Intro to Geozones:
Optimizing Your Geozones:
ServiceMinder uses Geozones to assist with finding a routing solution that is close to the best route possible. The secret to developing efficient routes is to use a few Geozones to assign your customers to a cycle (usually 14 or 21 days) in geographically-similar areas. Too many zones or two few are equally bad. The secret to efficiency is to use the Geozones to cluster the stops, and then the daily routing engine to order them most efficiently for each day.
It is a best practice to use geozones to divide your routes based on geography into zones with approximately the same amount of contacts in each zone. So, if you work five days a week, and the Mosquito Squad model is to return every three weeks, then you should create fifteen zones (5 X 3) for up to ten vehicles. You should consider adding an additional set zones as your fleet grows past ten vehicles. If you work a four-day week, saving one day for additional services, weather, and new customers set up 12 (4X3). This should be repeated for every $1MM in sales, e.g., if you do two million in sales you should double the above.
The problem of routing is computationally intractable. This is a way of saying that even with modern computers, an exact and best route is impossible to discover. The more limitations on a given set, the less efficient a route it will be when the routing engine takes over.
ServiceMinder allows for not only constraining days, but also time within a day. On a Contact, you may edit the Constraints field to limit service to first, last, or a time-frame. The precautionary note here: use these only as necessary as they greatly increase drive-time. Forcing a constraint on a give stop will quickly add service hours to your day. Use them only where it makes business sense, e.g., for a restaurant before they open, or a daycare during lunch.
Again, overly constraining your work via more zones that this will place considerable constraints on your daily routing and force your service costs up. Limit special consideration as possible, not requiring except where necessary by law or type of service to have any resource (vehicle or technician) required at any stop at a specific time.
Here are two examples of routing strategies. The first has your team in each one third of your territory each of the four days you work. The second has them rotating around your territory based on the day of the week. Smaller locations generally use the second option, and then switch to the first after a few seasons. The major advantage of the first is it has you in each third of your territory daily so catching events, restaurants, and re-treatments is not a long drive.
This second example is generally the preferred model, as it's clustering allows for more efficient integration of 2-week and 3-week cycles, e.g., all-natural vs traditional. Remember, using three-week cycles as the standard a two-week "exception" will make up about 10% of the differences, while re-treatments (the other exception) will be much smaller. That is why this model is preferred--there are more "odd" cycles than re-treatments.
Practical Rebalancing Guide
As a course of business you should re-balance your geozones when you see that they are out-of-balance. This happens from growth, or with the addition of a new territory.
Editing geozones for a large organization is almost impossible unless contact clustering is turned ON. This can _only_ be toggled on/off in the MAIN maps area bottom left, and is set for that user going forward until changed by that user.
Again, it cannot be toggled in any of the other map pages. Here is a screen shot of the checkbox (labeled Clustering) in the bottom left.
Clustering may not be toggled in any of these map modules:
With Clustering ON, adding and editing geozones works fine in my tests for the map pages including geozones.
You can toggle the display pins when editing a Geozone to make it easier to edit. Click the dropdown under the word Map, and select Nearby.
To do so, it is helpful if you PRINT the current map of your zones and write in the number of current customers in each zone using a sharpie or digital editing program. Another option is to take a screen capture of the map with clustering turned on.
Then, move the lines of zones to make them even. You want roughly the same number of active customers in each zone. You might allow a few more if there is relatively little drive time in a zone, and conversely a little fewer if there is lots of driving.
Here is an example of this practice:
Depots
For a location with multiple service depots, a best practice is to create one set of zones around each depot.
(Reviewed for updates 12/24/24)