In-Store Retail Audit Services
In-store retail audit companies help brands determine the direction and effectiveness of the retail strategy. As a renowned store audit company, PPMS Field Marketing Services, our retail store audits are accurate and conducted thoroughly to be referred for studies and important business decisions.
The retail strategy will unearth patterns and fulfill objectives that the in-store audit was undertaken for. Our retail audit company ensures that the on-field team is skilled, competent, and technologically savvy to adjust and bring out the best results with the provided tools.
Key Features & Benefits of In-Store Retail Audit Services
It is often said that a retail store audit data is only as good as the quality of the audit. At PPMS, we promise a competent on-field team, best resources and innovative methods to ensure the following benefits –
- In-store audits ensure that retailers are following guidelines with respect to promotions, products, and placements.
- Retail compliance audit by brands helps compare progress with respect to competition.
- You get plenty of retail store centric data for reference
- Field audits can profit a brand by decreasing inefficiency and increasing sales.
Types of In-Store Retail Audit
With the plethora of information that can be recorded from an in-store retail audit, segregation is done to ensure focused efforts. The various types of retail field audits can be classified on the basis of data types they focus on.
- Retail Marketing Audit – Gathers data regarding customer sentiment, store appearance, etc.
- Retail Merchandising Audit – Concerned with the brand’s performance related to inventory levels, stocks, and product condition
- In-store Promotional report – Data gathering for a recent promotional activity or a sale undertaken by the brand
How Does The PPMS In-Store Retail Audit App Work?
Advanced technologies, like a field retail audit app, can help make retail audits smoother and more accurate. Adding a field data collection app to retail audit operations will lead to receiving accurate data with quick turn-around time.
The PPMS store audit app can collect critical, brand-specific information and edit questionnaires as per the brand’s need. The audit will be data specific, with ample insights on any issues with the brand’s retail strategy. Assigning territories, GPS tracking, product displays, audit progress – everything can be done through the PPMS retail audit app.
Why Should You Choose PPMS for In-Store Retail Product Merchandising Services?
- There are new challenges faced by brands every day and PPMS goes beyond the usual to conduct the most accurate retail store audits.
- We have experience with merchandising, point-of-purchase execution, repacking, among many other things.
- You can always depend on us for decently executing a large-scale on-field retail audit.
- We take complete ownership of the execution process of retail store audits. This ensures less complexity and the client is free to focus on sales and product development.
Frequently asked Questions(FAQs)
An audit is an important part of running a business. It has several purposes, some of which are:
- Ensuring transparency for business operations
- Quality control
- Identifying any malpractices in the business
For these reasons, retail store audits need to be carried out. The retail audit process is quite complicated; however, it has been much simplified since the arrival of store audit app suites.
Broadly, the process can be broken into several steps:
- You start by establishing the objectives of your store audit.
- The next step involves designing the audit criteria. In this step, you identify the questions to be asked and the acceptable answers.
- Then you schedule appointments, and gather data and photos.
- Finally, you evaluate the results and implement changes if needed.
The points that we have highlighted above is a typical in-store audit process. Some stores might have a more complex and intricate process according to the size of their business.
A store audit or retail audit results may not always directly reflect in your sales numbers. However, it could lead to business growth overtime if you take strategic actions with the data you already have.
The audit will streamline any inefficiencies in your store’s operation. It will also eliminate quality issues with respect to both the products as well as the customer service inside.
Once you resolve these issues, it will result in better customer service and increase sales. Thus, we can say that in-store audits indirectly impact sales of your store.
A typical retail compliance audit is of two kinds. One is called Planogram Compliance, and the second type deals with labor and contract compliance.
Planogram Compliance is concerned with ensuring that your organization’s instruction on how retail merchandising, shelving or displays are set up in-store is followed. The process is fairly similar to a normal audit process which includes:
- Establishing goals of audit
- Designing the criteria
- Gathering data and photos
- Evaluating the data and getting results
- Implementing changes based on those results
A field audit is important because where there is a significant amount of human element involved, there are bound to be inefficiencies in the system. Therefore periodic field audit is a requirement to ensure these inefficiencies are eliminated in a timely fashion.
Field audit apps make that job way easier as manual effort is cut down drastically, thereby dramatically increasing the speed of the field audit. It can also function as a field data collection app.
Although both the audits are done in retail, there are significant differences between them. For example:
- A retail audit is more focused towards collecting data with regards to the customer sentiment, the appearance of the store, etc.
- On the other hand, merchandising audits ensure that your store’s displays are in place, your shelves are full, and you are ready to sell.
Thus, to summarize retail audit audits the retail outlet as a whole. Merchandising audit focuses on your shelves, inventories and related things.
Field data helps in generating real-life/practical insights as opposed to theoretical, which have minimum application in actual business. A field data collection app collects the authentic field data that gives us a peek into how the consumer is actually responding to our brand as compared to our predictions. Based on the comparison,you can implement changes in your brand in terms of positioning and image for better performance in the market.