The 2004 ISMS Practice Prize Winner-Sales Territory Design: Thirty Years of Modeling and Implementation

Authors:
Andris A. Zoltners;Prabhakant Sinha
Affiliations:
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201;ZS Associates, 1800 Sherman Avenue, Evanston, Illinois 60201
Venue:
Marketing Science
Year:
2005

Citing 1
Cited 8

Costa: Contribution Optimizing Sales Territory Alignment

Marketing Science

Editorial: Errors in the Variables, Unobserved Heterogeneity, and Other Ways of Hiding Statistical Error

Marketing Science
Optimal Sales Force Diversification and Group Incentive Payments

Marketing Science
Practice Prize Winner---Dynamic Marketing Budget Allocation Across Countries, Products, and Marketing Activities

Marketing Science
A hierarchical procedure for multi-skilled sales force spatial planning

Computers and Operations Research
GRASP strategies for a bi-objective commercial territory design problem

Journal of Heuristics
Effective Marketing Science Applications: Insights from the ISMS-MSI Practice Prize Finalist Papers and Projects

Marketing Science
Embotelladoras ARCA Uses Operations Research to Improve Territory Design Plans

Interfaces
A dual bounding scheme for a territory design problem

Computers and Operations Research

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Sales territory alignment is the assignment of accounts and their associated selling activities to salespeople and teams. Models, systems, processes, and wisdom have evolved over 1,500 project implementations for 500 companies with 500,000 sales territories. Optimization models have evolved over time to explicitly consider travel time along road networks and customer disruption. Personal computers with continually increasing speeds and storage capabilities, the Internet, and mapping databases have enabled the development of systems that communicate alignments visually to sales managers. Because of their combinatorial complexity, multiple conflicting objectives, and personnel aspects that touch everyone in the salesforce, the alignment models were unable to completely solve the sales territory alignment issues faced by companies. Consequently, processes that add local managerial knowledge were used to communicate and enhance model-derived solutions, while achieving very high implementation rates. The territory alignment team gains knowledge with every sales territory alignment. Alignment insights get codified. Alignment experts improve every model-derived solution. This wisdom becomes part of subsequent alignments and triggers further innovation. Over time, the role of processes and wisdom becomes larger than the role of the models and systems.