We have a company that has supported us in the past. They've been absorbed into a larger company further away that is not interested in supporting us. What do we do with that account? That company technically no longer exists, but I'm just unsure if inactivating is the way to go.
Flagging the company as "deceased" is popular as well. We dislike inactivating customer accounts because they are "deceased" as we often want to make changes to them after the fact. And with a little consistency, the deceased status does all of the screening we need for things like communications. To be honest, much of my reluctance comes from not really knowing all of the ramifications of flagging an account as inactive, beyond locking edits and being automatically screened from lists. The latter is also a concern for me. You might suggest that if you are pulling lists for analysis that you should be using extractions to get counts, I think there's also a danger of lists used for reporting and analytics also hiding information from you if relevant customers are inactive. Does anyone have a solid list of what "inactive" impacts?
I'm actually thinking through this right now: we have a lot of customer records (800k?), but many are imports from almost 20 years ago, and are clearly not returning customers at this point. Probably my life would be easier if I was typically screening them out of most operations, but I don't want to turn in some long-term sales analysis that's quietly undercounting old seasons.
Gawain's thoughts are great as always. Because of Corporate Partnerships, Plans and People I'd add a relationship to the new parent company and reflect the changes in General and Research etc. If there are plans and former employee relationships that may have value to corporate partnerships, (including the "Where do I know that guy from" factor) it might be worth keeping. Check with the Business Development team and if they are a bit and laissez-faire err on the side of caution.
For people who have passed away from us (but their finances have not) we convert them into an estate account. Different because the relationship remains.