One of the most overlooked yet powerful features of Dynamics 365 CE is Territory Management. Territory Management is available in Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project service Automation, and Marketing. This blog is part 5 of our series on Forgotten Features in Dynamics 365.
Why is Territory Management such a powerful feature?
Territory Management in Dynamics 365 helps you to optimize your sales efforts, focus on the behaviors of a specific market, and base your business decisions on real data.
For example, say you own a women’s clothing company. You might have it divided into four separate markets; one for business attire, one for casual clothes, one for formal clothes, and another for sporting clothes. You would market differently to each. Sales Territories do not have to be driven by geography – they can be driven by other factors!
Territory Management also helps:
- Not only defines your markets, but determines which markets are important – which markets are mature, which markets are in the growing stage, and which markets are new and upcoming. This is important because your approach to a mature market will be very different than that for a new one.
- Helps you internally, as you are able to organize and plan more effectively.
- Customize the parameters for each territory (based on a particular market’s needs).
- Rethink your market subdivision. For example, you may have divided into six markets, but in rethinking, you realize that two markets have very similar behaviors and patterns – so you want to group them.
- Helps reps use their skills, expertise, and resources to focus on the most valuable leads and potential customers
- Optimize territories and increase Sales
- Sales Managers distribute the workload more evenly.
- Managers maintain a bird’s eye view of performance tracking, which can help in forecasting.
- Organizations meet targets with less workforce and use available resources more efficiently.
- Organizations increase their opportunities, save time, and increase productivity.
Getting started with Territory Management
Only certain security role or equivalent permissions are able to set up territories in Dynamics 365. Click here for directions on creating and assigning sales territories or setting up sales territories to organize business markets by geographical areas.
Important to note
- For a new organization that provisions Dynamics 365 for Sales, the territory hierarchical relationship will be available and enabled by default.
- For existing customers upgrading to the latest release, if the organization doesn’t already have a hierarchical relationship created for the Territory entity, the hierarchical relationship will be available and enabled. If the organization has a hierarchical relationship created for territory, the new out-of-the-box territory hierarchical relationship will be available but not enabled.
How can we help?
If you have questions regarding territory management or just are looking to get the most out of your CRM, turn to enCloud9 for assistance.
From platform selection to licensing to implementation and go live, we guide you every step of the way. Once you are live, enCloud9’s Dynamics 365 Management Services support your users and keep your system up-to-date and running smoothly. To learn more, contact us today.
We’d love to hear about your business and discuss how our custom Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions can work with your business and its specific needs.
Other “forgotten features” in Dynamics 365 that we’ve recently written about include:
Watch for other monthly blogs on this topic.
