Lets imagine that we have a customer segmentation based on Potential and Adoption for a hypertension drug. The segments of a specific customer may change in time because:
This means that at different points in time the same customer has different segments for the same segmentation. The system must remember these different segments and not just the latest one because the customer engagement planning decisions are taken based on the customer’s segments. Therefore when we look at a past plan we need to see the segment that the customer had at that point in time and not their current segment.
This is why we need to have multiple versions of the same segmentation. It is the same segmentation because we still talk about the Potential-Adoption segmentation for the hypertension drug.
Once a segmentation version is used in a Plan that has been finalised that segmentation’s version is locked, meaning we cannot change its rules or even refresh the data to the latest Customer Profiles. This is because this segmentation version needs to remember the values linked to the Plan.
If you want to change anything in a locked segmentation you need to create a new version of that segmentation instead of creating a new segmentation.
All versions of the same segmentation will have in common the: segmentation name and type (individuals/accounts). Everything else can be changed from version to version (except for the segments defined on Version 1, which can be renamed, reassigned, but they cannot be deleted).
A new version of a segmentation can be created only if the segmentation is locked, which means that the segmentation is either used in a finalised product plan or a submitted master plan (or both).
To create a new version, we need to access the segmentation for which we need to create a new version and to click the plus button near the Version dropdown.
Create segmentation version
The new version will be displayed in the Version field. The Created at will contain the date when the current version has been created. The Last data refresh represents the date of the last refresh or regenerate performed on the segmentation’s matrix and on the current version (which, at the moment of creation of the new version, the date is not available). Once we perform a refresh/regenerate on the matrix data, this Last data refresh will be populated with the new date.
This new version is an exact replica of the previous one. Once the new version has been created, it can be edited. The user is able to do everything in the new segmentation version, except deleting old segments. Old segments can only be deleted in the version 1 of a segmentation which is not locked. On the other hand, the new segments (added in the new version) can be deleted.
We can only delete a segmentation version which is not locked. After deleting it, the old versions are still available and they are still locked. To create a new version, repeat the steps above (from Creating a new segmentation version chapter).