If you have only imported sales account/client data, you will notice that little icons will appear all over the map, but no geographic sales territories have appeared. This is because the account import is just that; accounts being imported. During the account import you may have also included the assigned sales territory. Including that column of data will assign the account to a sales territory but not the zip code.
In AlignMix you are able to create account-based alignments, geographic alignments, or a hybrid that is geographic and account based using account overrides. If you only plan to import accounts and geographies are not important then you are on the right track. But if you plan to see geographic sales territories from an account import then you still have a few things to do. You can either import a zip to territory file that will automatically assign all the zip codes to the correct sales territory or you can use the clean up tool and the AlignMix software will assign the zip codes for you based on the account to territory assignments.
Before moving forward its best to make sure that your original import was a success. To do this, lasso an area with one of the lasso tools. When the map query appears, you will see a summary of all the accounts, data sets, and sales territories that are found inside the lasso. If you see all the data that you have imported, then we can move forward. If you are missing data, you will need to re-import the account data to make sure all of your data is in the AlignMix file.
There are two ways to move forward, import your zip to territory file or use the clean up tool. The zip to territory import is a second import. The excel file will have two columns. One column will be a full list of zip codes and the second column will be the assigned territory for each zip code. Importing this file will tell AlignMix to look at each zip code and then assign the zip codes to sales territories. This will create the geographic portion of the sales territory alignment. There is no specific order for these imports so you can import the zip to territory file first or last.
The second way to proceed is to use the clean alignment tool. The clean alignment tool will look at every zip code that has an account inside of it. The AlignMix will assign the zip code to the same territory that the account is assigned to. If there are multiple accounts assigned to multiple sales territories in a single zip code then AlignMix will assign the zip code to the territory that has the most accounts inside that one zip code. The other accounts will remain assigned to the correct sales territories, only the zip code will be assigned to one sales territory. It is important to remember that in AlignMix zip codes can only be assigned to one sales territory/sales rep. The accounts found withing a zip code can be assigned to multiple sales territories. This is basically what an account override is. An account located inside of one territory but assigned to another sales territory. Having account overrides allows you to create a hybrid territory alignment that is geography and account based.
When the clean alignment is finished you will see a jig saw puzzle looking image on the map. Any areas that are not colored in are zip codes that are still not assigned. They are not assigned because there was no account in that zip code which prevented AlignMix from assigning that account to a sales territory. Only zip codes with accounts in the zip code will have been assigned to a sales territory using the clean up tool. From here you can either use the touch align tool or lasso tools to fill in the unassigned areas or you can use the clean up tool a second time. This time when you use the clean up tool you select the option for “closest territory” this will tell AlignMix to look at every zip code in the map and assign that zip code to the closest sales territory. This second clean up tool will color in the entire map for you. This second clean up tool is not perfect, so you will need to use the touch align tool and lasso tools to make adjustments to some of the sales territories. This is a great starting point. From here you will be able to create a sales territory index and then manually balance and optimize all of the sales territories.