How Merchandising Software Can Help Overcome the Challenges of Data Collection

When it comes to retail analytics, compiling and analyzing large amounts of data can be a challenge, especially in fast-paced sales and marketing environments. Mobile data collection is considered a game-changer in retail helping companies to overcome most of the challenges associated with traditional data capture methods.

The challenges, which companies face when conducting merchandising audits to get retail data, are mostly determined by the necessity of dealing with many people, at many different locations, bringing in a lot of information on many products. Managing multiple data channels becomes even more complicated if your business operates in different cities or countries.

When it comes to merchandising, most common challenges in retail data collection are as follows:

Getting inaccurate data from retail locations due to data entry errors, lost paperwork, improper use of working hours and fraudulent reports.
Loosing efficiency of mobile workforce management, which results in improper use of working hours, tardy substitution of merchandisers that got sick, slow paper submission.
Wasted time and productivity, when relying on traditional ways of communication with merchandisers like e-mail, SMS, and phone calls.
Poor customer service, when merchandisers concentrate on paperwork and do not have enough time to communicate with customers.
Weak analytics, which is caused by fragmented information that has to be managed in different systems.
Data storage and sharing security challenges.

The key solution to solve all the challenges listed above is to adopt a comprehensive merchandising software solution, which provides your merchandisers with all the necessary tools for mobile data collection and allows their managers and supervisors to manage all kinds of data collection activities within one system. Companies that have adopted merchandising software out-perform those that haven't through streamlining of retail data workflow.

VisitBasis merchandising software is a cloud-based, complete mobile data collection solution designed to schedule and monitor field team activities in real time. VisitBasis merchandising software provides the following capabilities for the managers:

Develop various tasks with different types of answers to get the exact data you need from stores
Easily assign territories, visits, and tasks to merchandisers, which become instantly available in their smartphones.
Monitor in real time what is happening in the field knowing where are merchandisers and what they are doing at every moment
Being able to assess the results as son as data is collected
Generate up-to-the-minute reports filtering all the information that comes from merchandisers to see the exact data you need at the moment.

When merchandisers can perform in-store activities on their tablets and smartphones and instantly report back without visiting the office, they become more productive and happy with their job.

Sign up today at www.visitbasis.com to get the most complete set of tools for retail data collection in one great package or book a free live demo to see how merchandising software can help your business overcome data collection challenges.

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