Using Retail Audit Software to Research Your Competition

Regular retail audits are vital for CPG and FMCG companies, allowing them to adapt their marketing strategies in accordance with current retail trends and evolve with the market. The most effective way to maintain regular retail audits is switching to a retail audit software solution, which allows automating most of the time-consuming and expensive operations in the field.

In order to fully maximize the benefits of retail audit software, along with gathering store data on it’s own performance, companies should do the same thing with competitors’ information. Competitor analysis is a substantial part of marketing strategy. It allows companies to assess their competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and develop effective strategies to improve competitive advantage.

Yet most of the companies do not conduct this type of analysis systematically enough, relying on intuition and informal impressions, putting themselves at risk of being outdone by competitors. To avoid this risk and be aware of how your competitors are doing, oblige your field reps to perform competitors' audits on regular basis, supplementing scheduled retail visits with competitor’s data collection tasks.

At first sight, it seems difficult to measure store-level marketing and analyze competitors at the same time. But when you use retail audit software to collect store data, you’ll be able to organize competitor’s audits in a few clicks and easily analyze results due to automated reporting. Retail audit software is a data collection tool that provides streamlined data workflow, real-time field-level insights and wide analytic capabilities for the management.

Retail audit software allows gathering data on competitors’ products, prices, marketing strategies, market share, and customer profile. Retail audit software provides customizable task templates with different types of answers for everything that needs to be checked, allowing your field reps to capture accurate, live data that can be analyzed in real time back at the home office. Real-time analytics and customizable reports to analyze competitors’ strategies is one of the most important features of retail audit software, which allows companies to use targeted marketing when competing with those surrounding brands.

A minimum competitor’s data set, which your reps should capture on regular basis include:

• In-store location
• Shelf location
• Pricing

If you are able to see where exactly your competitors’ products are located and how they are priced you receive a good indication of industry leaders marketing strategies. To make competitor’s data more meaningful and insightful, your field reps can also supplement it with the following data:

• Parameters of the layout
• Promotional and marketing materials

When field reps use a retail audit software mobile solution for tablets and smartphones to perform competitors’ audits, adding this data doesn’t require much effort. All that your reps will have to do is to make a photo of a shelf or a leaflet using a built-in camera. Retail audit software allows generating photo-reports, which are automatically attached to all the tasks completed in that store and become instantly available at the office.

Photo reports and mobile forms to analyze competitors’ products are one of the most important features of retail audit software, which make competitors’ audits a breeze.

Try the most innovative way to research your competition today! Sign up at www.visitbasis.com to get your free trial of VisitBasis Retail Audit Software.