Mobile Merchandising: MobileSOP configuration for merchandising automation and merchandiser work control and management.

Our mobile world requires the growing mobility of sales representatives and agents. But higher the representative’s mobility, higher the cost of mobile structure maintaining and development. It is especially noticeable in such area as merchandising, where paper forms are the most popular way to record the results at least somehow; however this way involves expenses, possible loss of quality and… mobility. In addition to form-filling, sales representative should in some manner transfer the form to back office; then it is to be correctly entered and analysed for possible errors afterwards.

The corporate system of merchandiser activity automation – Mobile Merchandising – will allow you to step aside of traditional paperwork technologies through complete automation of merchandiser activity, any forms entry and their transmission to your back office accounting / analytical system bypassing the whole stage of result retyping from the paper carriers. Additionally, the automation system provides you with the complete reports on the activity of your sales representative, agent or merchandiser that allows monitoring his/her steps by minutes.

The solution topology is as follows. There is central website for configuration operations, merchandiser’s tasks and objectives assignment, control of his activity results. A mobile employee gets mobile application on his phone or tablet to collect all of merchandiser’s retail points, tasks, route schedule. Merchandiser visits the route location, performs the necessary operations of retail audit and availability standards – and the software guides him through the tasks allowing him to mark the results, e.g. fitting the standards of goods availability at the location. Mobile Merchandising solution pays special attention to convenient and fast processing of large data volumes. The software may work offline supporting data packet synchronization with back office.

Mobile Merchandising automation system supports virtually any type of the paper form that can be processed by your back office system. The time saved on filling the necessary forms allows the merchandiser to undertake the functions of sales representative / agent (for example, additional ordering of required goods at retail point, stock take operation, payment receipt, etc.)

This business automation system offers a separate option, goods distribution (facing; checking if goods are present in shop window/showcase) – this operation, including the transmission of all data to back office, now takes only few minutes. Mobile Merchandising system offers the option of barcode or QR code reading from goods surface via tablet’s built-in camera and phone. Implemented the integration with external barcode scanners connected via Bluetooth. The functions of point’s goods remainder inspection, goods delivery to location, payment receipt and point sales are available as well.

Owing to convenient and easy-to-grasp interface of merchandising automation system, you will optimize business processes typical for your company, cut your time and cost expenses on staff training, as well as raise work efficiency and productivity of your merchandisers, mobile representatives, sales agents at retail point, and also ensure goods availability on shelves.

IMPORTANT NOTES

Per se, sales automation module Mobile Merchandising allows controlling the sales representative (merchandiser) during his out-of-office work in remote retail points. Upon your request, sales representative, sales agent, merchandiser may get the information about retail point, approved standards of goods layout / placement (represented as diagram), obtain the route related data. In any case, sales representative, sales agent, merchandiser fills certain report entered on pocket device instead of paper forms. Supported are both basic reports (“yes, I have done everything” – and supervisor receives hidden timestamp of operation) and more complex tasks (similarly to Mobile Order system) —

• Determination of visit objectives and control of their fulfillment
• Registering the goods remnants and prices
• Inspection of equipment and promotional samples at retail point
• Control of goods layout and placement (control of goods availability at retail point)
• Goods quality estimation
• Control of other sales representatives
• Marketing survey of visitors
• Competitor’s goods analysis
• Control of retail point conditions
• Retail point analysis and control of available goods
• Merchandiser work analysis
• …and many more

Noticeable fact: our company offers specially developed product for automation of sales and retail point audit, MOBILESOP-ONLINE. This product allows creating corporate network for data ANALYSIS (including OLAP cube representation), distributed access level data organization for remote users, data input. As manager, you get the option of virtually unlimited scaling of your enterprise and partner connection with zero expenses growth! All you need for this purpose is common computer with standard web browser. No additional software is required so there no need to employ dedicated IT professionals or developer representatives who are helping with efficient staff management.

We can also provide ready-to-use integration mechanisms to the companies preferring to connect mobile workplaces directly to accounting system.

Just contact us, tell us your goals and problems, and we will offer you different ways to handle them.