How Sales Territories Support Assignment and Forecasting

Here's how sales territories support automatic assignment and sales forecasting.

Sales Territory Assignment

Sales territory assignment matches the values that you enter in the territory dimensions to the records you're assigning. The application:

1. Evaluates all territories regardless of their position in the sales territory hierarchy to see if there's a match.

2. Discards the ancestors of any of the matching territories.

Here's an example to illustrate how sales territories work in assignment and forecasting. Consider a simple territory hierarchy for a company that sells laptops and servers in the US:

• The company divides the US states and assigns them to two territories: East and West.

• The East and West territories are divided into two territories, one territory sells laptops and the other sells servers.

• The company requires only two territory dimensions to define territories: address and product.

Here's what the sales territory structure looks like:

Here are the values that you enter in the address and product dimensions for the example:

• A value of Any means that all values, even a missing value, match.

• The top territory in this hierarchy has a value of Any across all the dimensions making it the overall catchall territory.

  The application assigns all records not matching any of the coverage values of other territories to the overall catchall territory.

• The West and East territories have a value of Any for the Product dimension. They are the catchall territories for any opportunities in those regions for products other than laptops and servers.

Territory Name	Address	Product
US Product Sales	Any	Any
West	States in the western US	Any
East	States in the eastern US	Any
West Laptops	States in the western US	Laptops
West Servers	States in the western US	Servers
East Laptops	States in the eastern US	Laptops
East Servers	States in the eastern US	Servers

To assign accounts, assignment uses the address of the account only (there's no product information available in accounts). Here's how the application assigns an account with an address in New York:

1. Finds the following matching territories: East Laptops, East Servers, East, US Product Sales.

   East Laptops, East Servers, and East territories include New York explicitly in the list of states. US Product Sales has the value of Any in the address dimension.

2. Discards East and US Product Sales because these are parents and grandparents of the East Laptops and East Servers.

The application assigns the account to the East Laptops and East Servers territories.

For assigning opportunities, the application assigns each opportunity line separately. The assignment process uses the address of the account (each opportunity must be associated with an account). For example, here's how the application assigns an opportunity for servers and laptops in a New York account.

Here's how the application assigns the servers opportunity line:

1. Finds these matching territories: East Servers, East, and US Product Sales

   East Servers includes the correct product and state. East includes the state and Any as the value for the product. US Product Sales matches because it has Any for both dimensions.

2. Discards East and US Product Sales because these are parents and grandparents of East Servers.

The application assigns the opportunity line to the East Servers territory. The application uses the same process to assign the laptop opportunity line to the East Laptops territory.

For the matching territories, assignment gives each territory owner edit access to the opportunity as a whole, and both territories are listed on the opportunity Team tab. Only the matching opportunity line is included in forecasts for that territory, however.

Here's a diagram that illustrates the different effects of territory assignment on opportunity access and forecasting. The diagram shows an opportunity for laptops and servers. Here's what happens when agent A owns the laptops territory and agent B owns the servers territory:

• Both agents gain edit access to the opportunity as a whole.

• Agent A can only forecast laptops.

• Agent B can only forecast servers.

• Agent A's and Agent B's managers (who are also the owners of the parent territories) gain access to the opportunity as a whole, but they get to view and adjust only the forecasts submitted by their subordinates.

• The colleagues of agents A and B don't have any visibility into the opportunity unless they have edit access to the account.

The Importance of Catchall Territories

Some of the values required for assignment may be missing from the records you're assigning and you may have gaps in your territory coverage. For these reasons, you must set up one or more catchall territories with Any as the value for each of your territory dimensions. The value of Any means that any value, even a missing value, is a match. The owner of the catchall territory, or another user you assign as a territory member, must monitor the catchall territory for records that didn't get assigned properly. You can adjust your territory structure over time to minimize the number of records assigned to the catchall territories.

Using the sample territory setup, an opportunity for service (a product not specified in any territory) in a Japanese account (a country not specified in any territory) is assigned to the overall catchall territory. An opportunity for service in California, gets assigned to the West territory because the West territory includes the rule: Country=US, State=CA.

How Sales Territories Work for Forecasting

You can enable two types of forecasts: Prime and Overlay. Forecasts designated as Prime forecast sales revenue. Overlay forecasts are designed to permit any overlay organization, such as sales support, to create a separate forecast. The overlay forecast isn't included as part of the sales revenue forecast. How forecasting works depends on the hierarchy of the sales territories you set up and the value you enter in the Enable Forecasting field for each territory. The Enable Forecasting field can have these values:

Enable Forecasting Field Value	Explanation
Prime only	The territory owner can forecast and adjust the sales revenue forecasts.
Overlay only	The territory owner can forecast and adjust forecasts that are not counted in the sales revenue forecast.
Prime and Overlay	The territory owner can adjust both types of forecasts.
Disabled	The territory owner is excluded from creating or reviewing forecasts.

The sales territory hierarchy that you set up determines how forecasts are passed up for adjustment and approval. In the example, the East Laptops and East Servers forecasts are automatically submitted to the owner of the East territory for adjustment. Then the forecasts are passed on to the US Product Sales territory owner. The western forecasts mirror that process.