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TM Decision Guide
TM Decision Guide
TM Decision Guide
com: Spring 13
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Territory Management Decision Guide ................................................................................................1
Preface.......................................................................................................................................................................................1 Introduction..............................................................................................................................................................................1 The Salesforce Territory Management Feature.........................................................................................................................2 Salesforce Territory Management Decision Tree......................................................................................................................5 Scenarios....................................................................................................................................................................................6 Platform-Based Solutions..........................................................................................................................................................9
Table of Contents
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It contains: An overview of the Territory Management feature A decision tree for determining whether this feature fits with your organizations business needs Scenarios showing how organizations might use the decision tree to find the most appropriate territory management solution An introduction to alternative, platform-based territory management solutions
Audience
This document is intended for expert Salesforce architects working on implementations with complex territory management requirements or large-scale sales organization realignments.
Assumptions
This document assumes an understanding of basic territory management concepts, and of Salesforce administration and security.
Introduction
Territory management is the process of allocating sales responsibilities across an organization. Organizations use territory management to: Better cover their sales territories Reduce selling costs Improve customer service Measure their sales teams performance accurately
Organizations use the Salesforce Territory Management feature to: Allocate sales responsibilities based on account-level attributes Define a territory hierarchy, in addition to their existing role hierarchy
Territory Hierarchy Is available by contacting salesforce.com Determines forecasts Supports assigning a user to multiple territories Affects account and opportunity reports Grants access to records regardless of ownership. Users receive whatever access is most permissive across both hierarchies.
Role Hierarchy Is available by default Has no impact on forecasting when territory management is enabled Supports assigning a user to only one role Affects all other reports Grants access to records based on ownership. Users receive whatever access is most permissive across both hierarchies.
These topics appear with the same names and in the same order in the Salesforce Territory Management decision tree, where they align with the key decision points that organizations should go through when considering the Territory Management feature.
Forecasting
You can manage your forecasts with Salesforce Collaborative Forecasts or Salesforce Customizable Forecasting, or you can manage your forecasts outside of Salesforce altogether. Of the Salesforce forecasting engines, only Customizable Forecasting
is compatible with the Territory Management feature, and you must use and enable Customizable Forecasting to use the Territory Management feature. After enabling Customizable Forecasting, you can forecast only by using Customizable Forecasting or by going outside of Salesforce. Organizations should weigh the benefits of each forecasting option before committing to any one of them. See Enabling Customizable Forecasting in the online help. Note: You do have the option of rolling out the Territory Management feature in Salesforce while forecasting in an external system. Then, during a future release, you can move the forecasting process into Salesforce for tighter integration. If you are planning on forecasting in Salesforce, and Customizable Forecasting does not meet your business requirements, consider contacting your salesforce.com account executive to discuss your assistance options and using an alternative to the Territory Management feature.
Rule Source
Some organizations manage their territory management assignments outside of Salesforce to provide a solution shared across their organization. Using the API to assign territories from an external Single Source of Truth (SSOT) can improve performance speed and allow extremely large enterprise organizations to scale to even larger sizes more smoothly. Because these organizations do not store their assignment rules in Salesforce, they do not need to worry about the complexity of their rules when determining whether to use the Salesforce Territory Management feature. Organizations that manage an external SSOT for territory assignments can decide whether they should use the Territory Management feature based on: Sales structures Performance
Organizations that instead manage their territory assignment rules inside Salesforce can decide whether they should use the Territory Management feature based on: Sales structures Rule complexity Performance
Sales Structures
The benefits of the Territory Management feature depend upon organizations sales structures. Organizations that require a matrixed visibility model can benefit from the Territory Management feature, which allows representatives to belong to multiple territories, or they can leverage public groups to provide similar abstraction. After organizations enable the Territory Management feature, their sales representatives can submit multiple forecasts to multiple managers. Organizations that require sales data to roll up differently than other data within a Salesforce organization can benefit from the Territory Management feature because it allows them to define a separate hierarchy for controlling both access and forecast rollup for sales data.
Organizations that require the ability to scale to extremely large numbers of territories should consider alternative options, such as the teaming- and public groups-based territory management solutions.
Rule Complexity
The Territory Management feature can significantly reduce the complexity of customizations if you: Base your territory management decisions on account-level attributes Some organizations define their territories based on records related to the Account object. If these records are in a master-detail relationship with the account, you can use rollup summary fields to bring attributes to that account. Some customers can use triggers to move related data into accounts, allowing those customers to use standard account assignment rules. However, as the complexity of the relationships increases, performance might degrade, and a customized solution might be necessary. Can use the features account assignment rules Salesforce account assignment rules have limitations regarding the number of rules, and their criteria and complexity. While many customers find the rule structure capability to be sufficient, others push Salesforce beyond its limits. When this happens, a customized solution is required. Note: The Territory Management feature natively supports assignments of only account and opportunity objects. To assign additional objectssuch as leads, orders, or custom objectsyou must make significant customizations of your Salesforce organization.
Performance
Organizations that drive large data volumes with dynamic, frequently changing territories can benefit from the grouping concept of territory management. Grouping can: Increase the performance of the Salesforce sharing architecture, especially when organizations associate multiple representatives with each territory Without the grouping benefit of the Territory Management feature, each member within a territory must be moved individually, which can take significantly more time than moving the entire territory as a unit. For example, if territories have five members on average, using the Territory Management feature would mean maintaining 80 percent fewer object share records. Reduce the burden placed on an organizations administrators When organizations have groups of users sharing the same type of access, managing those users individually increases the maintenance burden. By grouping these users into territories, the territories visibility can shift and be maintained as a unit. The Territory Management feature uses groups to drive sharing of the entire territory team rather than sharing each team member to each account individually. See A Guide to Sharing Architecture.
Scenarios
Scenarios
The following scenarios show how two organizations can use this guides decision tree to meet their territory management needs. Scenario #1: Minimizing customization Scenario #2: Forecasting in an external system
Accounts
Organization A has 200,000 accounts, which it frequently realigns, and it bases its account assignments strictly off of account-level attributes. While Organization As territory rule structure can be modeled after Salesforce standard account assignment rules, its named accounts have very complex requirements that cannot be accommodated by those rules. Even though each of its sales representatives exists in only a single territory, Organization A requires a complex visibility and forecasting model for sales data that is not required for the other data in its Salesforce organization.
Scenarios
Figure 2: Organization As Path through the Salesforce Territory Management Decision Tree
Conclusion
Organization A would benefit from the Territory Management feature.
Scenarios
Accounts
Organization B has 400,000 accounts, which it frequently aligns, and it bases its account assignments on: Account-level attributes Certifications that are custom child objects of the accounts Postal codes that are not in contiguous ranges
Organization B has reps in multiple territories, and it forecasts opportunities up to multiple managers. It will use Salesforce as its system of record for account data, and for the territory assignment engine and assignment rules.
Platform-Based Solutions
Figure 3: Organization Bs Path through the Salesforce Territory Management Decision Tree
Conclusion
Organization B would also benefit from the Territory Management feature.
Platform-Based Solutions
Even if the Territory Management feature doesnt meet your current territory management requirements, you can still take advantage of the following platform-based solutions. Teaming-based territory management Public groups-based territory management Criteria-based territory management
Platform-Based Solutions
Because territories generally have no more than 1020 members, the first condition shouldnt present issues for most organizations. Note: Salesforce public groups do not have an automated assignment engine or rules structure, so organizations can assign objects manually, through a custom code and engine, or through the API from an external rules engine.
In both cases, if you use Customizable Forecasting, the forecast will roll up the role hierarchy.
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