When planning store visits for their field teams, managers have to follow the system imposed by their retail execution app, sometimes compromising due to a lack of software flexibility. This is why – when faced with the question “how to plan retail visits for field teams” – the developers at VisitBasis took into consideration all the different types of store visits that might need planning, from recurring inventory counts to secret shoppers.
This post shows you all the possibilities offered by VisitBasis when it comes to planning retail visits and the different merchandising, marketing, and audit situations where they might be used.
For managers looking for how to plan retail visits for field teams, VisitBasis offers the following options:
Planned visits:For when visits are recurring (repeated every “x” weeks), a standard assignment is used on every visit, and a predefined schedule is known. Includes in-store activities such as:
- Inventory counts
- Regular competition research
- Order taking
- Compliance audits:
- Planogram
- Promotion
- Pricing
- Placement
- Safety
Tickets: On VisitBasis, Tickets should be used if the retail visit matches one or more of the following parameters:
- It addresses a specific one-off problem needs to be resolved in a specific place
- You want to keep the job open for days or weeks
- More than one field rep can be responsible for the job and one can reassign the ticket to another rep
- Customizable Ticket statuses are required e.g. Open/Resolved/On-hold etc
- Tickets might need to have a deadline (Milestone), such as the end of a seasonal or promotional period
- An action – a Ticket comment or change of Ticket status – might be required without submitting a Report
This makes Tickets perfect for:
- Addressing out-of-stock, expiration date, or display / product damage situations
- Store, pricing, or customer survey that needs to be completed by one or more reps over a certain period of time
- Planogram sets and resets
- Secret shopping
For organizations that do not need so much rep schedule oversight, VisitBasis also provides the flexibility to allow reps to manage their own activities by allowing them to file unplanned reports – where reps can create reports anywhere by filling out a form – or by managing their own schedules and planning their own visits. This is ideal for smaller teams, for instance, where reps have greater responsibility and more autonomy.
Which VisitBasis retail visit planning solution works best for your business? Let us know by emailing us at sales@visitbasis.com
