Territory management can be convoluted. Especially if you’re part of a large organization, it can be hard to keep track of all the different sales territories and which sales rep should be assigned the latest inbound lead.
But what if there were a way to make it simple and automatic instead?
Geopointe’s Assignment Plans provide a solution that automates the process of assigning records to the correct owner, for example, or writing back to any object in Salesforce. Assignment Plans ensure data hygiene, save you time, and reduce the chance for human error.
How Do Assignment Plans Work?
Assignment Plans are based on predefined geographic boundaries (Assignment Areas) that you set up to suit your territory layout.
After you have your shapes set up in Geopointe, you can use those boundaries to inform your Assignment Areas. The software looks at each record to see what shape it resides in based on latitude and longitude, then assigns it (i.e. writes back to that record).
Assignment Areas link Geopointe’s shapes to Assignment Plans, which defines the relationship between the area and an object. Start by creating Assignment Areas on the map using the shapes you have set up for your territories, then set up Assignment Plan rules to define sales, service, marketing or other types of territories.
For example, Assignment Plans can be used to automatically assign a new lead that comes in to an account owner. The lead record is created and the system looks at its latitude and longitude to determine where it should be assigned, or written back to.
But it doesn’t stop there. Assignment Plans in Geopointe support multiple assignments, not just single assignments. If you have overlapping shapes, or territories, hierarchical assignments are supported.
Therefore, if an account belongs to an individual account manager, but also falls under that account manager’s VP of sales, as well as belonging to a customer support manager that is part of a different territory, they can all be assigned the record.
What Are the Benefits of Using Assignment Plans?
Assignment Plans are a fairly simple concept, but they have a big impact on productivity. Our customers who utilize Assignment Plans see significant benefits, and they become a critical part of the organization’s internal processes.
Get Leads To Your Sales Reps Faster
When you have to manually assign leads to the appropriate owner, there will inevitably be a delay. Even if you have a dedicated person who assigns inbound leads as their sole responsibility, they may only check for new leads at specific times and therefore some leads that come in later will sit there unassigned.
Assignment Plans take that piece out of the equation, so the leads are instantly assigned to the correct owner as soon as they come in, getting them into your sales reps’ hands faster. That way your reps can start chasing those leads asap.
Save A Significant Amount of Time
One of the primary benefits of Assignment Plans is the amount of time you’ll save that would have been spent manually assigning records to an owner.
You’ll save the time it would take to initially assign records to the correct owner, as well as the time it would take to reassign that record if an address gets changed and falls inside a different territory. Assignment Areas will automatically update based on the new latitude and longitude of the record if it changes.
Alternatively, Assignment Plans allow you to grandfather a record into an Assignment Area. Say you have an account manager who has been working with a company for a couple years and has built a strong relationship with them.
If that account were to change addresses and fall into a different Assignment Area, you have the option to keep the original account owner and disregard the new Assignment Area it falls under.
Reduce The Likelihood of Human Error
Additionally, Assignment Plans eliminate the possibility for human error. It’s easy to miss a zip code or select the wrong value for a field when you’re doing it manually using spreadsheets, but with Assignment Plans all of that is done for you. The system automatically makes the necessary changes, getting it right every single time.
Consider this example: your sales team gets a list of event leads from a conference they recently sponsored, and the leads need to be divided up and dispersed among your sales development reps (SDRs) for follow-up. There are thousands of leads on this list, and depending on the size of your company, you may have over 100 different SDRs that get assigned these leads.
This would take hours, maybe days, to parse through manually and ensure each lead is assigned to the correct SDR based on spreadsheets full of zip codes. It would be easy, when working with that volume of data, to miss a zip code or two, or to assign the wrong SDR a lead.
Human error and loss of precious time can quickly derail this lead assignment process, but with an automated solution like Geopointe’s Assignment Plans, everything is done in the background with little-to-no work on your part.
Who Benefits From Using Assignment Plans?
There are multiple job roles, industries and company sizes that benefit from using Assignment Plans. Whether it’s your salespeople or service workers, customer support case-workers or anyone else, the benefits of Assignment Plans are immediately clear.
In particular, field sales benefit from the time saved between a lead coming in and it getting manually assigned to them, enhancing their productivity. Service team members benefit from being able to assign cases automatically to the correct CSMs based on location. Also, account managers benefit from the assurance of accurate data available sooner than if leads had to be assigned manually.
Just one example of many industries that benefit from Assignment Plans is the food & beverage industry. Restaurants are always updating locations and making changes, which can be automated to save lots of time normally spent manually reassigning records.
Really, any organization that utilizes a large amount of territories, or needs to get very granular with their assignments, will benefit from the automation Assignment Plans bring to their processes.
Territory Management Made Easy With Assignment Plans
Assignment Plans are valuable for saving time, ensuring accurate data, and getting the right information to the right people immediately. With this ability to create territories on the map, Geopointe offers geographic insight and accuracy that you may not get with traditional territory planning tools.
While territory management is a primary application for this feature, there are many other useful applications, including:
- Identify the person or place that will be managing the record. (For example, a regional headquarters.)
- Apply regional rules or processes to a record. (For example, your fee structure or documentation needs may vary by location.)
- Use area-specific information to enhance your decision-making. (For example, you might want to know about approved local venues, local governmental regulations, local support resources, timezone, demographic data, and more.)
Discover how Assignment Plans can save you time and improve your processes and contact us today!
