3 Ways to Increase Retail Execution

Photo by Marc van der Chijs, via Flickr

“The result of bad communication is a disconnection between strategy and execution.”
Chuck Martin
Former Vice President, IBM

Your retail company may have the best and brightest employees in the industry. You have game-changing ideas on how to take your business to the next level and as a team, you have spent hours developing your strategy.

Ready, set… uh oh! You’re just finding out there’s a problem in your retail execution. It’s disappointing after all your strategizing, but it’s not something that can’t be fixed.

You can quickly respond to – and perhaps even prevent – flaws in your retail execution.

We’ve identified three key problems in retail execution and how they affect your operation:

1. Compliance
You lack the ability to monitor compliance on multiple fronts, including product distribution, promotions, planograms and out-of-stocks.

2. New product launches
You lack the ability to monitor new product launches in real time. As a result, you have a poor return on brand and promotion investments.

3. Limited decision making
Since you lack real-time data for customers, promotions, products and competitors, you’ve prohibited your ability to quickly identify a problem and develop an actionable plan to address the issue.

If you’ve noticed any of these issues before, you have a communication problem.

Even the best strategies may need some tweaking once implemented. If you want to improve your retail execution, you must have access to accurate data at a moment’s notice. You need real-time information and the ability to quickly analyze the situation.

What can you do? You are the doctor and your store is the patient. You order an “MRI” to diagnose the problem and gain insight.

“M” is for monitoring.

Track new product rollouts and monitor promotional execution. Verify in-store displays and signage.

“R” is for real-time reports.

Don’t wait a week to find out there’s a problem in your sales. Track the execution of programs by region and individual location. Receive real-time exception reports on your mobile device or desktop.

“I” is for images.

Share images and video, and pop into your store from anywhere. Stay organized by using a mobile solution that uploads images directly from your device, and sorts them by team or region.

Don’t let poor communication get the best of your strategy or impede your execution. Stay mobile and use a flexible platform that works with you, not against you.

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