A week of walking, scored before her coffee

The challenge

Each client sends a shortlist of streets, and she walks every one at lunch and dinner, counting rival tables. A shortlist takes her a week, so she can take only three clients a month. And her memos are mostly gut feeling.

How the flow works

With xMap Flows, Ana built Vista. Vista is an AI employee: a flow of 6 blocks.

1. Each time a client adds a street to their shortlist,

   A client adds a street (New rows)

2. Vista counts the rival restaurants around it and how they are rated,

   Rival restaurants nearby (Nearby places)

3. measures how busy the roads around it are,

   How busy the roads are (Traffic Flow)

4. scores the street for that client’s kind of restaurant,

   Score each street (xMap LLM)

5. ranks the shortlist,

   Best first (Sort and limit)

6. and emails the client a memo.

   A memo to the client (Gmail)

What it solves

• A week per shortlist: solved by Nearby places and Traffic Flow
• Three clients a month: solved by New rows and Gmail
• Memos on gut feeling: solved by xMap LLM and Sort and limit

The result

When a client adds six streets in Ribeira and Bonfim, the memo arrives before Ana finishes her coffee. She still walks the top two, at dinner, to be sure. She now takes ten clients a month, and her memos have numbers.

Ana still walks the streets. Just the two worth walking.

An illustrative scenario: the figures are modelled to show what the flow produces, not a customer's results.

The flow, block by block

1. 1

   A client adds a street

   New rows

   Starts the flow when new rows appear in a Google Sheet or in a table in My data.

2. 2

   Rival restaurants nearby

   Nearby places

   Places around a point from xMap’s own places database (300M+ places, refreshed every month): pick the types of place (more than 5,000, such as Restaurant, Cafe, Pharmacy, Hospital or Gas station, or a whole group of them) and how far to look.

3. 3

   How busy the roads are

   Traffic Flow

   How the traffic is moving on the roads around each place, right now: the current speed and the free-flow speed in km/h, how jammed the roads are (a jam factor from 0, free, to 10, standstill), the congestion as a percentage, the level in words, how many roads were measured and closed, and the busiest road.

4. 4

   Score each street

   xMap LLM

   Tell the AI what to do in plain words.

5. 5

   Best first

   Sort and limit

   Puts the items in order, and can keep only the first ones: the 10 best rated, the 20 nearest, the highest fit scores.

6. 6

   A memo to the client

   Gmail

   Email service by Google

Templates to build it

Ready-made flows with the same blocks. Open one, change the city and the kind of place, and run it.

• Road speeds around the stadiums, every hourHow the roads around each stadium are moving, every hour, the most jammed first.
• Road speeds around the airport, every hourHow the roads around the airport are moving, in a short note every hour.
• Best-rated suppliers near meThe best-rated restaurant suppliers near you, scored from how buyers rate them.
• Find distributors in a new countryWholesalers and distributors in a new country, scored as partners.
• Brand sentiment, branch by branchEvery branch of a brand ranked by how customers rate it, weakest first.
• Well-rated clinics for my referral listThe best-rated clinics and urgent care in your city, kept up to date in one sheet.

Learn how it works

• Location intelligenceUsing where things are, and what is around them, to make business decisions.
• Site selectionChoosing where to open a store, branch, clinic or facility.
• How to find new businesses in a city every morningA daily list of newly listed businesses of a type, ranked, in your inbox.
• Build your first flow in ten minutesFrom a blank page to a flow that emails you a ranked list every morning.
• Compare sites side by sideTwo or three spots measured the same way, one column each, the best of every row marked and the best site and why.
• An instant site report of any spotPaused for now while xMap improves the data behind it. Reports already made still open.

More stories from Consulting

• Meeting every new business in its first weekLauren runs a one-woman bookkeeping practice in Houston. Her clients are independent shops, cafes and studios.
• Twelve AI employees, one page for the partnersBram is a partner at a large management consultancy in Amsterdam. His team runs twelve AI employees that watch markets for clients.
• The client hears about every rival gym firstWing is a consultant at a global strategy firm in Hong Kong. Her client, a European gym chain, is choosing districts for its first ten clubs.
• The supplier filed. Her clients knew by nine.Lea is an independent restructuring adviser in Berlin. She helps family manufacturers when a supplier gets into trouble.

All 137 stories →