This chapter covers the following topics:
Oracle Territory Manager assigns business objects (customers and leads, for example) to resources based on configurable business rules. It defines who owns what.
When concurrent programs are run, the territory assignment engine assigns business objects such as the following to resources:
customers
leads
opportunities
service requests
tasks
contract renewals
trade management claims and offers
Additional information on concurrent programs for sales is in the "Setting Up and Using Territory Assignment Program (TAP)" section of either the Oracle Sales Implementation Guide or the Oracle TeleSales Implementation Guide.
Territory implementations use all or a subset of the following components to build territories:
Territory Types: Required. Territory Types are the building blocks for all territories. A type is blueprint for territories, defined by a specific set of transaction types and corresponding matching attributes.
Self Service Named Accounts: Optional. Sales administrators use the seeded named account territory type to create named account territories. Sales managers then assign their named accounts to individual sales representatives. Sales managers use the alignment tool to create different territory assignment models and compare them.
Self Service Geographic Territories: Optional. Sales administrators create a self-service geographic type to create geographic territories and assign them to sales managers. Sales managers can then allocate their geographic region to their directs.
Concurrent programs enable territory definitions.
A stand-alone sales team search is available to any user.
Sales organizations use territories to automatically assign prospects to salespeople.
An example of a sales territory is: High-tech companies within a specific geographic area. This territory is defined using the following matching attributes:
Account Classification = High Tech
State = California
The resource assigned to the territory is Joe who is in Sam's sales group. When the assignment engine is run Joe is assigned to all high-tech companies that have an address in the state of California. Because Joe is in Sam's sales group, his manager and the other resources within his group can be granted access to these same companies.
Most customers fall into sales territories segmented along geographic or industry boundaries. Named accounts represent individual customers elevated from geographic territories and deemed by a sales organization as critical enough to have their own salesperson or account manager.
By their very nature, named account territories are difficult and complex to maintain and revolve around a decentralized business process.
Upper levels of sales management identify a set of named accounts and associate them to a sales division. The sales vice presidents responsible for the sales division distribute named accounts to their directs in a top down fashion through the sales hierarchy until all named accounts are owned by salespersons.
Proper territory alignment is frequently overlooked and can have a high impact on sales force productivity. Without any additional salespeople, studies have shown 2-7% increases in sales revenue due to proper territory alignments.
Sales managers start the year with compensation plans, named accounts, and quotas. They can then build and save what-if territories in an iterative manner until their alignment goals are met.
Sales managers export a territory alignment to spreadsheet, change named account assignments, and upload the changes for the alignment. Through the HTML interface they use analytic data to compare two alignments using graphs and a calculated balance index. When managers have finalized an alignment they can activate it, making it the one of record.
At the end of the alignment process, you can manually enter named account quotas into the Oracle Incentive Compensation Quota Planning module.
Geographies are centrally identified to a sales organization and distributed top down to individual salespeople. Ownership changes are reflected quickly to all levels of sales management and for incoming leads and opportunities.
At each level of the distribution process, the ownership of geographies is clearly and accurately communicated. Sales management interfaces are simplified for common administrative tasks such as the transfer of geographic territories between salespeople.
The following Oracle modules can use Oracle Territory Manager to assign business objects to resources:
Oracle Collections
Oracle Partner Manager
Oracle Field Service
Oracle Service Contracts
Oracle Trade Management
In Oracle Field Service, all high urgency service requests for internal IT support should go to the senior IT support person, John Gray. A territory is defined, with John Gray as the resource, using the following matching attributes for service requests:
Request Type = Internal: IT
Request Severity = High1
Request Status = Open
Request Urgency = Immediate
Oracle Territory Manager includes the following features:
Over 100 matching attributes through which to define territory rules
Territory Types for ease of territory creation for any usage (such as Oracle Sales or Oracle Service)
Assignment to individual resources, groups, or teams
Named account support
Self-service distribution of named accounts
Named account alignments with visual comparison of what-if territories
Export to spreadsheet for ease of territory maintenance
Self-service distribution of geographic territories
Configurable territory exception handling through Oracle Workflow
Ability to create custom matching attributes through a public API