let you store and maintain basic information for companies, universities, VCs, labs, and other types of institutions and organizations. A company can be linked to almost all other business objects in the system, and is often a required field on projects, assets, and agreements.

Company Overview

A company record in Inova has three main sections:

1. The overview tab, which contains basic details such as the address and company URL.

   The "Parent Company" links the company to its parent to show a two-level structure of a company and its subsidaries. Only one parent can be selected per company.

2. Tabs that contain links to all the key interactions you have with the company, such as agreements or licensing deals.

   The tabs you can see on a company overview screen are defined by your license. Likewise, the deals, agreements, and other objects displayed in those lists will only be those you have been authorized to view. If you do not see a tab, project, or agreement that you believe you should have access to, contact your Inova administrator.

3. Additional tabs will contain links to your key contacts at the company, as well as any documents and emails uploaded to the company record.

   If document roll-ups are configured in your system, documents uploaded to the company will also be rolled up to any object the company is linked to. Emails, however, do not roll-up to other objects. In the case where there is an ongoing transaction with another company and the interactions are being tracked on another object such as a project, then it is recommended to push emails, detach attachments, and upload documents to the project, not the company.

Companies can be created in several ways:

• Manually, from the New Company form
• From a modal window, while creating an associated object such as a project or asset
• While pushing an email into the application
• importing from Thomson Cortellis

Create a company manually

1. On the Companies list, click "New Company". The system will display the new contact form.
2. Populate the required fields. Required fields are highlighted with a red bar
3. Click "Save".

Create a company from a modal window

The modal window (sometimes called "quick create") lets you create a new company on the fly while creating another object.

1. Access this option by clicking the plus button. A modal window is then displayed:

1. Populate the required fields.
2. Click Save in the modal window. The screen will refresh and display your new company's name in the field.

To save the new company record, you must save the linked object as well.

Create a company via email push

The Outlook Add-in allows you to create a new company record while pushing an email from that company into the Inova system. For details about this feature, see this article. 

Create a company via Cortellis import

The same features that let you import asset records from Thomson will import and create company records in Inova. For details, see this article.