Microfinance · Dhaka, Bangladesh · Operations

Twelve fair routes before the officers leave

Nadia manages a branch of a microfinance bank in Dhaka. Her twelve field officers visit about three hundred borrowers a week to collect repayments.

Listen to the story:

The challenge

Each officer plans their own day, and Dhaka’s roads decide the rest. One closed road can cost an officer half a day, and the borrowers at the end of the list wait at home for nobody. Missed visits turn into missed payments.

How the flow works

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

  1. Every morning at seven,

    Every morning at 7 (Schedule)

  2. Wayfinder takes the day’s visits,

    Today’s visits (My data)

  3. flags any road closure near each one,

    Closures near each visit (Traffic incidents)

  4. splits them fairly between the twelve officers,

    A fair share per officer (Split by territory)

  5. plans each officer’s best visiting order,

    Each officer’s route (Route planner)

  6. and sends the branch the day’s routes.

    The day’s routes (Email)

What it solves

The result

Now each officer leaves the branch with a fair list in the best order, and the visits near a closed road marked to call first. The branch made two hundred and ninety visits last week, up from two hundred and forty.

Nadia’s officers still face Dhaka’s roads. They just stopped facing them blind.

290visits last week, up from 240
12fair routes every morning
7 amroutes ready, every day

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 morning at 7

    Schedule

    Starts the flow on a timetable.

  2. 2

    Today’s visits

    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

    Closures near each visit

    Traffic incidents

    Road closures, roadworks and other incidents on online maps right now, with where they are.

  4. 4

    A fair share per officer

    Split by territory

    Shares the items out between your reps by area: compact territories of about the same size, so every rep gets a fair share close together.

  5. 5

    Each officer’s route

    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

    The day’s routes

    Email

    Sends one email per run with all the items, or one email per item.

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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