4 Ways Surveys Find Waste and Boost Efficiencies
March 20, 2024 By Becca Fisk and Jasmine Barham – Retailers often invest extra time and resources when they don’t have accurate data from the field. When your chain has an accurate profile of every store, you eliminate guesswork in store needs and improve maintenance schedules. Accurate profiles ensure that you purchase the exact equipment, correct fixtures, and marketing materials. This improved efficiency reduces wasteful overages and unnecessary spending.
In addition to on-site surveys, the AccuStore 6 survey app can create and distribute surveys to store personnel to quickly gather specific store-level information to keep the original survey data and site profiles accurate. You can visually confirm the accuracy of your responses with a simple photo to help you raise the bar on execution and compliance audits. The survey tool synchronizes with your database to eliminate manual compiling of spreadsheet data.
Opportunities to Pinpoint Waste
- Mergers and Acquisitions. There are several different types of in-store opportunities for surveys. After new store acquisitions or mergers, it’s time to capture architectural and equipment details to create initial site profiles for each location—and to ensure accurate data for efficient execution in-store going forward.
- Marketing Material Overage. These surveys capture POP details, such as the specific number of sign types, hardware components and dimensions of each graphic insert frame. This key data pinpoints and reduces unnecessary overages before the next marketing campaign roll out—and ensures only the exact quantity each store needs ships.
- Fixturing Assessment. These surveys determine if there are enough fixtures for each store layout, along with the right amount of front of house displays and back of house storage. Also, it’s how to know if there are sufficient quantities of displays and storage to accommodate extra inventory for the holiday season.
- Equipment Maintenance. Capturing accurate equipment details reduces capital expenditures. It also tracks and improves scheduling by reducing the number of expensive maintenance visits for servicing equipment. In addition, it’s important to conduct facility compliance and safety audits on a regular basis to protect your stores and your brand.
Developing the Survey
Once you’ve determined the data you need, the next step is developing the survey. To ensure accuracy of the site data collected at each retail location, the survey team should first complete a business needs analysis and determine use cases with key company stakeholders. They will then conduct on-site walk-throughs to specify and refine all survey terminology, measurement details and customized data points.
Once the final survey specifications are set, the team will collect survey data and digital photos at each site location. It’s important to also have project status meetings for ongoing client communication throughout the process. Utilizing this approach will lead to seamless on-site survey execution at each location—and a complete, accurate set of store profile data.
What questions do you have about surveys? Let us know and we’ll answer them.
