How to best use departments for multiple companies?

[JStockel]

Not sure if the right forum, but I'll shoot my shot.

Hi guys,
I'm wondering, how others has done, when they're working with multiple entities of one company. Like retail, hotel, restaurant chains, and so on.
How do you proceed, when there's the same kind of "department" within multiple different companies?

Let's say, we got Company A, B and C. 
They're all basically the same, just at different locations.
Company A, B & C got the same 5 departments. Department 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5.

How to set this up in ServiceNow? Since we can only OOTB from the Department table reference to one Company. Company related links got a list of its Departments. Any suggestions? Best practices? 
We've had an old setup, where we've simply setup all the entities under Department table. But that leaves us without departments. More and more requirements and needs, has surfaced to be able to pinpoint departments as well, such as "we want to see only people in Department 3 in Company B". Therefore, we need to try re-organize our structure.

[Mark Manders · Accepted solution]

If there are 4000 departments, you would likely have 4000 departments. I don't really see the issue. If you have 400 companies and each company has 10 departments, you just have that much data. There is nothing you can do about that. 
Can you tell me what kind of a solution you are looking for? Users are related to companies and to departments. If you would have 1 HR department that you use for 400 companies, you would have all HR employees on 1 department. That doesn't make sense, because they aren't in the same department. You are servicing 400 HR departments.

[JStockel]

Hmm, yeah, it's the same "department", type, name and all, but it's associated to different locations simply.
So, reception, kitchen, vegetables and fruits or whatever is one department. And this department exists at 400 different locations.
Just feels a bit overwhelming to have 4000 departments, when it's just like "15 different types" in reality. But maybe it's the only logical way to go anyhow. Thanks!

[DineshS · Accepted solution]

It will also help with granular reporting, say you have to report the number of incidents raised by colleagues in Company1, HR department at Location 1 vs Location 2. If you dilute that structure with reduced number of departments, the reporting will have an impact. Also futureproofs the situation where someone decides to call HR department as People in one location 🙂

[Mark Manders]

I would certainly put a type on it. It can help in using automation to create departments for future companies (one of each type). 

I do understand the overwhelming number, but if it is important to have the departments for reporting/user related logic, you simply need to have them in the system.