Points of sale, blocks and territories

This article presents the main data elements of a territory manager, and how these data interact with each other.

Point of sale

Points of sales are the features we want to create territories for. They are registered in a point layer, to which any attribute data can be joined.

Points of sales are here displayed as red points. The Territory Manager aims to visualize, analyze, and manage sales territory for each of these points.

Blocks

Blocks are geographic units and are what territories are made of. A territory is an aggregation of several blocks.

In our example map, blocks are Postal Codes in Michigan. Blocks can also be municipalities, dissemination areas, etc.

Territories and trade zones

An aggregation of blocks

Territories are what links blocks and points of sale. A territory is an aggregation of blocks, associated with a point of sale. Each territory is divided into different zones. By default, zones are concentric: this allows you to partition your territory depending on a 20min / 30min / 40min drive time for instance.

Primary trade area

Among the created zones, you can choose the one that will be the primary trade area. It is the one that will be displayed by default in the global view when the map is opened. It will also be identified as such when exporting.

Status

All territories have a status. They can either be:

• An official territory: official territories can be modified only by Territory Managers. Contributors can only view them.
• A prospective territory: prospective territories can be modified by Contributor and Territory Manager users.

The Territory Manager interface allows you to visualize the status of any territory, and modify it.

Associated Data

Territories also have attribute data, that comes from:

• Point of sales: all attribute data associated with the point of sale is joined to the territory
• Blocks: all numeric attribute data associated with the block layer is aggregated at the territory level. That is, if blocks hold housing data, then each territory will hold housing data based on the sum of the number of housing of each block that composes this territory.

We can see this attribute data in the table view. The column “Name” comes from the point of sales, whereas the columns “Households count” and “Total Industry sales” come from the block aggregation.

Exclusivity rules

For each territory, you can define the exclusivity zone, as well as its relation to the exclusivity rules of other territories. Exclusivity rules allow preventing the overlapping of zones between two different territories.

Additionnal contextual data

The Territory Manager can also allow you to visualize on the map any contextual data: competitors, points of interest, etc.