The Scenario
You are a retail expansion analyst. It is Wednesday and the site selection committee meets Friday. You have 30 candidate store locations in an Excel workbook, lat/lng in columns A and B. The committee wants to know how many competitor grocery stores are within a 1-mile radius of each site.
Your current approach is opening a mapping app, dropping a pin on each location, and manually counting. At 30 locations, that is four hours of counting.
The bad version of Wednesday:
- You open the mapping app and zoom into site 1, count four competitors
- Site 7 has a cluster that is hard to count at this zoom level, and you guess
- By Friday the committee has numbers for 18 of 30 sites, three of which are guesses.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads your candidate locations and calls HERE Browse for each one, writing POI counts back into the workbook.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
For each lat/lng pair in columns A and B, use HERE Browse to find all grocery store POIs within 1,600 meters and write the count to column C and the name of the closest competitor to column D.
SheetXAI reads all 30 coordinate pairs, calls HERE Browse for each, and writes count and closest competitor name back. All 30 sites, consistent methodology.
What You Get
A site analysis enriched with competitive density data:
- Column C — competitor grocery store count within 1 mile for each site
- Column D — name of the closest competitor location
Sort column C ascending and the lowest-competition sites surface immediately.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Site lists come with missing coordinates, mixed categories, and stakeholder-specific requirements. SheetXAI handles them inline.
When you need multiple POI categories in separate columns
The committee wants competitor grocery counts and nearby coffee shops as a footfall signal.
For each lat/lng pair in columns A and B, use HERE Browse to count grocery store POIs within 1,600 meters and write the count to column C. Also count coffee shop POIs within 500 meters and write that count to column D.
When some rows have addresses instead of coordinates
Twenty sites have lat/lng but 10 only have a street address in column C.
For rows where columns A and B are blank, geocode the address in column C using HERE and write lat/lng to columns A and B. Then for all 30 rows, use HERE Browse to count grocery store POIs within 1,600 meters and write the count to column D and the closest competitor name to column E.
When you want to flag sites that cross a competitor density threshold
The committee wants to instantly see which sites have too many competitors to be viable.
For each lat/lng pair in columns A and B, use HERE Browse to count grocery store POIs within 1,600 meters and write the count to column C. Add a flag in column D: write "High Competition" if column C is greater than 4, otherwise write "Viable".
When you need POI counts, competitor names, and a ranked shortlist in one pass
The VP wants raw counts, the closest competitor name, and a top 10 ranked by lowest competition.
For each of the 30 lat/lng pairs in columns A and B, use HERE Browse to find grocery store POIs within 1,600 meters. Write count to column C and closest competitor name to column D. Then create a new tab called "Top 10 Sites" and write the 10 rows with the lowest count in column C, sorted ascending, with all original columns included.
The pattern: data pull, enrichment, and output table in one prompt, so you walk into Friday's meeting with a ranked shortlist.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any Excel workbook with location coordinates, then ask it to find nearby POIs using HERE Browse. The HERE integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. See also how to generate drive-time catchment polygons in Excel or the HERE in Excel overview.