# Parent Companies

### Overview

The top level 'unit' in the Shipper Database is organized and labeled as the Parent Company. All locations and all shippers in the database will have a parent company that they belong to.

A parent company is essentially the larger corporation or organization that owns or oversees a location. For example, a company like Walmart has dozens of locations across the United States that they own and operate. 

<figure><img src="/files/29L1wmFIKPVgJ4ASzz4H" alt=""><figcaption><p>Each location belongs to a parent company</p></figcaption></figure>

By associating each location with a parent company, Shipper CRM makes it easy to know if you're dealing with multiple locations from the same corporate family, which can influence negotiations and help you understand the nature of operations for a particular location.

### Parent company information

There is a significant amount of information that has been researched about each parent company. This is useful for getting a sense of the size and scale of the organization affiliated with a location, as well as to understand if a particular shipper has needs that align with the capabilities of your organization.

You can expect to have access to the following information about any parent company:

1. **Company website**: The main website for the company
2. **Company Description:** A brief description of what the company does
3. **Estimated Revenue:** An estimation of the company's annual revenue.
4. **Predicted Equipment**: An overview of the type of equipment that the shipper needs
5. **Commodities**: The company's main commodity types that they ship

### Conclusion

Shippers and locations in Shipper CRM are all organized under parent companies. Parent companies are the top level organization that a location belongs to. By grouping items in the database in this way, it's easy to get an overview of the needs and scale of any given location.


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