Planning Optimal Assignment Rules

In general, the fewer assignment rules, the better. When you use fewer assignment rules, you achieve the following long-term gains:

Reduce maintenance. The assignment administrator (AA) has fewer rules to manage, thus reducing time spent on checking quality of assignment rules.
Scalability. When new organizations or divisions require Assignment Manager capability, there is no need to rewrite the existing rules to accommodate the new requirements.
Reduce system resources. Assignment Manager, like other processing applications, is resource intensive. By reducing the number of assignment rules, the amount of system resources required are minimized including database, Siebel Server, and the time window for territory alignments.
Enhance performance. Assignment processing and throughput is increased when there are fewer rules because the Assignment Manager engine has a limited dataset to work on.

For normalization purposes, use the following guidelines to optimize your assignment rules:

Avoid duplication of assignment rules across objects.

For example, an account rule and a professional rule might have the same position assigned (within the same ZIP Code, or other postal code). In this case, you can collapse these two assignment rules into a single rule.
For custom assignment criteria with similar values across multiple objects, build a single criteria so that you can consolidate assignment rules.
Consolidate positions across multiple assignment rules.

After assignment rules are created, determine the 10 most popular positions used in assignment rules. If one or more positions are used in more than 90% of the assignment rules, then you might want to consider alternate paths.

With a skills model, consider using the built-in Assignment Manager skills feature. Although it is typically used within a Call Center implementation, this feature can also be leveraged for a sales implementation.

Note:

Although it is recommended that you keep your assignment rules to a minimum, you must continually weigh the advantages of ease of administration with loss of performance as they apply to your particular deployment.

Examples for Optimizing Assignment Rules

Use the following examples to assist you in determining the number of assignment rules for your implementation.

Sales Example

A telecommunications sales company is planning their Assignment Manager implementation based on the following data:

There are 1,200 potential territories for the geographic and product lines served.
There are 600 sales people working these territories.

Ideally, this company would define no more than 600 assignment rules, which is the lower of the two numbers. However, if this company plans to use additional Assignment Manager features, such as dynamic candidates, scoring, skills, and so on, then the company might consider reducing its rule count even further.

Service Example

An appliance services company is planning their Assignment Manager implementation based on the following data:

There are 100 potential geographic territories for their product line and different service products.

The product line includes refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioning units, and so on. The services the company provides include: preventive maintenance, extended warranty coverage, and so on.
There are 1,600 field technicians working with customers in these territories.

Ideally, this company would define no more than 100 assignment rules, which is the lower of the two numbers. However, if this company plans to use additional Assignment Manager features, such as dynamic candidates, scoring, skills, and so on, the company might consider reducing its rule count even further.

In summary, when you create assignment rules, identify the logical territories and the people participating in these territories, and then determine how you can best optimize your Assignment Manager deployment.