Is your Retail Execution solution performing as highly as it could be? A robust Retail Execution solution can help you to do things right at your point of sale.
Consumer goods companies stand to benefit from a robust Retail Execution solution – a successful in-store execution strategy can help to increase revenue by capitalizing all the opportunities available at the stores, while maximizing the efficiency of your sales team. Ongoing supply chain disruptions mean that a solid strategy in the field is more important now than ever, but it can unfortunately be difficult to determine whether your current retail execution solution is the best of its breed or if you are potentially missing sales opportunities.
In order to improve your brands’ performance on the shelf, you can begin by auditing your existing retail execution process in three areas: efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness.
Increasing Efficiency with Retail Execution
When evaluating your retail execution process, the first question to ask yourself is whether your existing tools are helping you to “do things right” at your point of sale. No matter how rigorous your store strategy may be, the disconnect between strategy and execution can be costly if you do not have the correct tools in place to optimize store visits and store activities.
Is your retail execution solution helping you to increase call coverage, and making it easier for your field sales team to complete assigned tasks? Does it include sufficient route optimization capabilities, and is it compatible with your team’s mobile devices? A retail execution solution that truly works for your business should help you to reduce the duration of your calls by streamlining processes and finding the most valuable activities to be performed. Retail Execution by TELUS Consumer Goods, for example, includes Rapid Image Recognition and data capture capabilities to improve your team’s accuracy and empower them with the relevant data they need.
Ultimately, a retail execution solution that maximizes your team’s productivity will translate to not only higher margins for your business, but also increased profitability for your customers.
An Effective Retail Execution Solution
When you are confident that your retail execution process is as efficient as it can be, and that there is little disconnect between your strategy and your execution, then the second question to ask yourself is whether your retail execution solution is helping you “do the right things”. One of the most important functions of a retail execution solution is to help you increase your sales; if you are not confident that you are maximizing your effectiveness at the store, then there are a few areas on which you can focus.
A best in breed retail execution solution should give your team the data that they need to succeed – capabilities such as Instant Shelf Audit analysis, in-flight Perfect store scoring, guided workflows and others, ensure that your in-store teams have sufficient tools and information to make adequate decisions at the Point of Sale. When your team is empowered with effective data, it can quickly translate to improved compliance, product assortment, and increased order value.
Finally, lapses in negotiated promotional deals and the acknowledgement of out of stocks are two common areas in which sales opportunities are missed; a robust retail execution solution should help you to achieve your strategic retail execution goals and thereby reduce your margin leakage.
Improve Responsiveness with Retail Execution
When you are certain that your retail execution solution is helping you to both “do things right” and “do the right things,” the final step towards retail excellence is ensuring that your business is responsive to change.
A best in breed retail execution solution will provide insights to management from the data captured and will empower users with actionable data where it matters most: at the Point of Sale. If your field and management teams can act adequately based on those insights, then you can make better decisions on actions with the highest return of investment, identify and act upon addressable issues, reduce costs and improve your responsiveness in an ever changing environment.
Sales management is an important component to consider when evaluating your retail execution solution; is your existing tool helping you to define your strategy, plan your accounts, and set goals? Is it helping managers to review team performance and manage team activities? And do they have the store data they need to effectively evaluate and prioritize?
Retail Distribution for Consumer Goods Companies
To address the issues above, and to help you achieve excellence in the retail store, TELUS Consumer Goods offers a Retail Execution solution that helps our partners to increase productivity, profitability, and efficiency throughout the retail execution process. The solution supports planning, selling activities, merchandising, store auditing, delivery and inventory options, and more, and is used by some of the top consumer packaged goods companies across the globe.
Contact us to discuss the ways in which you can optimize your retail activity and achieve your business objectives.