Determine the number and home locations of new employees

Have the number and home locations of new field reps determined

You are probably familiar with the following challenge: you want to expand and need new employees to do so. What you don't know is how many new employees make sense, where they should ideally be based and what the new territories will look like.

This is exactly where the function for planning new employees can help you. Proceed as follows:

1. Start a territory optimization.
2. Go to Initial situation > Analysis and click on + New hires at the end of the table. A pop-up window appears.
3. Set Amount to Automatic to give portatour® a free hand in optimizing the employees' amount.
   
   If you want to restrict the scope, select At least ..., Up to ... or Between ... and enter the desired number.
4. Click on Save. In the initial situation, you will see a new line for the new employee(s).
5. At the top, click on Start optimization.

In the following territory optimization, portatour® plans to take on so many new employees and allocates customers that the average workload per employee is reduced to around 100%.

You are usually presented with several variants with different numbers of employees so that you can quickly compare the effects. You can switch between the variants in the selection box at the top. At Details you will see the proposed new employees marked with stars:

On the map, the proposed home regions of new employees are represented by a circle with a rotated square in the center:

If you have already defined the number of new employees in advance, set the amount using Exactly .... This speeds up the optimization process.

Amount and home locations are fixed

If you already know the address of a new employee, proceed as follows:

1. Click on + New hires.
2. Set the Home location to Specify manually.
3. Enter the home location's address and click on Geocode.
   
4. Enter the name of the new employee at Label.
5. Click on Save.

If you hire several new field reps of which you already know the home location, then repeat these steps for each new team member and then start the territory optimization by clicking on Start optimization.

One employee fixed, possibly more

A combination of the above scenarios is also possible. For example: You have already recruited a new field rep and therefore know their home location. Further new employees are possible - regardless of whether you are not yet sure whether you need any more or whether you simply still have not found them.

First, enter the known employee:

1. Click on + New hires and select the option Specify manually for Home location.
2. Enter the home location and click on Geocode.
3. Enter the employee's name and click Save.

Then, create the flexible new employees:

1. Click on + New hires.
2. Set the Amount to Automatic.
3. Click on Save.

Start a new optimization now by clicking on Start optimization.

Edit new hires

• To change the above settings for new hires, use the pencil icon.
• To edit other settings for new hires, such as working hours or overnight stays, go to Initial situation > Settings. Set Editable per user to Yes. Then use the user modifications in the initial situation.
• To manually assign selected customers to a new hire, use Manual adjustments > Customer assignments. This is only possible if the amount is Exactly ... 1 and a home location has been specified manually.

Notes:

• If the optimization result contains new hires, only the export is possible - no direct application in portatour®. Tip: As soon as new employees have really been recruited and the actual home locations are known, create them as users in portatour®. Then perform the optimization again with the actual users or use the customer import.
• The maximum amount of new employees at territory optimization is determined by the number of licenses you have. The sum of existing users and new hires may not exceed twice the number of licenses. Furthermore, the maximum number of new employees with an automatically determined home location is 50.