Cash machines that follow the street, not last year
Mei runs the cash machine network for one of Shanghai’s largest banks. Her team looks after four hundred machines across the city.
Listen to the story:
The challenge
Every year she decides which machines to move, using last year’s withdrawals. But streets change fast: a mall opens, a market closes, and a busy machine goes quiet. Moving one costs a small fortune, so a wrong guess hurts twice.
How the flow works
With xMap Flows, Mei built Atlas. Atlas is an AI employee: a flow of 6 blocks.
On the first day of each quarter,
First day of the quarter (Schedule)
Atlas takes the bank’s four hundred machines,
Our four hundred machines (My data)
counts the shops and restaurants within three hundred metres of each,
Shops and food around each (Nearby places)
gives each machine a busy score,
A busy score (Calculated field)
picks the quietest twenty,
The quietest twenty (Sort and limit)
and adds them to the team’s network plan.
Into the network plan (Microsoft Excel 365)
What it solves
- Last year’s numbers: solved by Nearby places and Calculated field
- Streets change fast: solved by Schedule and Nearby places
- Costly wrong moves: solved by Sort and limit and Microsoft Excel 365
The result
This quarter, Atlas flagged twenty quiet machines. Six stood on streets where most of the shops had closed. Mei’s team moved those six first, and checked the other fourteen on the ground.
Mei stopped moving machines on last year’s numbers. She moves them to where people 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
- 2
Our four hundred machines
Brings in a table you uploaded or a list you saved on the My data page: your stores, customers, target accounts or sites.
- 3
Shops and food around each
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
- 5
The quietest twenty
Puts the items in order, and can keep only the first ones: the 10 best rated, the 20 nearest, the highest fit scores.
- 6
Templates to build it
Ready-made flows with the same blocks. Open one, change the city and the kind of place, and run it.
- Competitor density around each sitePeople per competitor around each of your sites, ranked.
- Branch network review: which branches the area needsA monthly review of which branches their area needs, with a note for the committee.
- Villages with no health centre nearbyVillages with no health care within 5 km, for the mobile clinic.
- Districts with no pharmacy close byBlocks with many people and few pharmacies, ranked.
- Where young adults lack mental health careBlocks with many young adults and few mental health services.
- How guests rate the hotels next to mineHow guests rate the best hotels next to yours, every week.
Industries
Learn how it works
- How to score candidate store sitesCompare sites on residents, competitors and neighbours, with an AI score and a reason.
- 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.
- 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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Build this flow on your own city
Run a live search on the home page without an account, or let Ask xMap build the flow from one sentence.