Analysis: Territory Building and Design Apps

XACTLY Alignstar -

• Overview: Xactly is a large company, originally focused on building compensation plans for sales teams. Xactly has over 1000 employees, and has many software products supporting enterprise sales teams and revenue operations teams. They purchased a company called Alignstar, which brought Territory Building and Design to their suite of tools. Alignstar was one of the leaders in the space when they purchased them. We believe that about 50 employees are working on Alignstar at Xactly today, making them one of the larger companies in this group, but also being supported by the framework of the broader Xactly. 

With Alignstar, Sales Management can automate and optimize the process of balancing and realigning sales territories. They offer visualization tools to help understand and make decisions about where to draw territory lines. There is an automated Alignment report card that helps managers determine how good the territories are and identify areas for improvement and rebalancing. They support the ability to do ‘What If’ analysis, to help predict results if changes are made to efficiency and effectiveness of the sales team. 

Alignstar is focused on helping big companies solve this problem. If you have 5 sales people, this product would probably be overkill. But if you have 5 sales people across the country or world, you are probably just breaking it up by state or country, so you probably don’t use software like this. If you have 25 sales people though, you would probably get measurable benefits from software in this category. Their enterprise edition starts at 50 territories. There isn’t a specific number of reps where you would need enterprise class software in this category, because different companies have different levels of complexity to their territories. If yours is really complex, you probably know it already. Alignstar is able to connect with virtually any CRM system, and also supports spreadsheet uploads. 

• Reference Customers:  None Listed, but we believe this is one of the most widely used products in this category.

• Potential Issues: This is ‘thick client’ software meant only to run on a computer (as in this doesn’t run in the cloud like basically all modern software), and to keep it fast, you’ll want a beefy machine. Go with a desktop and just pretend like it's a part of the cost of the software. Our guess is that they haven’t moved it to the cloud because if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but there are plenty of annoyances that cloud software already fixed. So if this looks and feels like it's 2003, and Alignstar reminds you of the annoyances that were common in software back when JZ released The Black Album and George W. Bush was president, now you know why. But in all seriousness, these are small annoyances, and this is great software. 

• Demo: here and full youtube channel here. 

• Published price: not published because it is often bundled with other Xactly products

Caliper Maptitude -

• Overview: Caliper Maptitude is a mapping company that supports many business mapping applications, including territory building. Although this is not their focus and this isn’t purpose built software for territory building, because they have great mapping tools, you can use those tools to build your territories. Maptitude is a professional territory map creator that includes extensive geographic and demographic data so that you can get started creating territories as soon as you install the software. You can import your sales data from a spreadsheet into Maptitude. This is also thick client software. 

This is not a negative or a positive, but this software could also have been included in the GIS Apps and General Mapping Apps category too, but because they do advertise expertise in these specific territory building capabilities, and we are focused on the perspective of someone interested in Sales Mapping and Routing in this analysis, we felt it made more sense to include them here. 

• Reference Customers:  Octapharma, The Glass Guru. More Customers and testimonials here, but it is not clear who is giving a testimonial for this particular use case for Sales, as Maptitude is a general mapping tool and that is what people are discussing in these reviews. 

• Potential Issues: Since this software is not purpose built, it will feel like there are a lot of bells and whistles on it that are not relevant to what the user who is a Sales Leader is trying to do when they are building territories. While the software is well reviewed, it's unclear how much people like it for this particular application, which is not what it is built for. Sales Managers who don’t have any expertise in mapping or are not fairly technical may find this to be a steep learning curve to use successfully.

• Demo: General Demo here, Territory Mapping Demo here, Full youtube channel here. 

• Published price: $695 or a $395 upgrade

Terralign from Salesforce Maps -

• Overview: Salesforce purchased MapAnything, who had already purchased Terralign. As a result, now this is a part of the Salesforce Maps suite of mapping products. This is a full featured suite of purpose built territory building tools. Terralign was considered among the strongest competitors in this category in the past, although it's unclear what elements of its capability set made it into Salesforce Maps, or if they have meaningfully added to it. It doesn’t appear that you can purchase the thick client Terralign software that used to be available anymore. 

We believe that because of the long term enterprise relationships that Salesforce has with its customers, you can get them to enable this for a period of time and then you can kick the tires on it, which is nice in a space that you often can’t try before you buy. This all appears to be negotiable with Salesforce, and nothing is written in stone. 

• Reference Customers: None listed 

• Potential Issues: This is not Salesforce’s focus area, but a feature that they got as a tag along in an acquisition. It's unclear if it is a priority for the company going forward. There are complaints about the ease of use of the software. There are complaints about the price, but those may be referring to the other B2B Sales Mapping part of the Salesforce Maps Suite as outlined in that category. 

It's hard to tell if reviews are for these capabilities or the other part of the Salesforce suite. We believe through going thru this that if this were to be teased out into two products like it was pre-merger, that this product would be fairly well reviewed, but because some of the complaints are not specific to what area of Salesforce Maps they are complaining about, it means we have to take those negative reviews with a grain of salt. 

• Demo: here (but behind a signup wall)

• Published price: It is unclear for what price this is sold alone from the other Salesforce products. The best thing to do is talk to your Salesforce rep as we honestly could not figure this out, but it appears to be sold for different prices to different companies. 

We were not able to get a great read on this product relative to a lot of other products in this analysis, but if you are already a salesforce customer, you can talk to your sales rep to learn more about it, and of course, you need to be a licenced salesforce customer to use this. If anyone has better information about this, just let us know and we’d love to include what you learn from your direct experiences with this product. Or if anyone from Salesforce would like us to clarify here, feel free to let us know.   

Anaplan - 

• Overview: Anaplan helps finance and operational leaders across the organization model complex scenarios, forecast continuously leveraging their data, and make agile decisions with more confidence. One thing that they do is help build and optimize Sales Territories. There is often software and consulting involved here, so if you want outside help with this, Anaplan is a place you can get it. 

With Anaplan Territory Planning products and services you can remove the guesswork from territory design. They enable you to carve out sales territories that optimize market coverage, build territory plans that incorporate accurate signals and data. Model and deploy optimal structures across multiple dimensions (such as geography, industry, product, division or named account). Anaplan helps sales leaders easily adjust plans to accommodate changes in head count, market disruptions and shifting priorities. You can connect your territory, quota, and incentive compensation plans in one place. 

• Reference Customers: VMware (case study here),

• Potential Issues: This does not appear to be a stand alone software offering that a company can purchase and build their territories. It appears that it is wrapped within a broader product and service offering. This is both good or bad, depending on what you are looking for, but it's probably not what everyone looking at this category is looking for. 

• Demo: Demo of their Sales and Operational Planning software here. Full youtube channel here

• Published price: Not published

EasyTerritory -

• Overview: EasyTerritory is a small company focused on building an App to help you manage your sales territories. Also sometimes called MapDotNet, this product has not been reviewed much. They connect with Dynamics 365, PowerBI, SQL Azure, and Excel. Figure out where to put your next retail store or Balance your sales territory with powerful analytical tools. 

• Reference Customers:  

• 5 guys Burgers and Fries, Captain D’s Seafood Kitchen, Sarnova, Weight Watchers, Bridgestone, TA Instruments, AutoNation, Garage Experts, O’Neal Steel, Rooms to Go, AAG, Optos, Eat Right, Autonation, Akhurst, Laundry Lux 

• Potential Issues: There is not a lot of information or reviews about EasyTerritory, even though they have been in business since 2015. They have only 6 employees. Because of the lack of information, this is definitely a try before you buy situation if you can (although you should always try before you buy with any software).  

• Demo: here

• Published price: here

Maptive -

• Overview: This small company is focused on Territory Mapping and Design. They boast features to build, manage, and adjust your team’s territories like grouping markers by color, multiple variable grouping, filtering, drive time polygons, radius tools, polygon territory tools, geographic boundaries, demographic and census tools, heat mapping tools, driving radius maps, and drawing tools. They also have poster sized printing capabilities, so that you can blow up your sales territories and put them on the wall. 

• Reference Customers: No published case studies, but testimonials here

• Potential Issues: There are not a lot of reviews about this company and they are a small company, so try before you buy to make sure its the right fit. The tools seem to be pretty basic compared to some other products in the category, but the price point is also a lot lower. 

• Demo: Demo here, Full youtube channel here

• Published price: here

AlignMix -

• Overview: AlignMix is a small company focused on Territory Mapping and Design. They boast a lot of companies, large and small, using their product. Their focus appears to pay off though as their demo shows them walking through some well built out capabilities for this space. They make it easy to build, align, manage, and adjust your sales team’s territory boundaries. Their ‘Smudge’ feature allows you to play with making small adjustments around the edges and see the results. 

• Reference Customers:  (case study here),

• Potential Issues: There are not a lot of reviews about this company and they are a small company, so try before you buy to make sure its the right fit. (They do have a trial which is great and to us signals that they believe in their product). We were a little confused because Alignmix appears to be only a team of 2 people, but the product seems to have a lot of capabilities (maybe they’re just really good coders, maybe they have a bunch of outsourced engineers that aren’t leaving an internet footprint, but normally 2 guys in a garage can’t do something this robust). 

• Demo: At top of homepage here. Full youtube channel here. 

• Published price: here

(Sales Mapping Buyers Guide)