Mobile networks · Lagos, Nigeria · Operations

Every tower filled before the floods

Chidi runs diesel deliveries to the generators at nine hundred mobile towers across Lagos.

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The challenge

When the grid fails, the towers run on diesel. In the rainy season, roads flood and his tankers get stuck for a day. Towers run dry, and whole neighbourhoods lose signal. Last July, sixty towers went dark in one week.

How the flow works

With xMap Flows, Chidi built Juniper. Juniper is an AI employee: a flow of 7 blocks.

  1. Every morning at five,

    Every day at 5 am (Schedule)

  2. Juniper reads the towers running low on diesel from the company’s fuel list,

    Towers low on diesel (My data)

  3. checks the rain coming at each one,

    Rain at each tower (Weather forecast)

  4. and where heavy rain is on its way,

    Heavy rain coming? (Branch)

  5. plans a refuelling run for today,

    Refuel run for today (Route planner)

  6. sends it to the drivers in Teams,

    Send the drivers (Microsoft Teams)

  7. and keeps the rest on the normal schedule.

    Normal schedule (Google Sheets)

What it solves

The result

On a Monday in July, Juniper sees heavy rain heading for Ikorodu and Lekki on Wednesday. Twenty-six towers are filled on Monday and Tuesday, before the water rises. That week, not one tower runs dry.

Chidi can’t stop the rain. He just gets there before it.

900towers watched
26filled before the rain
0towers ran dry that week

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

    Every day at 5 am

    Schedule

    Starts the flow on a timetable.

  2. 2

    Towers low on diesel

    My data

    Brings in a table you uploaded or a list you saved on the My data page: your stores, customers, target accounts or sites.

  3. 3

    Rain at each tower

    Weather forecast

    The weather forecast (Open-Meteo, from national weather services) for up to 16 days: temperature, rain, wind and UV.

  4. 4

    Heavy rain coming?

    Branch

    Splits items in two.

  5. 5

    Refuel run for today

    Route planner

    Puts the places that reach it in the best order to visit them in a day, from a start you pick: one route, one for each rep (by a field such as owner), or shared out between a number of reps.

  6. 6

    Send the drivers

    Microsoft Teams · Teams

    Runs an action in Microsoft Teams.

  7. 7

    Normal schedule

    Google Sheets

    Create, edit, and collaborate on spreadsheets online

Templates to build it

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

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