GeoForce 2.0 allows users to balance territories. Balancing automatically splits a territory into equally loaded areas of responsibility, one for each representative. Instead of dividing the map by eye, you choose what "equal" means for your team, and the system distributes the geographic units so that every representative gets a comparable workload.

This matters because territories that look similar on the map are rarely similar in practice: one may contain a dense city with hundreds of pharmacies, another a sparse rural area where most of the working day is spent driving. Balanced territories make workloads fair, make results comparable between representatives, and let you redraw the map quickly when someone joins or leaves the team.

What the system equalizes

You select the criteria that matter for your team and assign a weight to each of them, up to 100 in total. Available criteria include:

• region;
• territory compactness;
• turnover;
• types of institutions;
• specializations of contacts;
• categories of institutions and contacts.

Keep some weight on compactness: without it, the system may produce territories that are equal in numbers but impossible to travel through.

Requirements

Balancing starts only when all of the following are true:

• Small geographic units. Balancing works on layers with detailed divisions: districts, bricks, quarters, or polygons, including Voronoi polygons built from your own organizations.
• A continuous area. All territories taking part in balancing must touch each other and form one continuous area. Separated areas cannot be balanced together.
• Coordinates. Organizations must have their location specified on the map. Organizations without coordinates are not distributed among territories.
• Starting points. Every user taking part in balancing must have a starting point, and each polygon may contain only one. See Set Starting Points.

To balance territories

1. Specify the starting point for each employee. A starting point marks where a representative begins their working day — for example, the first hospital they visit. It can be placed anywhere on the map.
2. Select the area containing the starting points to be balanced.
3. Choose the parameters by which the territories should be equalized and distribute their weights.
4. Click Start. The system prepares the data — which polygons border each other, their area and perimeter, and how many of the selected objects each of them contains — and begins searching for the best distribution.
5. Review the balancing results: the territories appear on the map, and the composition of each one is shown in the summary table.
6. Save the territory balancing outcome, or stop the process and start again with different parameters and weights.

After saving, you can adjust the borders of any territory manually with the drawing tool.

What to expect while the search runs

The search is iterative: the system keeps improving the distribution, so the longer it runs, the better the result. It stops on its own if no better solution is found within 30 minutes. The best result found so far remains available when you reopen the balancing tab.