New money agents where people already gather

The challenge

She picks new agent spots from a paper map and the sales team’s hunches. Some new agents open beside three others and starve. Meanwhile busy markets and bus parks have none, and people walk twenty minutes to send money home.

How the flow works

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

1. On the first Monday of each month,

   First Monday of the month (Schedule)

2. across Kigali,

   Greater Kigali (Area of interest)

3. Periscope finds the markets and bus stations,

   Markets and bus parks (Nearby places)

4. finds the company’s nearest agent to each,

   Our nearest agent (Find nearest)

5. keeps the ones with no agent within a kilometre,

   No agent within 1 km (Filter)

6. and draws the gaps on a map for the sales team.

   Gaps on a map (Show on a map)

What it solves

• Hunches, not data: solved by Nearby places and Show on a map
• Agents too close: solved by Find nearest
• Twenty-minute walks: solved by Filter and Show on a map

The result

This month, Periscope found fourteen markets and bus parks with no agent within a kilometre, including busy stops near Nyabugogo. Grace signed eight new agents there in a fortnight, and the first ones already take hundreds of payments a day.

Grace stopped guessing where people need money. Now she goes where they already are.

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

   First Monday of the month

   Schedule

   Starts the flow on a timetable.

2. 2

   Greater Kigali

   Area of interest

   Sets where the flow looks: countries, cities or specific places, or areas you draw on a map.

3. 3

   Markets and bus parks

   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.

4. 4

   Our nearest agent

   Find nearest

   For each place, finds the nearest of your own points from a CSV you upload, for example the nearest ambulance to each accident or the nearest branch to each new lead, and adds its name and the distance.

5. 5

   No agent within 1 km

   Filter

   Keeps only the items that match a rule.

6. 6

   Gaps on a map

   Show on a map

   Shows the results as points on a map, with the area of interest.

Templates to build it

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

• Malls with no store of mine nearbyMalls far from any of your stores, the busiest first, every month.
• New shops likely to want card paymentsNew shops likely to be cash only, given to the nearest sales agent every weekday.
• Where my rival is and I am notEvery rival branch with none of yours within 2 km, with who lives around it.
• New garages and tyre shops on my van routesNew garages and tyre shops sorted by what they do, scored and sent to the right van route.
• New outlets, graded and routed to each repNew outlets graded, researched and routed to the nearest rep, with what to pitch at each.
• Restaurants worth reviewing this monthYoung, well-loved restaurants worth reviewing, every month.

Industries

Learn how it works

• Location intelligenceUsing where things are, and what is around them, to make business decisions.
• POI data (points of interest)Records of places such as shops, clinics and offices, with their category, position and details.
• Catchment areaThe area a store or service draws its customers from.
• The xMap Flows browser extension: what is around this businessOn a company’s website or a place on a map, one click shows its market and the AI employees to hire for it.
• Build your first flow in ten minutesFrom a blank page to a flow that emails you a ranked list every morning.
• What xMap remembers about your companyYour city, industry and what you sell, filled in for you and always yours to change.

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