Retail execution is a complex occupation: While developing go-to-market or promotional strategies seems exciting, supervising the implementation of those strategies is a difficult task due to the fact that it is done over sometimes hundreds – if not thousands – of stores.
The solution is deploying an army of field reps with clipboards to audit in-store implementation, however, the old pen-and-paper way has several drawbacks. A retail audit platform can help solve many store audit problems, including the following:
Low completion rates
Traditionally, store audits have low completion rates, whether due to reps skipping auditing SKUs, categories, or complete stores altogether. Having a retail audit platform provides ways to make sure that reps are completing their assigned tasks as well as the early detection of non-completion of visits.
Lack of retail data
Lack of retail data affects not only assessing the success of go-to-market or promotional strategies, but it also might prevent future successful campaigns. With the help of a retail audit platform, merchandising and channel managers can customize audit the forms that the reps will be filling in on their mobile devices to include all the information necessary to generate useful KPIs.
Delays in getting retail data
One of the most time and resource-consuming activities of retail audits is data transcription. However, having a retail audit software on hand completely eliminates it as data captured by field reps and auditors is immediately uploaded to the Cloud upon synchronization.
Fraudulent check-ins
One of the key problems of paper-based retail audits is that, technically, there is no way to know whether the rep or auditor collected the data at the correct store. Many retail audit platforms offer GPS verification of visits, allowing management to know that the information collected came from the appropriate store.
Would you like to solve the above store audit issues for your company? Let VisitBasis retail execution software help!
