3 Ways to Boost Brick-and-Mortar Sales with Field Merchandising Software

A lot has been said about how brick-and-mortar retailers are losing ground to Internet sales. However, research - and revenue - has shown that some physical stores and brands within these stores can maintain a competitive advantage retaining repeat customers if they manage to:

Ensure product availability
One sure way to lose a customer is to not have product available at the store at the time of purchase. With field merchandising software, distribution and store operations can have a system in place to frequently perform product counts and check out for out-of-stocks in order to better time shipments.

Improve presentation
Presentation at the point of sale can make or break product sales but package design is not the only consideration since many things can happen between factory and shelf - from leaks to damaged boxes and tampering. Recurring store audits on field merchandising software can greatly improve presentation consistency and make management know of any pressing issues at the points of sale.

Engage with customer
A lot can be learned by talking with customers. However, the old paper form method is highly time-consuming and can lead to inaccuracies, especially during the data transcription process. Electronic customer surveys through field merchandising software are straightforward to implement, tweak, and report on, and can increase awareness of customer wants and needs.

VisitBasis is a comprehensive field merchandising software system for businesses of all sizes, from small marketing agencies to large CPG companies and retail chains. VisitBasis allows creating custom forms not only for retail audits but also for in-store surveys, making it easy for merchandising, category, or distribution managers to gather store and shopper insights, and provides real-time access to the captured data with both tabulated and visual reports.

Online demos of the VisitBasis field merchandising software can be scheduled at http://meetme.so/visitbasis. For more information and to sign up for a free trial, go to www.visitbasis.com.

Image Recognition for Retail Execution and Merchandising Software

Retail execution and merchandising software have revolutionized the way store audits were performed with the virtual elimination of paper forms and transcription that came with the advent of data collection apps for smartphones and tablets.

Now a second revolution is coming: The one of artificial intelligence applied to store audits. Image recognition for retail execution and merchandising software allows for information to be extracted directly from photos taken by field personnel at the stores.

This means that, instead of filling in information on the number of product and competitor faces, for instance, reps will just take a picture of the target product category. Pictures will be then sent to Cloud servers where a neural network will analyze them and provide instant information on share-of-shelf and other retail KPIs.

One can see how image recognition for retail execution and merchandising software saves not only time but also reduces human error when, for instance, counting product and category faces at the store, especially considering the accuracy of over 95% that some systems provide.

BrandML is the image recognition technology developed by VisitBasis, provider of the namesake retail execution and merchandising software chosen by many CPG, distribution, and marketing businesses. While groundbreaking, BrandML can be implemented in a short period of time and is cost-effective, making it a realistic technology upgrade for retail-focused businesses of all sizes.

Want to learn more about the BrandML image recognition technology? Go to www.visitbasis.com and contact us!

Retail Store Audit Software Optimizes Calculating KPIs

Calculating retail merchandising metrics such as product, category, and store KPIs is an essential part of many businesses, from large CPG companies to supermarket and drugstore chains. However, collecting the source data beyond what is supplied by cash registers can be incredibly complex, since it might involve ground teams with dozens or even hundreds of people.

Retail merchandising metrics include traditional concepts such as share of shelf, out-of-stocks, damaged units, promotions, product positioning on store or shelf, but can also include custom scorecard KPIs like display visibility, customer engagement, visual planogram compliance, among others.

By adopting retail store audit software, a business will not only optimize the data collection step of this process, as ground personnel will use their mobile devices to fill in forms, but will also completely skip data transcription and access reports as soon as devices are synced.

Some retail store audit software systems even allow for businesses to automatically connect the data source to their preferred reporting or scorecard tool through APIs, leading to a seamless transition for analysts and other merchandising data stakeholders.

VisitBasis is a comprehensive retail store audit software for businesses of all sizes. VisitBasis allows creating custom forms in order to gather all the metrics necessary to calculate standard or custom Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), providing real-time access to the captured data with tabulated and visual reports, as well as Rest/API connection.

Online demos of the VisitBasis retail store audit software can be scheduled at http://meetme.so/visitbasis. For more information and to sign up for a free trial, go to www.visitbasis.com.