ALLOCATE: A COMPUTER MODEL FOR SALES TERRITORY PLANNING

Recent years have witnessed a renewal of interest in the application of management science techniques to personal selling related problems. Some early applications are described in [2] [7]. Cloonan has employed simulation in examination of the salesman routing problem [3] [4]. Lodish, in CALLPLAN, has devised an interactive call planning system designed to assist sales management and/or salesmen in allocating sales call time more efficiently [6]. Armstrong has devised a system he labels SCHEDULE which estimates the value of calls on accounts [1]. Hess and Samuels have designed a computer based sales districting model which is an analogue of a legislative apportionment model [5]. The objective of this paper is to explore the nature of a call planning system entitled ALLOCATE. ALLOCATE was designed to be employed by upper sales management either as an input device for sales management decisions such as sales-territory-size, or as a vehicle for determining the effects of alternative call allocation strategies on territorial revenue over multiple time periods.