The next contractor yard, chosen in a morning
Jacob leads expansion at one of Canada’s biggest building supplies companies, in Toronto. He decides where the next contractor yard opens.
Listen to the story:
The challenge
Every lot on his shortlist gets a consultant’s study. It takes six weeks and costs more than a truck. By the time it lands, the best lot is often sold. And twice, a new yard opened far from the contractors it was meant for.
How the flow works
With xMap Flows, Jacob built Atlas. Atlas is an AI employee: a flow of 7 blocks.
On the first Monday of each month,
First Monday of the month (Schedule)
Atlas takes the lots on the shortlist,
Lots on the shortlist (My data)
draws what each one reaches in fifteen minutes by car,
15 minutes by car (Travel area)
finds the builders, roofers and electricians inside,
Contractors inside it (Map business scan)
counts the people living there,
Who lives there (Demographics)
ranks the lots,
Rank the lots (xMap LLM)
and sends the board a short report.
The board’s report (Make a report)
What it solves
- Six weeks a study: solved by Map business scan and Demographics and Make a report
- Best lots sold first: solved by Schedule and xMap LLM
- Yards far from trade: solved by Travel area and Map business scan
The result
On Monday, Atlas compares nine lots before lunch. The winner, in Vaughan, has eleven hundred contractors within fifteen minutes and a quarter of a million people. Jacob’s offer goes in that afternoon.
Jacob used to wait six weeks for an answer. Now the answer waits for him.
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
Lots on the shortlist
Brings in a table you uploaded or a list you saved on the My data page: your stores, customers, target accounts or sites.
- 3
15 minutes by car
The area you can reach within a travel time (15 minutes by car) or a distance by road (10 km), on foot, by bike or by car, from each incoming place or from places you pick.
- 4
Contractors inside it
Finds businesses on online maps live: name, category, rating, address, phone, website and whether it is open.
- 5
Who lives there
Who lives in an area: the number of residents, men and women, and nine age groups, from xMap’s population grid (hexagons of about 0.1 km², about 100 countries).
- 6
- 7
The board’s report
Turns the items that reach it into a clean PDF report with your logo and colour: the summary an xMap LLM block wrote for the whole list, the figures, charts of kinds and cities, a map and the list.
Templates to build it
Ready-made flows with the same blocks. Open one, change the city and the kind of place, and run it.
- Impact report for donors: people around each siteThe reach section of the donor report, from the people around each site.
- Rival bank branches that closed or movedRival branches that closed, with the people left nearby.
- More reviews for my clients: a request message for eachA ready message for each client to ask happy customers for reviews, every morning.
- Stores customers rate lowest, every weekWhich of your stores customers rate lowest, every week.
- Clients that closed or changed, for my insolvency teamClient businesses that closed, moved or changed, with what to do.
- Alarm monitoring clients that closed or movedMonitoring clients that closed, moved or changed, with the next step.
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.
- Drive time vs radiusTwo ways to draw the area around a site, and when each is good enough.
- Enrich a list onceA CSV of addresses or companies back with phone, website, rating and an AI score.
- 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 Manufacturing
- A factory hiring is a factory ready to buyMarek sells used machine tools in Krakow, on his own. Lathes, mills and presses, mostly to factories in southern Poland.
- A hardware shop that answers every builder at onceBaraka runs a hardware wholesale shop in Kariakoo, Dar es Salaam. Builders buy cement, iron bars and roofing sheets from him.
- Every client sees their land from space on FridayBrooke owns a small site works firm in Austin. Her crews clear and grade land for new neighbourhoods, on three sites at once.
- Sixty dealers watched, three worth a visitFarah manages sixty dealers for one of Malaysia’s biggest paint makers, across Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley.
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.