Hierarchy files
Hierarchies are used to plan your territories. In Varicent Sales Planning, you can create hierarchies based on your specific needs, such as by customer accounts, geographies, products, or industries. Customer accounts and Geographies come as out-of-the-box hierarchies, but you still need to add your own data to them.
Once you've imported hierarchy data, you can start to set up your territories on your battle cards. You can set multiple territory group types on a battle card, and these territory group types are based on your uploaded hierarchy data. For example, if you want to organize your territories first by customer accounts and then by geographic region, you can set your first territory group type as Customer Accounts and your second as Geographies. This creates a stacked model where Customer Accounts is given precedence over Geographies. What this means is that when you run coin sort, activities are sorted first into territories under the Customer Accounts territory group type, and then any leftover activities are sorted into territories under the Geographies territory group type.
Formatting Customer Accounts hierarchy files
Before you get started creating your Customer Accounts hierarchy file, make sure you fully understand the file requirements. See Best practices for formatting your data.
Customer Accounts files only require three columns to import, Key, Name, and ParentKey; however, we recommend you include additional columns to capture the account location, such as the Country and ZipPostal columns.
Column name | Description | Data format | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
Key | NoteThis is a required column. Contains a unique ID for the hierarchy member. | Text | 12345 |
Name | NoteThis is a required column. Contains the name of the hierarchy member, for example the name of a company account. | Text | Big Company Inc. |
ParentKey | NoteThis is a required column. Contains the Key value (unique ID) of the parent hierarchy member, you can leave cells in this column blank to place a hierarchy member directly under the root. CautionWhen setting up parent/child relationships, make sure you avoid circular references, otherwise your upload will fail. For example, if hierarchy A is a child of hierarchy B, then hierarchy B is the parent of hierarchy A. If you then set up your data to list hierarchy B as the child of hierarchy A, you will have created a circular reference because a parent can't have a child that is its parent. | Text | 12345 |
City | Contains the city where the customer account is located. | Text | Toronto |
StateProvince | Contains the state or province where the customer account is located. | Text | Ontario |
Address1 | Contains the civic number and street name. | Text | 4711 Yonge St. |
Address2 | Contains the apartment, suite, or unit number, if applicable. | Text | Suite 300 |
Country | NoteThis is a recommended column. Contains the country code where the customer account is located, for example CA for Canada and US for United States. | Text | CA |
ZipPostal | NoteThis is a recommended column. Contains the zip or postal code. | Text | M2N 6K8 |
Industry | Contains the industry that the customer account operates in. | Text | Software |
Sample Customer Accounts hierarchy data
Here is an example of Customer Accounts hierarchy data. You can use this as a reference when setting up your own files.
Key | Name | ParentKey | City | StateProvince | Address1 | Address2 | Country | ZipPostal | Industry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
12345 | Big Company Inc. | Westland | Michigan | 956 Woodbridge Lane | Suite 200 | US | 48185 | Engineering | |
56789 | Big Business Ltd. | Charlo | Montana | 3539 Masonic Drive | US | 59824 | Health Sciences | ||
54321 | Little Company Corp. | 12345 | Albany | Georgia | 1213 Junkins Avenue | Unit 11 | US | 31701 | Engineering |
11223 | Tiny Company Mtg. | 12345 | Hamilton | Ontario | 207 Burlington Street East |
| CA | L8L 4H2 | Engineering |
98765 | Small Business Co. | 56789 | Cambridge | Ontario | 730 Fountain Street North | Building 2 | CA | N3H 4R7 | Health Sciences |
Tip
During file upload, any hierarchy member with a blank field in the ParentKey column is placed directly under the root. For example, Big Company Inc. and Big Business Ltd. will be directly under the Customer Accounts root hierarchy. That's why we left the ParentKey field blank in these rows.
Importing hierarchy files to the Customer Accounts hierarchy
The Customer Accounts hierarchy is included as an out-of-the-box hierarchy in Varicent Sales Planning. It contains all the customer accounts that your organization sells to.
Before you import your hierarchy data, make sure that you've completed the following tasks:
Download the Customer Accounts hierarchy file template
Follow the steps to format your data
On the Planning cycles home page, click the planning cycle to open.
Click the Command center icon
.Click the hierarchy that you want to add data to.
Click the Upload hierarchy icon
.Click Choose a file.
Navigate to your pre-formatted CSV file, select it, and then click Open.
A progress bar displays as your file loads. Your file will show as Pending for a minute or so and then change to Completed.
Click Complete.
Adding and importing data to custom hierarchies
You can add any custom hierarchies required for your organization. For example, you may want to plan your territories based on product and industry. In this case, you can add a Products hierarchy that contains data about the products your organization sells and an Industry hierarchy that contains data about the industries your organization sells to.
Before you import your hierarchy data, make sure that you've completed the following tasks:
Download the custom hierarchy file template
Follow the steps to format your data
On the Planning cycles home page, click the planning cycle to open.
Click the Command center icon
.Click the Add hierarchy icon
.Enter a name for the hierarchy.
Review the file structure and then click Next.
Click Choose a file.
Navigate to your pre-formatted CSV file, select it, and then click Open.
A progress bar displays as your file loads. Your file will show as Pending for a minute or so and then change to Completed.
Click Complete.
Importing hierarchy data from a new Symon.AI configuration
You can import activity data directly from Symon.AI. Once you set up your Symon.AI source and export node, we'll save the configuration for you in the Configuration for planning section of the Integrations page. You can run your configuration again to re-import any new data you may have added in Symon.AI.
Before you import your activity data from Symon.AI, make sure that you've completed the following tasks:
Set up your Symon.AI integration with Varicent Sales Planning, see Integrating Symon.AI with Varicent Sales Planning
Make sure to correctly format your activity data in Symon.AI, see Formatting activity files
Note
For information about how to create pipes in Symon.AI, see the Symon.AI documentation.
On the Planning cycles home page, click the planning cycle to open.
Click the Command center icon.
Under the Admin section, click Integrations.
Select the Configure for planning tab.
Click Create configuration.
Choose a Symon.AI source and export node to pull your data from.
Select the file type from the drop-down list.
Click Next.
On the Match fields dialog, click Automatch to match the required column headings to the headings in your file.
Manually select the corresponding column header name for any column that was not automatically matched.
Click the drop-down icon next to a column that hasn't been matched.
A list of required columns displays. Note that any custom hierarchies or fields you added are available to be selected in the list. If you included data for these custom hierarchies or fields in your file, you must match them to the appropriate column. Columns names that have already been matched are grayed out.
Select the column name that corresponds with the data column in your file.
For example, your file may have a column called Customer Account ID, but this data is identified as Customer Accounts in Varicent Sales Planning. In this case, you would match the Customer Accounts required column to the Customer Account ID column in your file.
Repeat steps a and b until all columns are matched.
Click Next.
Review your import settings and click Create configuration.
once the configuration has been successfully created, the import will start automatically.
Standard Geographies hierarchy data
To allow you to plan at a global level, we have included standard Geographies hierarchy data in our product. Rather than creating and importing a file that contains information about the countries your organization sells to, simply select your required countries from a list. Once you've selected your countries, we'll automatically add hierarchy data for them. As part of this process, you can select the geographic level that you want to plan at for each of your selected countries. The geographic level refers to region boundaries, such as zip codes, postal codes, provinces, states, or whole countries. For example, you may plan your territories at the zip code level in the US, at the province level in Canada, and at the country level in France. We add hierarchy members based on your selected geographic region, so if you add hierarchy data for the US and select zip codes as your geographic level, we'll add hierarchy members for each US zip code. If you selected states as the geographic level instead, we would add hierarchy members for each state.
Whichever geographic level you choose, it should match the type of data you plan to use in your activity files. For example, if you track sales activities by US zip code, you would choose zip codes as the geographic level for your US hierarchy data, rather than just states or country.
Not all geographic levels are available for all countries. The geographic levels available depend on the region boundaries used by each country and on the level of support available in Varicent Sales Planning.
Note
If you require a more granular geographic level for a country your organization sells to, speak to your Varicent Sales Planning Services consultant.
Choosing a geographic level
Varicent Sales Planning provides standard geographies hierarchy data for supported countries. When you select countries to add data for, you must also select a corresponding geographic level to use for each country. The geographic level refers to region boundaries, such as zip codes, postal codes, provinces, states, or whole countries. The levels available change based on the country you select and how those countries break up their regions. For example, the US has states and Canada has provinces. Your hierarchy data is based on your geographic level selection. If you select country, we add one hierarchy member for the country, if you select states, we add a hierarchy member for each state within that country. It also impacts how we break up geographic regions on the map.
Note
You can select a different geographic level for each country.
When choosing which geographic level to use, consider how you plan to break up your territories. Your hierarchy members are based on your geographic level, meaning that when you create territories, you will be including or excluding zip or postal codes, states or provinces, or whole countries in your territory rules. For example, if you add hierarchy data for the USA, depending on your geographic level, your rules may look like this:
Zip code: Geographies = "10001", "10002", "10003"
This territory includes a selection of New York City zip codes.
Counties: Geographies = "Bronx County"
This territory includes the entire Bronx county.
State: Geographies = "New York"
This territory includes the entire New York state.
Country: Geographies = "USA"
This territory includes the entire country of the USA.
You must also consider how you plan to track sales data in your activity files. If you plan territories at the zip code level, your activity data should match this. These choices will then determine your geographic level, for example, choose:
Zip code - if you track sales activities at the zip code level and plan to break up your territories to match this.
Counties - if you track sales and activities at the county level and plan to break up your territories to match this.
State - if you track sales activities at the state level and plan to break up your territories to match this.
Country - if you track sales activities at the country level and plan to break up your territories to match this. This is the default selection. We only support some countries at the country level.
Note
These examples are based on the geographic levels available for the USA. Other countries will have different options available, but the idea is the same.
The map view changes based on your selection. For each country you added, you will be able to see individual geographic regions on the map. The level of granularity that you see depends on the geographic level you selected for that country.
Adding standard Geographies hierarchy data
The Geographies hierarchy is included as an out-of-the-box hierarchy in Varicent Sales Planning. It contains all the geographic regions your organization sells to. Add standard Geographies hierarchy data for each country your organization sells to or plans to sell to. You will reference this hierarchy data when you create your territories and define your territory rules.
On the Planning cycles home page, click the planning cycle to open.
Click the Command center icon
.Click the Geographies hierarchy.
On the Standard geographies panel, click the Add hierarchy icon
.Select the countries you want to add hierarchy data for.
Tip
Use the search bar to filter the list of countries. Select the check box next to a country to select it. You can select as many as needed.
In the table, under the Geographic level column, use the drop-down to select a geographic level for each country you added. The default is Country.
Note
The geographic level refers to region boundaries, such as zip codes, postal codes, provinces, states, or whole countries. Notice how the Number of geographic regions field changes based on your selection.
Your hierarchy data is based on this selection. If you select country, we add one hierarchy member for the country, if you select states, we add a hierarchy member for each state within that country. It also impacts how we break up geographic regions on the map. When making your selection, think about how you plan to break up your territories, what level of granularity do you need? Also think about how you track sales activity data. Do you track sales at the zip or postal code level? Your geographic level should align with that.
For more information about choosing a geographic level, see Choosing a geographic level.
Click Add.