How Hillman Designs Service Territories That Ignore Zip Codes
The Hillman Group, a North American leader in hardware and home-improvement products, runs a nationwide network of self-service retail kiosks, and the service territories behind that network rarely follow a clean line on a map. For about a decade, Hillman has used Maptive to design those territories, because the mix of machines, revenue, and density that defines them does not align with zip codes or simple radius circles.
It’s a good visual way to represent your business, and 10 years in, it is still where the team turns to make sense of the network’s geography.
Dan Peck · Service-Territory Operations, The Hillman GroupDan Peck, who manages service-territory operations for the kiosk network, uses Maptive to assign each location to the appropriate territory and quickly assess new opportunities.
Key outcomes
- Custom territories that total Hillman’s own metrics, far beyond what zip-code or radius tools allow.
- A fast answer on if a new location can be serviced, as soon as its address is checked.
- The network segmented by machine type and by retail account in a few clicks.
- About 10 years of steady use, with the team’s data and maps in one place.
- Territories and machines layered on one map, each refreshed from its own data.
Tools Behind the Results
Tap any screen to see the tool in action.
Service Territories Beyond Zip Codes and Radius
Hillman’s kiosk territories are defined by the business, not geography. The mix of machines in an area, the revenue they generate, and how densely they cluster all decide where one territory ends, and the next begins, and the result can split two sides of a single street. Every machine still has to belong to a territory so the field team knows who services it.
That is why standard mapping tools never fit. Most of them can only build territories from zip codes or a fixed radius, and they will not total a company’s own data inside a custom boundary. Hillman needed territories that follow its own irregular boundaries and report its own figures.
Hillman’s territories follow machine mix, revenue, and density rather than geographic lines, which is why off-the-shelf zip-code and radius tools could not support them.
Territories Built From Hillman’s Own Data
Custom territory design is the feature that brought Hillman to Maptive a decade ago and the reason it stays. Maptive builds territories from Hillman’s own data and totals the metrics within each one, including revenue, machine count, and number of locations, so a boundary is never an empty outline on a screen. As the network grew, those territories were continually rebalanced to keep each service area proportional.
The company does not detail how it draws those boundaries. What Peck’s team will point to is the set of Maptive tools it relies on, and an operations group that owns every call, working from the figures the map puts in front of them.
Custom territory design is the capability that first brought Hillman to Maptive, and is the main reason the team uses it.
Fast Answers on New Locations and Opportunities
When a store asks for a machine or a new opportunity arises, a single address is enough to show which territory would cover it and how close the nearest service is. A location far from any route can be ruled out in seconds, and one that sits among existing stops is an easy yes.
The same view helps Hillman weigh larger opportunities. When a retail account is interested, the team can compare its locations with current coverage to determine whether the work is already handled or requires new hires. Filtering the network by machine type and account shows the team exactly the slice they need, without the rest of the map in the way.
A single address determines if a location is serviceable in seconds, and comparing a prospect’s locations against current coverage shows what a new account would require.
10 Years of Steady Use
Ten years in, Maptive has stayed in use because of its usefulness. Peck can take an address file and quickly build a map of what is in it, and he keeps one set of data current and layers a territories map over a machines map to get the standard view the team works from. Updating either layer is quick.
The deployment team works in it most days to place new machines, while Peck uses it for the bigger, less frequent planning questions. The shared habit is the same. The data is in Maptive, the team knows Maptive, and the map shows the network’s geography.
Maptive is where Hillman stores its network data and maps its geography, used daily by the deployment team and regularly for the larger, less frequent planning questions.
Across that stretch, Maptive has become part of how Hillman runs its kiosk network, and it answers the recurring question of what a new location would mean. Hillman’s operations team still makes the final call.
Free trial, every tool, no credit card
See What Maptive Can Do for Your Team
Start a 10-day free trial with no credit card and every tool unlocked, or book a demo to see Maptive on your own data.
