The account import will place icons on your sales territory map representing the location of every sales account. If you use an account ID for the sales account import you will see that the software will locate any duplicates and merge the data into one icon on the map. Using a segmentation will allow you to show each type of sales account as a different icon on the map. Any data that is imported will then be exported in the Excel Exports or the Batch Exports
In AlignMix you can import Sales Accounts, Zip to territory assignments, Sales Reps, Employee roster, and zip code data. There is no specific order to importing the data into AlignMix. You can import sales accounts into your file at any time. If you used a sales account ID for the import, then you will be able to import updates to the account data in the future. The account ID will also allow you to do a search for the accounts using the Paste from Clipboard tool.
Using an Account ID/Unique ID in your sales account import is highly recommended, but not required. If you import without an account ID then AlignMix will create one for you. The numbering will start at 1 and continue down the excel list until the last row of data that has been imported. If you did have duplicates in your excel file AlignMix will not locate and merge them. In order for AlignMix to merge the duplicates you will need to have the account ID for the import.
When importing account data there are two pieces of data that are required. The Account ID and/or the account name and the location of the account (most often the zip code). Without these two columns of data you will not be able to import any account data into AlignMix. Instead of using the zip code/post code you can also use the latitude and longitude of each account. Geo coding accounts has become super cheap and you can easily upload a list of accounts with addresses into one of these services for a very low price. Then when importing with the geo location AlignMix will place the icon of each account in the exact location on the map. You can also import street address, city, and state but these columns of data will not impact the mapping of the accounts. They are mainly imported so that when you do the final export these data sets will also be included in that excel file. If you have any additional data sets like sales, call, potential, or workload; you can also import that data. Any numeric data will be imported and linked to the accounts unique ID. You can also import the assigned sales territory and sales rep during the account import.
If your accounts are segmented, you can also import that into AlignMix. Segmented accounts means that you have different types of customers. Each segment can be imported into AlignMix and will appear as a different icon on the map. You can then toggle on/off the icons from the view options.
During the import process AlignMix will default to showing the column labels from the first worksheet in the excel workbook. To select a different worksheet, click on back and then select the correct tab for import. From the main import screen, you simply need to drag and drop the column labels from the left to the corresponding section on the right. This will tell AlignMix what you are trying to import. If you are importing account-based data, then the majority of you data will fall into the accounts section. Sometimes when importing data you will notice that some errors will appear at the end of the import process. This is normal. You can click the save button and then view and fix the errors. The most common errors occur when there is a typo, blank data cells, or incorrect geographies. You can fix these errors in the error report and then import that error file back into AlignMix.
When the import is finished you will see all of your account icons scattered all over the map. If the all the accounts appear as a small blue box, that means you have imported your data without a customer segmentation. You will also notice that there are no colored in areas representing your sales territories. This is because you have only imported sales accounts and those accounts are assigned territories. The software has not yet assigned any zip codes to a territory. The next step would be to either import a zip to territory file or use the clean up tool to assign the zip codes to sales territories.