RETAIL AUDIT
Retail audit (in-store audit) is the study of selected retail outlets to collect data about the health of the brands compared to the quality of retail execution. Retail audit is a retail business intelligence that allows a company to gather quantitative and qualitative data to measure its retail execution performance via external data, namely;
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Product availability
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Visibility compliance
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Shelf shares
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Price compliance
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Inventory counting
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FEFO tracking
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Customer satisfaction survey
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Competition data, etc.
Why your company needs retail audit ?
As the Business Owner, CEO, VP, General Manager, Commercial Manager, Marketing Director or any other high ranked executive who is responsible for the commercial success of the company try to answer below questions;
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Do the shoppers find your products wherever and whenever they want?
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Am I sure that my pricing strategy implemented properly?
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How fast can I react to potential stock-outs and overstocks?
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How many POSM do we have inside the stores?
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Does the POSM placement facilitate more sales?
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Does your sales team possess the needed product knowledge?
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How could I evaluate retailer satisfaction about my or my distributor's performance without physical touch?
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How could I be informed about competitive activities remotely?
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How could I improve the quality of retail execution remotely?
If you are not sure with the answers then you are facing the same problem as many companies do. Keep reading below...
The Problem !
First facet of the problem is the fact that in most of the cases as managers we are inclined to evaluate retail performance by looking at internal data only. Sales volume, sales value, collection rates, number of sales calls, visit frequencies, value per customer, strike rate, completion rate, product withdrawal rate and etc. are among of many internal performance indicators.
What we are missing here is the external data of sales performance which can not be obtained from internal software tools being employed, but rather from retail market analysis. Think about below KPI list for a moment.
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Product availability on the shelf
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Availability and physical condition of your sales equipment
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Shelf share dynamics of your brands
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Shelf price communication quality
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Age of your products on the shelf
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Number of shopper interaction points
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Retailer engagement level with your business
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Competitive perspective on all above mentioned KPIs and etc.
Retail market research brings quality perspective into the sales performance. In a combination with your internal data that is presenting you new opportunities for sales performance management. Keep reading below...
How to use retail audit data ?
Retail audit data can be leveraged differently based on the profile of it's user, but with the same purpose all the time, which is the improvement of retail execution management, sales team performance and achievement of business objectives. At this point it worth to split retail audit data users into two groups.
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Brand owners (Suppliers)
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Distributors (Resellers)
The biggest challenge for brand owners who rely on distributors to sell their products is maintaining the integrity of their brand promise across multiple relationships and channels. Your brand promise can get scrambled or lost in a system that includes multiple tiers between a supplier and a consumer. And that is a big problem for supplier companies because they don't have direct control over the distributors that represent their products or services.
That's why developing a partnership with your distributors is vital to your success. Supplier firms can't mandate management policy to a distributor, but suppliers can share best practices and resources with partners in a mutually beneficial relationship. Retail audit data is one of those strategic resources that helps brand owners;
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Monitor and Manage Distributor & Retail Execution Performance
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Monitor and Manage Brand Heath quality
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Monitor Competitive activities in retail
On the distributor side retail audit data becomes an operational tool for sales performance management, which may include below applications but not limited to those only;
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Sales team performance management
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Brand/SKU penetration monitoring
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Product stocks monitoring
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Merchandising & Planogram monitoring
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Inventory quantity monitoring
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Promo and Price monitoring
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FEFO monitoring
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Competitive monitoring
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Store associate knowledge check
Why Retailor ?
For companies that want to establish and maintain control over their retail execution management, Retailor LLC is the retail intelligence partner that unlike other alternatives has been delivering Reliable and Actionable data since 2015 across Central Asia and The Caucasus. We are continuously investing in cutting-edge and sophisticated retail audit technology to deliver our vision of Connecting Retail Execution and Strategy. That is helping us to partner with global names like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Algida, British American Tobacco, and others.
Our advantages over competition:
15 + years of FMCG and Project Management experience
10 + years of Retail Audit management experience
Trusted by Global and Local partners
Business operations in The Caucasus and Central Asia countries
Digitalized recruitment and training processes
Data Quality Control process - 99% data accuracy
Advanced data collection and reporting technology
Actionable data delivered live and online
15 + years of FMCG and Project Management experience
10 + years of Retail Audit management experience
Trusted by Global and Local partners
Business operations in Caucasus and Central Asia countries
Auditor recruitment and training processes
Data Quality Control process - 99% data accuracy
Advanced retail audit technology
Actionable data delivered live and online