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  Method and system for automatic assignment of sales opportunities to human agentsUSPTO Application #: 20060212337Title: Method and system for automatic assignment of sales opportunities to human agents Abstract: A method (and system) of assigning a sales opportunity, includes creating an assignment model based on clustering historical sales opportunities, and providing a scoring mechanism on a plurality of sales agents for automatically optimizing an assignment of at least one sales opportunity to at least one of the plurality of sales agents. (end of abstract) Agent: Mcginn Intellectual Property Law Group, PLLC - Vienna, VA, US Inventors: Jamshid Abdollahi Vayghan, Philip Shilung Yu USPTO Applicaton #: 20060212337 - Class: 705010000 (USPTO) Related Patent Categories: Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, Or Cost/price Determination, Automated Electrical Financial Or Business Practice Or Management Arrangement, Operations Research, Market Analysis, Demand Forecasting Or Surveying The Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20060212337. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention generally relates to an enterprise or organization self-management tool, and more particularly to a method and system for automatically assigning a sales opportunity to a human agent by determining the success probability of a candidate sales agent for a sales opportunity. [0003] 2. Description of the Related Art [0004] Conventional management tools have been developed for aiding enterprise managers in assigning agents to specific activities or opportunities. Specifically, management tools have been developed for assigning a sales opportunity to one of a plurality of available sales agents. [0005] The conventional processes that are usually used to assign a sales opportunity to a sales agent are manual and ad-hoc processes that require human evaluations and follow-up, which is highly inefficient. The conventional processes are manual and ad-hoc in that the processes do not provide decision aid tools. That is, the managers are required to base all assignment decisions on their own personal knowledge. The conventional processes do not provide a systematic analysis of assignment data. [0006] Furthermore, the conventional methods do not provide a means for utilizing historical data to determine the most efficient assignment of sales opportunities to sales agents. Because the managers make all of the assignment decisions based on their own knowledge, when the manager leaves a new manager does not have access to the information relied upon for the assignment decisions. The new manager is forced to make all of the assignment decisions based only on information provided to the manager at that time. [0007] Furthermore, the most commonly used ad-hoc and inefficient assignment processes can result in assignment of sales opportunities to the wrong human agents. A wrong human agent can lose a good opportunity while a good human agent can win a mediocre sales opportunity. The conventional methods and systems do not provide a means for optimizing the assignment of the sales opportunities to sales agents so that the most important sales opportunities are assigned to the most qualified, available agents. [0008] Furthermore, the conventional methods and systems can also result in assigning a less valuable task to an over-qualified agent so that the agent cannot be assigned to handle more valuable sales opportunities later on. Identifying the requirement of a sales opportunity and then matching it with the appropriate salesman or salesman characteristic are very challenging tasks. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0009] In view of the foregoing and other exemplary problems, drawbacks, and disadvantages of the conventional methods and structures, an exemplary feature of the present invention is to provide a method and structure in which a success probability of an agent for completing a sales opportunity is automatically provided to an enterprise manager to optimize the assignment of sales opportunities to sales agents. [0010] It is another exemplary feature to provide a method and system that allows a user to carry-over or transfer previous expertise and knowledge when assigning sales opportunities to sales agents. [0011] It is another exemplary feature to provide a method and system that is self-adaptive so that if the data inputted into the method and system changes, the model created by the method and system does not need to be changed. [0012] To achieve the above and other features, in a first exemplary aspect of the present invention, a method (and system) of assigning a sales opportunity, includes creating an assignment model based on clustering historical sales opportunities, and providing a scoring mechanism on a plurality of sales agents for automatically optimizing an assignment of at least one sales opportunity to at least one of the plurality of sales agents. [0013] In a second exemplary aspect of the present invention, a computer system for assigning a sales opportunity, includes means for creating an assignment model and means for applying the assignment model to a data set for automatically optimizing the assignment of the sales opportunity to a sales agent. [0014] In a third exemplary aspect of the present invention, a computer system for assigning a sales opportunity, includes a creating unit for creating an assignment model based on clustering historical sales opportunities, and providing a scoring mechanism on a plurality of sales agents for automatically optimizing an assignment of at least one sales opportunity to at least one of the plurality of sales agents. [0015] In a fourth exemplary aspect of the present invention, a signal-bearing medium tangibly embodies a program of machine readable instructions executable by a digital processing apparatus to perform a method of assigning a sales opportunity, where the method includes creating an assignment model based on clustering historical sales opportunities, and providing a scoring mechanism on a plurality of sales agents for automatically optimizing an assignment of at least one sales opportunity to at least one of the plurality of sales agents. [0016] In a fifth exemplary aspect of the present invention, a method of deploying computing infrastructure, includes integrating computer-readable code into a computing system, wherein the computer readable code in combination with the computing system is capable of performing a method of assigning a sales opportunity, where the method of assigning a sales opportunity, includes creating an assignment model based on clustering historical sales opportunities, and providing a scoring mechanism on a plurality of sales agents for automatically optimizing an assignment of at least one sales opportunity to at least one of the plurality of sales agents. [0017] In a sixth exemplary aspect of the present invention, a method of creating an assignment model for assigning an opportunity to an agent, includes creating at least one opportunity class by clustering historical opportunity data, and training a classifier for each of the at least one opportunity class. [0018] In a seventh exemplary aspect of the present invention, a method of assigning an opportunity to an agent, includes creating an assignment model including at least one opportunity class, comparing a characteristic of the opportunity with a characteristic of each of the at least one opportunity class to match the opportunity to an opportunity class having a similar characteristic, determining a success probability of the agent using the assignment model, and assigning the agent to the opportunity. [0019] The present invention provides a method (and system) for automatic assignment of a sales opportunity to a human agent. The method of the present invention determines the success probability of a candidate sales agent for a sales opportunity. The success probability, agent availability, and importance of the sales opportunity are used to assign the sales opportunity to a sales agent. [0020] The present invention creates an assignment model by first, generating a small number of opportunity classes. Each opportunity class represents a special group of sales opportunities, sharing similar characteristics (or features). The classes are created by clustering historical sales opportunities data after they have gone through feature identification and selection. Then for each opportunity class, a classifier (or assignment model) is trained. The historical sales success/failure data for opportunities is used to predict the sales agent's success probability on that class of opportunity. [0021] The trained assignment model is used to assign new opportunities to sales agents by first, determining an appropriate opportunity class for the new sales opportunity by matching the sales opportunity with the nearest cluster class based on the features of the new opportunity. An appropriate similarity matrix is used to identify the nearest cluster for the opportunity. Next, the candidate sales agent's success probability or score is determined using the assignment model for the corresponding opportunity class. Then, the sales agent is assigned to a sales opportunity based on success probability (or score), agent availability, and importance of the opportunity. [0022] The present method addresses the shortcomings of the conventional methods by formalizing and automating the assignment of a sales opportunity to a sales agent. The present method improves the efficiency of an organization or enterprise, which can potentially increase the benefit from sales opportunities that an enterprise can gain. Continue reading... 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