I’m trying to use KNIME to build an allocation model. Basically I have 500 new accounts that need to be assigned across 10 sales reps (who collectively already oversee 750 accounts today).
I would like to do the assignment according to some kind of ‘weighted assignment’ I.e., if Rep 1 currently has 50 accounts, rep 2 has 70 accounts, rep 3 has 90 accounts, then assign accounts such that Rep 1 gets more than Rep 2 who gets more than Rep 3. That way reps end up with comparable number of accounts after each new influx of accounts.
I have a file with the list of the 10 agents and the number of accounts they currently have. And I have a list of the 500 new accounts. How would I go about setting up a KNIME flow that assigns the accounts to the reps in a way that is negatively proportional to the number of accounts those reps currently have? The reps are given new accounts weekly and so I want to set something up that automates the allocation of accounts in a balanced way indefinitely.
It would be helpful if you would explain the format of the two tables, i.e. are the reps in columns and accounts in rows in the existing account table? Is there other information than reps and accounts?
@dustysheehan
just some ideas
if you first calclate the total accounts and divide it by the reps you have then you know how many to allocate to each rep. Then you caclulate the difference to that target amount for each sales rep to his/her current accounts. Then you add the difference. You might need to use modulo and/or round function if the accounts do not distribute evenly
br
@rfeigel In terms of current data structures - currently I have one table with the rep names in one column and then the current number of accounts they have in another column; I then have another file with the accounts to be assigned - each row is an account and the columns are various info fields I have for that account
@Daniel_Weikert Thanks. I understand conceptually how to create the weighting that I want to allocate the accounts in proportion to. However, I’m not quite sure the nodes I would then go on to actually assign the accounts using. If I know that I want to give Rep A 15%, Rep B 13%, Rep C 11%, etc. - what nodes would I use to actually go ahead and do the assigning?
Is this what you are picturing? It will assign a list of accounts by your percentage table, but keep in mind that all of those accounts are treated equally in this workflow. In a real world scenario “accounts” are very rarely equal when it comes to workload on employees.
