Retail Execution with VisitBasis

Poor planogram compliance is a known issue in retail. According to the ISI Sharegroup , it is estimated that the total cost to the U.S. retail RCP industry of poor planogram compliance (actual and opportunity costs) is approximately 1% of gross product sales. Planogram compliance, however, is not something that is accomplished in an office by the merchandising strategy team. The adherence to a category's or product's retail merchandising standards must be verified at every single recurring visit performed at each point-of-sale by every single field rep. A retail planogram app for compliance checks is the ideal tool for verifying adherence to merchandising standards. By having a retail planogram app for compliance checks on their smartphones and tablets, field reps can have access to the merchandising schematics for each store they visit, making sure that the products are displayed according to plan. By implementing a retail planogram app for compliance checks, merchand...

For small and medium companies - sometimes just starting up - it is hard to compete with big businesses. As the old saying goes: "You must spend money to make money". Larger businesses, therefore, have more resources to invest and typically can reap larger benefits from their investments in machinery, technology, personnel, etc. Mobile field force automation, for instance, used to be a dream for small and medium-sized business owners due to the heavy investment needed not only on system technology, but especially on equipment. The widespread use of smartphones and tablets, however, combined with the recent advent of Cloud computing and SaaS (software as a service), dramatically brought down the initial costs of implementing a mobile field force automation solution . After all, all that is needed now is for sales reps to install a mobile app on their existing smartphone or tablet and field force automation will be mostly up and running. Small and medium-sized business...

Neglecting food safety in retail is not an option. Every food-related business - from supermarkets and grocery stores to restaurants, convenience stores, hotels, drugstores, and everything in between - can have it's reputation ruined and scare away revenues due to a bad official inspection or customer complaints, and consequences are amplified these days with reviews on websites such as Yelp and Google. However, it is not only up to the establishment's manager to watch over food safety . Food safety measures must be taken every time any employee manipulates or stores a food item, and therefore, every employee should be able to detect food safety breaches and communicate it to management so the situation is dealt with before it reaches the public or, worse, a city or county inspector. But how to empower every retail establishment employee to perform their own inspections and then record this information so it can be analyzed and prevented in the future? A retail inspe...

Fraudulent customer calls are a serious issue for sales. When outside sales reps are deployed to perform their daily customer rounds, it is expected that they will visit the locations they are supposed to, as well as present certain products and sometimes perform other tasks, such as performing surveys and collecting relevant information. However, once the sales reps are on the field, it becomes difficult to actually monitor their location and activities, especially in larger teams. I t is a lose-lose situation: The reps have to take time from actually selling to call the office or fill out reports, and sales management needs to assign extra personnel to help with taking these calls and transcribing reports. A sales tracking solution is the ideal tool for this scenario, since it fulfills the duties of the extra personnel mentioned before. With a sales tracking solution, sales managers can prevent fraudulent customer visits by monitoring the location of field reps, as well as ha...

Customer-facing time is an essential part of sales. By interacting with customers, outside sales reps and marketing agents can better understand their needs and wants, leading to better sales outcomes (quantity and/or satisfaction) and eventually to more customer-centric products. In retail, increased customer face time with a store manager means that the salesperson will have a better grasp of the peculiarities of each point-of-sale and will build sales orders that will lead to improvements in product turnover ratios and less out-of-stocks . However, customer-facing time is increasingly considered a rare luxury and many are the threats to it: Endless team meetings, traffic delays, scattered sales territories, email overloads, reporting and paperwork, etc. An outside sales software can be instrumental in increasing customer-facing time. By implementing an outside sales software solution , sales managers are able to see several improvements that can lead to increased customer-f...

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...

As strategists can tell us, knowledge is the most important thing if one wants to beat the competition . For consumer product goods (CPG) and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCC), the battle for the customer's wallet happens at the point-of-sale level, and this is why store audits are so important. A store audit app will not only help field reps to more efficiently collect competitor information, but also allows brand and category managers to get faster access to this information and act swiftly to take advantage of opportunities and/or to prevent losing market share. Among other benefits, a store audit app will provide the following competition monitoring tools: The ability to schedule and plan regular visits in order to get the right competitor information at the right time. Full customization of task forms and surveys , so the field rep will collect the exact information needed. The power to capture photos , so not only pricing, and shelf count and position can be anal...

Miami, FL - VisitBasis, the startup mobile retail execution solution provider from Hallandale Beach, FL, has been included among the 20 representative providers of retail execution technology evaluated by the Promotion Optimization Institute (POI) . The POI Retail Execution Vendor Panorama 2016 report is a detailed analysis by the POI of the retail execution technology market and its vendors, including Accenture, SAP, and StayInFront, among others. VisitBasis is evaluated in the report as being "a low cost and largely do-it-yourself solution with a global footprint" and "a starting point for affordable, rapidly deployed, and integrated on your own... merchandising solutions". "We feel that the POI Retail Execution Vendor Panorama 2016 captured the essence of what VisitBasis aims to bring to mobile retail execution: Simplicity and affordability, with global reach", says Sergey Gorbunov, VisitBasis CEO. "As we continually improve our applica...

Behavior psychology tells us that there are two types of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic, and that people perform better when a balance between both types is reached. Sales rep are the classic example of a profession that relies a lot on extrinsic motivation, since the rewards for a job well done are basically financial incentives and praise. A sales force automation app can help managers achieve a more even balance between both types of motivation. By implementing a sales force automation app, field sales teams can achieve the following: Less anxiety and stress With scheduling and planning tools, sales force automation apps make it easier to plan customer visits. With a sales force automation app, field reps also have anytime access to product collaterals, so they will never be empty-handed when the opportunity comes to present another product to a customer. More personal time A state-of-the-art sales force automation app will offer tools such as route optimization, savin...