High rep turnover in merchandising field teams is seen as a chronic, inevitable situation in the industry. Reps come and go due to many reasons that can include unreasonable expectations concerning hours and amount of work, lack of experience, poor performance, fraudulent check-ins and reports, among others.
Store checklists are notorious for being difficult to plan, implement and report on, especially when the retail inspection encompasses several SKUs across multiple categories. Not only it is time and labor-intensive, but the data processing as a whole – from collection to transcription – is extremely prone to human error.
Platforms for auditing in store have become a must-have for category managers. Not only are they a key data collection instrument when reviewing and assessing category performance but these apps also assist in implementing category plans. But how can a platform for auditing in store be used in gathering shopper insights so these can be incorporated into category strategy reviews?
Field marketing and retail merchandising are complex sciences. They both rely on data from a large number of geographically dispersed stores and, therefore, also rely on the large number of people collecting such data.
Merchandising activities are traditionally natural resource intensive, from the piles of paper necessary to perform numerous daily audits to the amount of fuel used by reps in their daily routes.
Smartphone use during working hours is frowned upon in most businesses, especially when it involves outside contractors or field staff – such as merchandisers and marketing reps – or, even worse, store employees.
Big data is the word “du jour”. While being able to analyze large amounts of data and detect patterns, trends, and associations from such analysis might be beneficial for retail businesses, small manufacturers, distributors, and channels might feel like they are left out, since the cost of implementing Big Data can be prohibitive. However, recent cloud-based technology means software for retail execution has become easier – and more affordable – to subscribe and implement, opening the door of Big Data to small businesses.
Having store audit report templates can greatly reduce the amount of time spent reporting. However, many retail audit apps available on the market do not offer the flexibility needed to fully customize templates, both for data collection and for report generation.
Mobile technology revolutionized many industries and retail is no exception. Working with an in store audit system is now a welcome reality for sales and marketing agencies, retailers, and manufacturers alike, since they streamline an old-fashioned, cumbersome process.
New advances in artificial intelligence have given rise to much-needed image recognition technology for in store audit apps, which allows quantifiable data to be extracted from pictures.
