Plan Area

Description

Plan your locations and the areas related to them in this dialogue.

For example, you can determine the number and locations of additional sales representatives to create areas of equal size.

During planning, you can determine whether to add new locations or to reduce existing ones.

In addition, you can carry out a potential equalization of your planning objects and determine whether the potential of the base objects is distributed evenly to your employees,

or if any possible existing restrictions should be included, such as maximum potential.

The calculation is faster with the alternative process and results in exact solutions.

To do Plan area proceeds as follows:-

1. User can access the plan area by

             Click on menu button  → Select <plan Area> under territory planning menu.

Under plan area, there are three tabs available

• Layer & object selection
• Planning procedure
• Potential calculation

Layer and Object Selection

2. Select desired planning layer or create new layer.

If no base layer has been defined for the selected layer, the Define hierarchy window appears; you can then define a base layer.

The planning layer must be a layer allocated to the base layer, Manage. In this case, the base layer is automatically entered.

3. Select either Consider all objects or  Include selected objects option.

4. You can enter the required number of territory objects in cluster target field.

5. Location planning:-

Adding locations

If you want to add a number of new locations to the existing ones, enable the Add locations option and enter the desired number of new locations in the No. field.

If you have various options for new locations, you can specify these under Candidate list.

• Click Candidate list

• Click on the upload button.
  

• Select the candidates that should be included in the calculation.

• Click Save.

Reduce locations

If you want to reduce existing locations by a certain number, activate the Reduce locations option and enter how much the locations should be reduced by in the No. field.

The Total field shows the total number of locations calculated for the plan.

Potential planning

Use the Even distribution of potential option if you want to balance the potential of your planning objects, such as your resources, locations or employees.

6. In the base layer area, select either Include all objects or selected object.

7. If necessary, enable the Only include base objects without allocations option.

Planning Procedure

8. Select the desired distance criterion:

Distance criterion	Description
Direct distance (in km)	The calculation is linear
Route distance (in km)	The calculation is based on the detailed road network

9. Select the desired solution quality

Solution Quality	Description
Exact	Searches for the exact solution
High	Searches for the best possible solution while adhering to parameters

An exact solution is not always possible. In this case, adjust the deviation tolerance or select solution quality High

10. To prevent overlapping of areas, enable the Avoid overlap option.

When this option is enabled, the calculation can be very time-consuming. This option is only available when the solution quality Exact is chosen.

11. If all resources are to be assigned the most equal potentials possible, enable the Even distribution of potential option.

12. In the Deviation toleration field, enter in the percentage value by which the solution may deviate.

Potential Calculation

13. Click Select fields. Data field configuration window opens.

14. Select in the Data table field the table that contains the potential value.

15. If you want to enter a fixed value for the Potential field, click on the symbol.

16. Select grouping attribute.

17. Click on <calculate> button.

Address - Area Combination

To do plan area with address - area layer combination, proceed as follows:-

1. Select the required address layer in planning layer list.

2. Opens Defined hierarchy window.

3. Select the required area layer in the base layer list.

4. Click on <OK> button.

5. Set parameters in layers and object selection tab, planning procedure and potential calculation.

6. Click on <Calculate> button.

7. Opens create copy window.

8. Enter copy name and click <Save> button.

If you tick 'Overwrite planning layer' checkbox, existing planning layer type will change to the area and existing allocation details will overwrite with a new one.