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. Available criteria include:

• 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.
• Brick data. Required only if you plan to refine the result by your own brick codes. Every brick must have its organizations linked to it — see Brick Data in Datasets.

Step 1. Select the area

1. Click the Balancing icon in the left pane.
2. In the first list, select the region, for example Florida.
3. In the second list, select the cluster, for example Miami.

The selected cluster is outlined on the map with a thick blue line. Everything inside the outline takes part in the balancing.

Step 2. Set the starting points

A starting point marks where a representative begins the working day — for example, the first hospital they visit. Place one for every representative who takes part in the balancing.

Open the Summary table, click the geo point icon next to the representative, place the marker inside the cluster, and save the change. See Set Starting Points for details.

Step 3. Set the balancing criteria

Choose the criteria the territories should be equalized by, and set the weight of each one with its slider:

• Compactness — how tightly the territory is shaped. The higher the weight, the more the system avoids stretched or scattered territories.
• Turnover — the total turnover of the territory.
• HCO type, HCO category, HCP category, Expertise — open the section and select the values you need. A separate slider appears for each selected value.

Step 4. Run the balancing

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.

When the search finishes, the new distribution appears on the map, and each representative's territory is shown in their own color. Review the result in the Summary table: the number of organizations, specialists, and the turnover of each territory should now be close to each other.

Step 5. Refine the result with brick data

This step corrects the finished balancing result according to your own brick codes from Datasets. Organizations that belong to the same brick are moved to the same representative, and the territory borders are recalculated to match. The original solution is kept, so you can compare the two and choose which one to apply.

1. Click Add grouping.
2. A second row appears with a Group by list. Open it and select the brick type, for example Proxima.

The panel now shows which result is currently displayed, for example Showing balancing result #7. This is the best result found before the next balancing.

3. Click the Update icon to recalculate the distribution and redraw the map.

Use the radio buttons on the left of each row to switch between the original balancing result and the refined one, and compare them on the map.

To discard the refinement and keep the original solution, click the minus icon — Remove grouping.

Step 6. Save or discard the result

Two buttons next to Start decide what happens to the calculated distribution:

• Save (the check mark) — applies the result to the map. The new territories replace the previous ones and become the current areas of responsibility.
• Clear (the cross) — discards the result. The territories return to the distribution they had before the balancing.

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