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Salesforce.com: Sprin

Territory Management Decision Guide

Last updated: April 19, 2013

Copyright 20002013 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of salesforce.com, inc., as are othnames and marks. Other marks appearing herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.


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Table of Contents

Territory Management Decision Guide ................................................................................................1

Preface.......................................................................................................................................................................................1

Introduction..............................................................................................................................................................................1

The Salesforce Territory Management Feature.........................................................................................................................2Salesforce Territory Management Decision Tree......................................................................................................................5

Scenarios....................................................................................................................................................................................6

Platform-Based Solutions..........................................................................................................................................................9

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Table of Conten


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PrefaceThis document outlines the factors and tools, including the Salesforce Territory Management feature, that organizations

should consider when:

Organizing and allocating their sales responsibilities

Attempting to meet their other territory hierarchy- and territory management-related business requirements

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 managementrequirements or large-scale sales organization realignments.

Assumptions

This document assumes an understanding of basic territory management concepts, and of Salesforce administration andsecurity.

IntroductionTerritory managementis 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

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Role HierarchyTerritory Hierarchy

Is available by defaultIs available by contacting salesforce.com

Has no impact on forecasting when territory management

is enabled

Determines forecasts

Supports assigning a user to only one roleSupports assigning a user to multiple territories

Affects all other reportsAffects account and opportunity reports

Grants access to records based on ownership. Users receive

whatever access is most permissive across both hierarchies.

Grants access to records regardless of ownership. Users

receive whatever access is most permissive across both

hierarchies.

See Territory Management Overview in the online help.

The Salesforce Territory Management FeatureWhen thinking about territory management, its natural to assume that you need to use the Territory Management feature to

model your territory hierarchy and manage your territory assignments. This assumption might be true for some customers in

some situations, but all customers should consider this feature one option among the rich Salesforce feature set for meeting

their territory management requirements.

The Territory Management feature is available only with Customizable Forecasting and is not supported with Collaborative

Forecasts. If the Territory Management feature is enabled, you cannot use Collaborative Forecasts in your organization. In

addition, customers should understand that, once enabled by salesforce.com Customer Support, the Territory Management

feature is permanent and cannot be disabled. For these reasons, customers should enable, implement, and validate the feature

in a full sandbox environment before turning the feature on in production. See Enabling Territory Management in the online

help.

When architecting a territory management solution, consider the following topics to determine whether the Territory

Management feature is a proper fit with your organizations business requirements.

Forecasting

Rule source

Sales structures

Rule complexity

Performance

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

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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 anexternal 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.



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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 ComplexityThe 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 thegroupingconcept

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. SeeA Guide to Sharing Architecture.

https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/sharing_architecture.pdfhttps://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/sharing_architecture.pdf


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Salesforce Territory Management Decision TreeYou can use this decision tree to determine if you should use the Territory Management feature.

The tree features most of the major points you should consider in making your decision, but you might also encounter other

factors that make your decision-making process less organized and less straightforward. If you do find yourself unsure aboutwhich direction those factors point you in, we recommend contacting your salesforce.com account executive to discuss your

options for:

Determining the best architecture base, given the current Salesforce features

Discussing how the Territory Management feature fits with your organizations territory management needs

Figure 1: Salesforce Territory Management Decision Tree

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ScenariosThe 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

Scenario #1: Minimizing Customization

Setup

Organization A is very concerned about minimizing customization and sticking to the core Salesforce features available formanaging territories. After a thorough review, it determines that Customizable Forecasting will meet its forecasting requirements.

Accounts

Organization A has 200,000 accounts, which it frequently realigns, and it bases its account assignments strictly off ofaccount-level attributes. While Organization As territory rule structure can be modeled after Salesforce standard accountassignment rules, its named accounts have very complex requirements that cannot be accommodated by those rules. Eventhough each of its sales representatives exists in only a single territory, Organization A requires a complex visibility andforecasting model for sales data that is not required for the other data in its Salesforce organization.

Using the Salesforce Territory Management Decision Tree

In this scenario, Organization As path through the decision tree unfolds as follows.

1. Are you going to forecast in Salesforce?

Organization A wants to forecast in Salesforce and needs to evaluate the forecasting solutions to see which product bestfits its requirements. The answer is yes.

2. Does Customizable Forecasting meet your business requirements?

Organization A has decided that Customizable Forecasting is a good fit for its forecast requirements, so the answer isyes.

3. Will any representatives need to submit forecasts to multiple managers?

Organization A aligns only a single territory for each representative, so the answer is no.

4. Does sales data need to roll up differently than other data?

In terms of accounts and opportunities, Organization A has a complex sales structure, but other objects in its system donot have the same complex visibility requirements. Leveraging the Territory Management feature will allow Organization

A to manage the more complex hierarchy for the sales organizations object while still leaving a simpler role hierarchy forthe rest of the organization. The answer is yes.

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Figure 2: Organization As Path through the Salesforce Territory Management Decision Tree

Conclusion

Organization A would benefit from the Territory Management feature.

Scenario #2: Forecasting in an External System

Setup

Organization B has forecasting requirements that are too complex and specialized for Salesforce Collaborative Forecasts orCustomizable Forecasting, so it decides to forecast in an external system.



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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 Salesforceas its system of record for account data, and for the territory assignment engine and assignment rules.

Using the Salesforce Territory Management Decision Tree

In this scenario, Organization Bs path through the decision tree unfolds as follows.

1. Are you going to forecast in Salesforce?

Organization Bs forecast process is too specialized for the Salesforce forecasting tools, so the answer is no.

2. Do you have a Single Source of Truth outside of Salesforce?

Organization B does not have an external source for territory management, so the rule structure and assignment engine

will exist inside Salesforce. The answer isno.

3. Does your sales organization need matrix visibility or have sales representatives in multiple territories?

Organization B has representatives who need to forecast up to multiple managers. For this forecasting, the representativeswill need to exist in different territories within the territory hierarchy. The answer is yes.

4. Is your territorys definition based on account attributes?

While certain attributes defining territory management are based on account attributes, related objects might also drivecriteria. In some cases, triggers can roll up criteria to the account so that standard rules can be used. However, in thisexample, we will assume that this rollup is not possible. The answer is no.

5. Do you have dynamic territories with large data volumes?

Organization B frequently realigns its 400,000 accounts. This number might seem large, but Salesforce has customers who

realign over 60 million accounts. In the Salesforce Territory Management decision tree, we will consider that an organizationwith more than 200,000 accounts has large data volumes, so the answer is yesthe organization does need dynamicterritories with large data volumes.



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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 SolutionsEven 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

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Documents

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