Why Mobile Data Collection by Itself is Not Enough

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 (supervisor, manager, executive) to view mobile user’s geo and time-stamped information. This allows the monitoring user to make on-the-spot decisions and properly manage territories and routes.
On a detailed user-level visit execution status window that contains all information pertaining to the data collection tasks. This window should also allow monitoring users to make last-minute changes such as assigning additional tasks for each visit (i.e. requesting POS manager input for unexpected out-of-stock). It also advises managers of excessive idle time or fraudulent check-ins among field reps.
By building reports with several filtering options in order to generate spreadsheets with useful and readable data that can be transformed into charts, forms, and other printable and presentable formats.

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 activities, including merchandising, field marketing, field sales, auditing, inspections, mystery shopping, surveying, POS asset management, training, sampling, and product demonstrations, among others.

See for yourself how VisitBasis can help with your organization obtain actionable information from its data collection efforts: sign up today!

Solving Information Loss in Merchandising Once and For All

Information loss used to be an inevitable consequence of retail merchandising. With many field reps performing a number of tasks on each one of the stores in their individual territories, it is easy to see how the amount of data collected on the field grows exponentially and is, therefore, increasingly difficult to handle and more subject to information loss. Mobile merchandising software is the ideal solution to information loss in retail merchandising. When businesses implement a mobile merchandising software solution, they prevent information loss in the following stages of data processing: Data collection It is easy to see how information can get lost in traditional pen-and-paper merchandising. With mobile merchandising software, field reps perform tasks such as filling out forms and taking pictures in their mobile devices, leading to less misunderstanding and mix-ups. Data transcription With mobile merchandising software, there is no data transcription. The information goe

Cloud for Retail Execution: Make Away with Data Storage Costs

Why Go Paperless? In order to store 2 million paper documents, an organization can expect to spend between $40,000 and $60,000 on filing cabinets alone. Those same files could fit on fewer than ten CD-ROMs (Business Guide to Paper Reduction) . If we assume that a filing cabinet uses from 6 to 20 square feet of space and the office space costs $23 per square foot , the space for a one filing cabinet will cost a company $1656– 5520 per year . How to Go Paperless? When you choose paperless data collection your data storage costs can be significantly reduced or even brought to zero. Digital data collected using mobile forms require much less space than paper sheets and therefore cost less money. With the development of mobile technology you don’t need CDs or any other data carriers to store and access your data. More and more companies opt for Cloud storage. The price of Cloud storage starts at $0.01 GB per month and the average number of MS Word pages per GB is 64782.

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