RSM: An Explainable Predictive Sales Route Selector

We present Route Selection Model (RSM), an online data-driven sales route selector to help firms decide on how to respond to new business opportunities. The system addresses sales route selection (also known as sales channel selection) to determine if the opportunity can be handled by business partners, within the firm using sales agents on the field, or aim to close remotely using digital sellers. Given a new opportunity, RSM recommends an optimal sales route with the highest win probability predicted by machine learning models and provides explanation by meaningful clauses. Compared to the traditional manual passing approach based on business rules, RSM makes faster and more objective recommendations. Our pilot evaluation study shows our recommendations are not only accurate but also interpretable, which is crucial in business decision making. The main features of RSM are: (1) automatically merges multiple sales databases and produce timely recommendations, (2) allows users to navigate through the opportunity information and evidence which supports the recommendation. In this paper we describe the methodology and demonstrate the main functions of RSM.