Retail Execution with VisitBasis

Yesterday we sent out our Holiday card and we got many questions on how Santa and his North Pole Elf team could actually use VisitBasis to plan and track Christmas deliveries. So we decided to make the following video to show it.  Enjoy, and Happy Holidays! Give your business the gift of effective visit planning and tracking. Create your free account today at www.visitbasis.com !

New capabilities include GPS verification of visits and tasks performed, as well as the ability to generate photo reports Miami, FL - VisitBasis has just released a new version of its field activity and visit management system. This new version is available in Spanish and Portuguese , in addition to the already existing English and Russian environments, for both its browser-based office interface and its mobile app. It comes as an answer to the requests of VisitBasis growing customer base both in the United States and in Latin America. Additionally, this release comes with extended features: GPS Validation of Visits and Tasks Visit Details/GPS window on VisitBasis with GPS Confirmation Previous versions of VisitBasis Retail Execution already had extensive GPS monitoring capabilities. Now their developers made it easy to access confirmation that the visits and tasks assigned to a rep were performed at the customer location they were supposed to be. This helps in the detec

In a highly competitive environment it’s critically important for the retailers to plan and apply coordinated strategies. To assess success a retail strategy needs to be regularly monitored, evaluated and revised if necessary. Regular retail audits allow to investigate a company's goals and strategy and also give you a reading on customers’ reactions to your product that translate into their satisfaction and loyalty. A retail audit checklist allows you to organize your walk-through. You should not forget that this is just one element of a retail auditing strategy as an ongoing, integrated process of interrelated steps. Therefore retail audit checklists should be created considering all the stages of a typical retail audit process. So before building a retail audit checklist make sure that you took into account the following steps. The first step  is to decide  who will be responsible for retail audits performance.  Retail audits can be conducted using a company’s workf

Territory management is an essential part of any field sales management job. However, even best-selling CRM systems overlook this important tool, or the feature is “not enabled by default” or “optional” (i.e. more expensive). Mapping capabilities give field operations and outside sales managers the ability to view customers on a map and assign them to reps, taking the guesswork out of territory management, but is considered a “premium” feature. There are many field activity management tools on the market these days and many of them have, in addition to standard territory management, CRM capabilities and/or the possibility to connect with existing CRMs through APIs and export/import. When shopping for a field activity management system, companies must consider the ease of assigning territories to outside reps. Take a look at this video an see how straightforward it is to assign territories on VisitBasis Retail Execution , the only pay-as-you-go of such systems on the market:

The business of in-store merchandising and execution has modernized dramatically with the recent advances in mobile technology and the development of field activity management systems. Despite new technologies, however, many challenges still remain in coordinating field teams and collecting relevant data , including fraudulent check-ins, network coverage issues, and device compatibility. Therefore, if a mobile field activity management system is to really work for retail execution and merchandising business, it needs to address such challenges accordingly. VisitBasis Retail Execution is a complete mobile data collection solution designed to build, schedule and monitor field team activities in real time. It provides tools for all types of field and in-store activities, including merchandising, field marketing, outside sales, auditing, mystery shopping, POS asset management, and product demonstrations, among others. VisitBasis deals with the modern in-store execution challeng

Managing field reps is one of the most time and effort-consuming activities in any business. Surprisingly, many management tasks are still being done the old-fashion way: Hand-written orders, phone calls to check on location or customer status, daily e-mail or phone recaps with each rep, and so on. Mobile enablement of field sales and marketing teams greatly improves communications and workflow between management and field reps. When properly implemented, it streamlines processes and makes it easier for management to get timely field information, leading to better decision-making. Likewise, field reps will benefit from much increased in-store or customer-facing time as well as reduced paperwork and issues due to miscommunication. Therefore, an effective mobile enablement system for field reps must possess the following features: Compatibility with numerous mobile devices (BYOD) Real-time GPS tracking and monitoring  Route optimization Territory management Call scheduli

One hardly knows all the expenses that will be incurred when starting up their own business… There is so much to think about, so much to plan: Where will the business be located, how many employees should be hired, what equipment needs to be purchased, and – most importantly – is there enough money for everything? Normally the last thing on the small business owner’s mind will be software, if the business is not technology-related. Unfortunately, many small businesses end up loosing productivity or revenue potential due to the prohibitive cost of software licenses. Software as a Service (SaaS) changed the game. By charging a per-user monthly subscription, it became easier for small businesses to afford taking advantage of state-of-the-art software. However, this per-user monthly subscription could still add up to a hefty amount, dragging down the business net income. On-Demand SaaS changes the game once more. Its pay-per-use model allows for businesses to adequately tailor the

"Sustainability" seems to be the word of the moment and every day more and more businesses are claiming that their processes are sustainable. But what does this mean for retail execution? How can merchandising and mystery shopping agencies, food brokers, retail sales and marketing companies, and other businesses in the industry up their sustainability efforts and make a real difference when it comes to conserving resources? They can start by adopting a mobile retail execution platform that meet the following criteria: Effective mobile data collection By allowing field reps to perform in-store activities on smartphones or tablets, businesses can virtually eliminate field paperwork and save on paper and printing. Choose a solution that includes scheduling and routing Route optimization will save time and gas for businesses, since field reps will spend more time in stores performing their assigned activities than on the road traveling. Choose a BYOD mobile solutio

In these days of limited everything (budgets, time, etc.) one needs to make the most of all available resources to get as much as possible out of their efforts. When it comes to field data collection, it is imperative to have a framework that promotes efficiency in all steps of the process, from having the right people to perform the field work to acting on the results revealed by the process. VisitBasis Retail Execution provides organizations with a framework of efficiency that helps improve their data collection process and extract actionable information out of said collected data. BYOD – Bring Your Own Device allows organizations to have a large pool of per-job or seasonal workers available for them to choose from, since VisitBasis works on most mobile devices and is easily downloadable from the App Store or Google Play. On-Demand – VisitBasis is an on-demand solution, meaning that organizations will only pay for the visits actually executed and don’t need to waste valuabl

Much has been written lately about mobile data collection and how it is changing the way companies are doing business, especially when planning their marketing and promotional efforts. However, what any type of data collection leads to is normally just what its own name implies: a whole bunch of data. Navigating though all the data obtained can be quite exhausting and unfruitful, and therefore any mobile data collection solution must, more than the data itself, extract actionable information. This is why the way the information is presented in these systems is so important: Plot it in unfiltered spreadsheets and the user gets lost in a bunch of numbers and letters; aggregate it in excessively colorful graphs and visual tools and suddenly the looks cloud the user’s judgment, blocking his/her decision-making. Actionable information extracted from mobile data collection seems to work best when presented in several ways: On a real-time map, allowing the monitoring user (supervis

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In yesterday’s post “Pay-As-You-Go: The New Approach to SaaS” we talked about the advantages of pay-as-you-go charges versus the traditional per user/month system and all the extras one has to pay for when using a subscription-based software service. But how does VisitBasis ’ new pay-per-use system for its Mobile Retail Execution and Merchandising Tool translate into savings for real-life businesses? Let’s see two case studies.* Small business in the food sector: 1 office-only user – owner  1 mobile user – sales/field marketing Average of 4 visits/business day Competition monthly cost: $60 (2 users) VisitBasis cost for 88 visits: $17.60 Monthly savings: $43.40 Regional food broker - sales and marketing agency: 4 office-only users – sales and operations management, merchandising, admin 15 regular mobile users – retail execution team 3 seasonal/temporary mobile users Average of 7 visits/mobile user/business day Competition monthly cost: $660 (22 users) VisitBasis

In the new world of SaaS (Software as a Service) it seems very convenient to think of software licenses as monthly subscriptions. However, one can quickly loose track of what is being paid for, especially when these subscriptions feel like a good deal in comparison to paying the full software license upfront. This is why VisitBasis developed the new and innovative pay-as-you-go approach to its mobile retail visit planning and management tool. With this new payment system, customers are only charged for visits actually started, at the rate of $0.20 per visit, with no minimums. For customers of all sizes this can translate into significant savings comparing to the traditional pay-per-month approach, since they will only be paying for active users and their usage and not for office-only/admin users and idle periods (such as weekends, holidays, configuration and setup, etc). See in the below chart a comparison between VisitBasis’ pay-as-you-go and the traditional pay-per-month system

VisitBasis has just launched its pay-as-you-go payment system, turning its comprehensive mobile platform into the only pay-per-use Retail Execution and Merchandising solution on the market. Read our full press release. Now users will only pay for the visits actually started, at a rate of $0.20 per visit . This means: No licenses or contracts. No full-month payment per user. No charge for office-only admin users. Full flexibility on the number of users - temporary or seasonal users can be added or removed at any time. Unlimited number of devices per user. Sign up today and get $50 in visit credits: That's the equivalent of 250 visits! Read our full press release.

Innovative pay-per-use system allows for greater budget flexibility by charging on a per-visit basis and doing away with license and subscription costs. Miami, Florida (PRWEB) September 19, 2014 VisitBasis web interface Account tab, with the new pay-as-you-go system. Up until now, Retail Execution and Merchandising professionals had only two payment options when it came to automating their field team activities: They could either invest a considerable amount in a software license (which sometimes lasts for only one year) or they could pay a monthly per-user fee. Both options have been proven inconvenient, not only because of budget constraints but also due to the frequent account issues resulting from user turnover, especially when one considers that Retail Execution and Merchandising is a fast-moving industry that sometimes relies on seasonal or temporary field agents. With that in mind, VisitBasis has launched the pay-as-you-go system for its mobile retail visit planning a

Any small business owner can tell how costly it is to start up a new company, and the costs that are incurred in addition to producing the actual product one wants to sell. So it is hard to justify investing hundreds (or thousands!) of dollars a year in one piece of software, even though it would help with order placement and the improvement of product presentation at the point-of-sale, which could lead to more sales. VisitBasis  is a complete in-store execution and merchandising tool, and it was designed with businesses of all sizes in mind. For small businesses, VisitBasis offers, among others: Easy to configure web interface, straightforward app, no software installation or deployment necessary – no need for IT department or consultant. Scalability – VisitBasis was designed to grow with you and your budget. A homemade gourmet food operation could start-up with only one person in charge of everything and probably with an irregular schedule of retail visits, so it will only

What if you could be in the field “virtually”, knowing where your field reps are and what visits and tasks they have completed for the day? With VisitBasis you can. VisitBasis makes use of the latest Cloud and GPS technologies and puts them to work for trade marketers, merchandisers and sales managers: With real-time dashboard, map and reporting you track all visits and tasks being performed by each one of your mobile agents, and every single activity is time and geo-stamped. GPS technology is also a key element to increasing rep productivity: with tools like Route Optimization your reps will spend more time on visits and less time on the road. VisitBasis runs on Google Cloud, a solid and robust environment that you can count on for the best service availability even if your company is multinational and runs in different countries and time zones. Being on the Cloud also makes it possible for reps to work on VisitBasis offline, and the system will automa

Retail Execution and Merchandising is a fast-moving business, having no time to waste with issues such as lack of field rep productivity. With tools such as advanced task setting, visit verification, route planning and ordering, VisitBasis allows for a dynamic workflow and improved communication between management and field agents. With the high turnover rate of some areas of the business, especially the ones that call for seasonal work, it is very costly to provide equipment for every single field agent, not only due to gadget price but also the time that goes into training. VisitBasis provides a uniform interface across most smartphones and tablets available today on the market, so mobile agents can bring their own devices - the ones they are already used to operating. Summarizing, with VisitBasis: No need to invest in costly equipment - field agents can bring their own devices. VisitBasis works seamlessly accross iPhones, iPads, and Android smartphones and tablets.  No training

When you begin to use VisitBasis you will promptly realize that it is a high quality web interface and mobile app solution that will make all your retail execution operations a lot easier to task and organize utilizing the user-friendly dashboard, and that you can customize in as much or as little detail as you warrant necessary. Immediately you will notice the following: Boost Return on Investment  Sales will skyrocket as you mobilize your field team and empower them with essential tools and data that will increase daily productivity, retail visits, sales and customer relations. Maximize Retail Visits Value  By utilizing VisitBasis for retail execution and merchandising, field reps will significantly show improvement in coverage and task executions with VisitBasis bulk scheduling and task assigning feature.  Manage your Field Reps Effectively When you implement VisitBasis into your daily operations - field reps will be able to use data collection features, which allows f

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Mobile Data Capture features are readily available for you and your merchandising operation when you use VisitBasis mobile app. Data capture is a feature that is paramount to the success of merchandisers and their field agents. You will have access to the most advanced and progressive Mobile Data Collection features when you implement VisitBasis Merchandising Mobile app for all your retail execution needs. Tablet and smartphone Data Capture features will grant you the access to essential tools that are needed for high quality and successful retail visits. VisitBasis - Mobile Data Capture Features: Mobile Forms Convert field tasks with mobile forms for tablets and other mobile devices. Create your customized layout to include items like pictures, signatures, etc. Workflow Process Manage and oversee all field work tasks and the development of workflows. Offline Use Collect Data offline and sync automatically when internet services become available. Data Integration Utilize A

New feature takes the guesswork out of route planning, adding one more advantage to its comprehensive field team management solution. Miami, FL (PRWEB) June 11, 2014 VisitBasis new Route Optimization feature helps  increase sales by maximizing the number of daily customer visits. VisitBasis has just launched version 1.5.31 of its field team management app on Apple Store and Google Play, which includes the advanced “Route Optimization” feature. It helps users increase revenues by improving the number of daily customer visits. This new tool allows outside sales reps, merchandisers, service technicians, and other mobile professionals to automatically plan their customer rounds according to the best route calculated from the user’s initial position. Instead of having to spend time planning who to visit first and where to go from there, with a click of a button and within seconds users will have displayed on their smartphone or tablet screens the most efficient route for the da

Field reps perform regular retail visits to help consumer packaged goods companies to stay competitive by making sure that their products are correctly displayed on shelves and also efficiently promoted and always in stock. VisitBasis Mobile App gives field reps easy access to all merchandising and sales data and tools required to perform in-store activities and allows them to collect critical information for store performance analysis. Meanwhile, the office supervisors can track all the field activities in real time using VisitBasis web-based dashboards and reports. VisitBasis is the most open and cost-effective field data capture system. It is the only pay-as-you-go Retail Execution platform on the market. www.visitbasis.com