Optimization in Salesforce Maps Territory Planning

This article explains how to optimize territories in Salesforce Maps Territory Planning using the Optimize, Plan Scenarios, and Estimate Travel Time features.

How to Optimize Territories in Salesforce Maps Territory Planning

The optimization feature impacts all areas in your current focus and excludes those that are not. From any alignment, you can balance the required attribute across all territories by clicking the Optimize button from the application menu.

1. Click Optimize from the application menu to launch the optimization settings window.

Optimization Settings in Territory Planning

• Balance On: This dropdown allows you to choose any numeric attribute that you have in your data set including calculated attributes and numeric external attributes. As part of the optimization, Territory Planning attempts to distribute the selected attribute as evenly as possible among the territories in focus, while retaining geographically contiguous territory boundaries.
• Apply drive-time network: This is toggled on for any alignment that uses territory boundaries (provided there is a drive-time network for that country). This creates areas that follow road networks when the area is set to contiguous. Removed, this option does a straight-line distance calculation between the units in focus, and can result in split (for example, cross-hatched) boundaries.
• Limit areas by attribute: This setting can be used to limit areas by a value, for example, balance areas on Annual Revenue, but do not allow each area to have more than 100 accounts. This works by first optimizing the areas, then trimming them down to meet the limiting attribute. This means that you cannot optimize and limit by the same attribute without using calculated attributes. After selecting this checkbox, you can configure the limit by functionality:
  • Limit By: The field you want to limit by (it cannot be the same as balance on).
  • Maximum Value: The maximum value per area.
  • Leftover Unit Assignment: You can use this to specify what happens to the trimmed units (either put them into a specific area or the unassigned bucket).
  • Using with geographic profile: Since two optimizations are run for contiguous and non-contiguous, any trimmed units from a limit by are eligible to be assigned to a non-contiguous area in the second run.
• Optimization priorities: The Venn Diagram on the right shows the three quality measures considered during optimization:
  • Balance: Prioritizes equal distribution of the selected attribute across territories in your focus.
  • Continuity: Attempts to minimize the amount of unit and container reassignments across territories in your focus. Optimizations that prioritize continuity typically return solutions with less balanced territories.
  • Compactness: Attempts to minimize the relative distance between units and containers within territories in your focus.

Run the Optimization in Territory Planning

2. After making your selections, click Next to see the optimization summary.
3. After reviewing the summary, click Optimize to run the optimization.

Note: In order for the optimization to run successfully, the number of Units in focus must be greater than or equal to the number of Areas in focus. Additionally, any units with the same latitude and longitude values are considered a single unit during optimization.

How to Plan Scenarios in Salesforce Maps Territory Planning

Scenario Planning can be used to quickly increase or decrease the total number of territories in your focus by creating new alignments optimized on the number of units. You can create up to three new alignments each time you run this feature.

1. Click the down arrow on the Optimize button in the application menu and select Plan Scenarios.
2. The Plan Scenarios modal displays the average for each numeric attribute in your legend. You can show additional attributes by clicking the Add Attribute button.
   • Note: Plan Scenarios automatically converts the type of some fields based on the field's label:
     • "Time" converts to Duration (hours)
     • "Revenue" converts to Currency ($)
     • "Diameter" converts to Distance (mi)
     • "Square Miles" converts to Distance (sq mi)
3. To add a new scenario, click the Add Scenario button. You can add up to three new scenarios to compare.
4. Adjust the Number of Territories per scenario to recalculate the averages for each scenario.
   • Note: You can choose one of your attributes from the dropdown if you prefer to see the number of territories required to meet your attribute goal.
5. Once your scenarios are defined, click Next Step.
6. The next window or windows ask you to name the scenario-based alignment or alignments and allocate headcount.
   • Modify the default Alignment Name using the text field at the top.
   • Determine the Span of Control for the higher-level areas in your focus:
     • Equitable: Allocate territory count in an even distribution.
     • Manual: Allocate territory count manually.
7. Repeat the process for each planned scenario.
8. Click Create New Alignment.
   • Note: The new scenario-based alignment or alignments are created and optimized in the background.

How to Estimate Travel Time in Salesforce Maps Territory Planning

Estimate Travel Time assigns an average travel time value to each unit in your current focus. This value is based on the average time it takes to get to any neighboring units. Neighboring units are determined by analyzing the distribution of units in focus and comparing travel distances. Estimates include a 5-minute buffer for any unit and are stored in seconds.

1. Click the down arrow on the Optimize button in the application menu and select Estimate Travel Time.
2. Click Estimate.
3. Travel Time Estimates are calculated for each unit in focus and automatically added to the legend as Avg Travel Time.