Level 3 - Ask the Stakeholders - Assigning Accounts to Territories Process Questions
Level 3 - Ask the Stakeholders
Assigning Accounts to Territories Process Questions
This forum is for asking the stakeholders of the Unicorn Candy Company questions about the Assigning Accounts to Territories Process. The Anaplan Academy team will be monitoring this forum during US Central standard business hours. Please allow up to 3 business days for a response.
The purpose of this forum is to clarify details regarding the business processes. Questions about model building will be removed from the forum.
Previously asked questions:
Q: When trying to balance the account assignments to territories to avoid over/under loading what specific method do you use for the "balancing"? Is it simply each territory has the same number of S/M/L accounts as the others?
A: What we are looking for is to see how our account sales targets are distributed across the different segments. For example, If I am looking at the country of Italy, I want to see how much of our sales targets are within the small, medium and large segmented accounts. I want to see the dollar amount by Country.
Q: Do we want a model to do an initial assignment which will maximize profit within given constraints (similar to Excel solver) or is it fully manual process? By manual process I understand a Country Sales Operations Manager going to the model, assigning accounts to teritories and if it's wrong (either by overloading a territory or by having difference between their location), the model highlights it and suggests to correct it. What's the correct approach?
A: We want to do it manually for this release, in the manner you described.
Q: When assigning account to territories. Can I assume that an account is specific only to a country (predetermined ) and the each country has a territory list... or the countries shared the same territory list (e.g. T1, - North, T2, South, T3 - East, T4 West) ?
A: Each account should be only assigned to one Territory. You'll see in our Territory Data.csv file (sprint 2 lesson) that we include the Country for each Territory.
Follow up Q: Thanks for the clarification. for the UX prototype. I am a bit confuse regarding if just submitting the an excel mop up of the dashboard or the whole workflow?
Follow up A: You'll produce a UX Prototype for each individual section.
Target Review to establish Country Sales Targets
Account Review to review and adjust Account Sales Targets
Account Assignment to assign accounts to territories
Account Exceptions to identify any errors in the account to territory assignment process
Sales Reps Account Responsibilities to designate a sales rep for each customer account
Q: can I ask what your definition of a 'territory' is?
Is it:
1. A geographical area within a specific country, for example a State or regional group of States, or
2. Some other subdivision specific to the country, for example 'all those accounts managed by Ms X, one of the Australian territory managers', or
3. A subdivision that is not unique to the country - perhaps sales channel, although that would likely be a fixed property of the account, rather than manually assigned
A: It is a geographical area within a specific country.
Q: How the new accounts are planned and what is the process to determine potential accounts in planning period or we assume the same accounts as of Previous year.
A: For this release, we want to just focus on existing accounts and not worry about any new.
Q: I do understand the process of assigning the accounts to the territories but still have few doubts.
1. On what basis the accounts will be assigned to a territory, Meaning let's say an account has a target of X and it belongs to a segment 'Medium'. Now on what condition this account will be assigned to a territory? Also here how would I know which territory has maximum support and the capacity to handle the customer?
2. How do you know the Account Segment of an account? Will it come through the data file or is there any calculation that needs to happen behind the scenes or is it a manual input(if yes, who has the access to do it?)
3. I hope the accounts to territories assignments will already be present and the Country heads will do the reassignment to the existing structure based on the Sales Target and Segment?
4. How about the newly added customers? Will it be assigned randomly or do we have a specific territory in each country where it takes the new accounts?
A: We want to make sure we run a small release and get the model in the hands of our end users. Because of this, we have put a lot of these functionality requests into our backlog for further releases. See my replies below to your questions.
1. Do not concern yourself with the territory capacity and the how behind the segmentation of an account. In this release, we will not be performing any calculations related to these factors.
2. It is in a data file that will be provided to you later.
3. There is a file that has all of our current assignments.
4. For this small release, we are not worried about newly added customers.
Follow up Q: Although the process is crystal clear what needs to be done but it gets confusing at certain places.
1. There are two files that are to be uploaded into Anaplan, one into Hub and another one into Planning Model. What is the purpose of First file that gets loaded into Hub? I think it is to make the Code for Territory-Account List within Hub. If I am right in thinking so, then how is it helping in the planning process to create codes when we are finally uploading second file for Territory-Account Assignment.
2. Finalize Assignment Process - What is this process supposed to do when all the Exceptions have been cleared? I think I am missing "Code to Use" Part. Explaining Functionally will help a lot
3. For User Story 2.4 - It says Use a Published Line Item on the Account Assignment UX. I am not able to find it? Or does it mean to Use Publish Selected Line Item on Dashboard" Option?
Follow up A: 1. There are two files that are to be uploaded into Anaplan, one into Hub and another one into Planning Model. What is the purpose of First file that gets loaded into Hub? I think it is to make the Code for Territory-Account List within Hub. If I am right in thinking so, then how is it helping in the planning process to create codes when we are finally uploading second file for Territory-Account Assignment. There is the creation of the Account>Product that is made in the data hub not the territory-account list. The territories are loaded into the Data hub because these are company wide and might be used in other models.
2. Finalize Assignment Process - What is this process supposed to do when all the Exceptions have been cleared? I think I am missing "Code to Use" Part. Explaining Functionally will help a lot It is made to finalize that list and make sure that list is up to best practice. That is all I will say on that.
3. For User Story 2.4 - It says Use a Published Line Item on the Account Assignment UX. I am not able to find it? Or does it mean to Use Publish Selected Line Item on Dashboard" Option? It is to help with comments.
Q: When we talk about balancing the sales support needed by the customer accounts with the capabilities of the territory, does it mean that the account assignments across all the territories should be done in such a way that the capability of all the territories should always be equal or slight variations( like in a real business scenario) is acceptable ? Can you just help me with a better clarification on the concept of balancing ?
A: For this release, the actions taken to balance will be done manually outside of Anaplan. We just need the ability to see the targets that each territory has.
Q: Re: Assigning Accounts to Territories Process Questions
Unicorn Candy Company seems to be specifically requesting the Assign function per the UX Checklist. Is there a specific reason they want the assign function? If they must have the assign function, do we need to capture a finalization process user story where we can then import the codes into the list items that have been assigned?
A: We are very keen on using the Assign function and we require that after all assignments are made codes are aligned.
Q: I downloaded the Hub in Sprint 1 but I couldn't find a copy of the Level 3 starter model to my Anaplan workspace.
A: There is a section called Level 3 Model Building Schema Design Part 2 - the link to download the model is in there.
Q: In Dashboard 4. Account Exceptions, the Finalize Assignments button has an explanation "After the Country Sales Operations Manager has resolved the account assignment errors, the Finalize Assignments button will run the process to finalize the mapping of accounts to territories and create an identifying code." I don't know what it exactly means. Could you help me?
A: We want to ensure that after the Account assignments have been made that each of those members has a code.
Q: A few related questions about account assignments:
1. Are there any accounts that operate in more than one country, and if so, is that account still considered one account?
2. Who decides which country the account gets assigned to if it operates in multiple countries?
3. How are the LY sales allocated as we go up the location hierarchy for an account that operates in more than one country?
A: Each account is calculated based off of the Account's primary account location, this can be found in the starter model you download. You do not need to build for accounts with multiple locations.
Q: I am a little confused with assigning accounts to territories. I am viewing customer accounts as a numbered list that includes the country they operate in. If there is only one customer account per country how could I assign an account to multiple territories? If I use USA as a filter for my system and show the list of accounts in the USA, I can allow a user to input through a drop down which territory they want to assign that account. Since their are no duplicate accounts the user would be unable to assign an account to multiple territories.
Each country has 2 to 4 territories. Would a territory include multiple countries? So Company A USA and Company A CAN should be assigned the same territory? The solution is Company A USA and Company A CAN should both have the same territory even if one of them throws a flag for having a territory in another country?
Or are you saying an account has multiple products and each product should be assigned a territory? Company A has Prod 1 and Prod 2. Prod 1 can be assigned to a product territory specialist and Prod 2 to a different territory?
A: A Country has multiple territories.
For Example in the United Kingdom, You have 3 Territories UK England - UK Wales - UK Scotland & NI
MetaCandy is an Account that is located in the London, the request that we have is that we want Assign this account to a territory. For Example, UK England.
Q: Pertaining to the territory assignment, currently we have weight based on 2 factors, could you provide some additional description of these factors:
1. Revenue (Potential/ Actual based on final target value): Is this based on the Sales reps present in each territory and their previous experience and capacity in terms of a $ value? Can we quantify the Small/Medium/Large segmentation in $ value?
2. Support Requirement(Small/Medium/Large Segmentation): Can we assume a numerical quantification to assign the level of support required as Small = 1, Medium = 2, Large =5, where we can determine that 3 small accounts require as much support that 1 Large account would? Could you provide further description of the level of support by account segment?
3. I am also assuming that the territory in your company is based on the Geographical territory within each country and that you would be providing the data file, based on discussion with questions asked by other builders, is that a fair assumption?
A: 1. I am assuming you are talking about commission for sales reps and not the Final Sales Targets for the accounts. In both cases, we do not use the segmentation for any calculations. For the Sales Reps commission, we look at their role and tenure to establish a commission and attainment rate based off of assumptions which will be given to you. While the Segment might influence the decisions on which accounts to Hold or Override, we do not calculate values based upon it.
2. This is out of scope for this release. You will be given assignments.
3. That is correct.
Q: Would there be a possibility of Account reassignment/restructuring at a later point after the initial assignment (even if it is within the same Territory and the Country Sales Ops Manager's assigned Countries)?
A: These assignments will be held for the year, there is no need to build in any functionality to account for reassignment. We just want to make sure we can finalize them and assure they will have a proper code.
Q: I don't understand the purpose of the Finalize Assignments process. It is explained that it "will run the process to finalize the mapping of accounts to territories and create an identifying code".
For accounts displayed in this DB as incorrectly assigned, does the end user correct assignment of these accounts to territories on this dashboard or on the Assign Accounts DB?
Or does the end user follow these steps:
1- check errors on Account Exceptions DB
2- modify assignments on Assign Accounts DB
3- run Finalize Assignments process, in order to create (or rectify) the right codes for previously misassigned accounts?
A: That is correct. The goal is for the end user to be able to easily identify and fix any mismatches and then run the process to make sure that there are codes.
Answers
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The following account: Chocolatemm (A122) is in the Accounts list and has revenues from prior year; however, the CYW_Scenario+Territoryto Accounts file downloaded was missing this account. While the Account details provided shows it belongs in the US, it us unclear how to assign it a Territory. Please advise. Thank you.
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Thank you Becky
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Hi Becky - not sure if you are allowed to answer or even have access to the exam info, but I just finished an attempt on the Level 3 exam. There was a question which asked about a monthly commission for a rep which is reasonable - however, its not clear which commission rate should apply. We built a quota template which is supposed to apply to all reps based on their tenure (role and # years) - in one case, a rep's commission should have been 15% per this table. But the employee file provided showed a hard coded comm for this rep at 10%. Do you have any insight on whether the comm rate in the employee file for reps should over rule the lookup table? Sorry but as you know we have no one else to direct these questions to. Thanks in advance, understand if you can't reply. Take care. Ted
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hi, thank you for attention. I want to confirm something about G4T Territory>Account#
1 Is this statement right?
The Country of an Account had been told.
The Country of a Territory had also been told.
Therefor, for the numbered list "G4T Territory>Account#", The children(the Accounts) of a Territory, must be the Accounts in the same county with the territory.
All the Territories, have all Accounts as their children.
The code of one of the child Account, should be "TerritoryCode_AccountCode", which is combined by the Territory code and Account code.
Take Japan as an example, which has 2 territories and 6 Accounts, the quantity of "G4T Territory>Account#" list of Japan is 2*6=12
2 Is this statement right?
The Location of an Account had been told.
About the Location, we only konw its country.
About Territory, we also only konw its country.
The hierarchy relationship of Territory and Location, never been told to us. There are no hierarchy relationship between the two of them.
We needn't to consider the hierarchy relationship of Territory and Location, it's nothing to do with the porcess of Assigning Accounts to Territories.3
About the assignment, I want to ask which one is rigth:
Case A, An Account is the target, we assign/give a Territory to an Account, as the Account's property.
Case B, A Territory is the target, we put many Accounts under the territory, as the children of the Territory.For example, In Japan
There are two Territories, (JA Metro, JA Other)
There are six Accounts, (Meecandy, Lacandy, Cogicandy, Candyer, Voochocolate, Achocolate)
For every Territory, it has all Accounts of its own country as its children
it indicates, if you want to assign/give a Territory to an Account, the territory should be the parent of the account. -----Case A
Say it in another way, you can give "JA Other" to Meecandy, Lacandy, Cogicandy, under the JA Other .
and, give "JA Metro" to Candyer, Voochocolate, Achocolate, under the JA Metro .
if you give JA Other to Cogicandy under JA Other , and also give JA Metro to Cogicandy under JA Metro, then it turns red
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I fundamentally do not understand what the expected process is for populating the G4T list and getting both duplicate account assignments as well as country mismatch. There seems to be no logical way to do this. Are we supposed to utilize list properties?
NVM, just seeing that the Format of G4T Display Name is 'A1 Accounts' list!
For the record, this is not best practice: avoid list properties at all costs and never import into a list without a UID/Code!
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User Story 2.4 requires the comments be seen by others. Who should see the comments? That Country Sales Manager's Regional Sales Executive? That Country Sales Manager's Sales Representatives? Other Country Sales Operation Managers?
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Can you clarify the current assignments file's format and content?
Edited by geometry dash lite 2 day ago
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