The Retail Audit Process

If you think the words "retail audit process" refer to a high-stakes exercise marked by ambiguous data and confusing spreadsheets, we're here to challenge that assumption. Believe it or not, a retail audit can be empowering, especially when the technology behind it makes it easy to extract useful, action-ready insights and improve your stores.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to retail audits, AccuStore's mobile technology can help you carry out an audit that fulfills your unique performance and compliance goals – no spreadsheets required.

Here's a breakdown of a retail audit process that takes advantage of our tools:

Assemble the audit team: Experienced, specialized auditors can help you uncover pertinent data and make informed business decisions. This audit team should understand the retail space and be aware of the unique challenges your stores face.

Identify all audit objectives: Establishing what to measure is the foundation of your audit. AccuStore lets you create a checklist of objectives that auditors access right from their mobile devices. Teams can add checklist items that correlate with every compliance-related business dimension and include scoring for quantitative analysis. Consider the checkout line: wait times under two minutes might receive a score of 5 while wait times longer than six minutes receive a score of 1. Applying numerical standards will help you compare performance over time and understand audit results in context.

Craft audit questions to minimize errors and inconsistencies: Speaking of context, getting good data often means asking the right questions. The questions you ask should be clear and repeatable. Clear questions help audit teams record accurate responses while repeat-ability ensures consistently relevant (and, therefore, consistently comparable) results across multiple audits.

Capture photos: It's hard to argue with the facts, and including photographic evidence with your audits adds visual validation to the standard checkbox approach. Wondering why your POP merchandising received a 3 out of 5? An image will tell the whole story, and AccuStore's mobile app automatically attaches photos to corresponding checklist items.

Measure, adjust, and re-audit: With your team and checklist ready for action, it's time to complete your store walk. The audit team will explore your facilities, collecting data and assigning scores in AccuStore. The best part? Our mobile app sends store data to decision makers in real-time, so there's no need for spreadsheets and more opportunities to make speedy, valuable changes at your stores. With established objectives and anytime access to past performance data, AccuStore helps you craft a repeatable audit process resulting in relevant, comparable intelligence.

Our technology brings speed and clarity to retail audits, but that's not where it ends. AccuStore's store profiles and mobile data management tools also help you conduct top-to-bottom site surveys and build sophisticated inventory plans. No matter how you choose to implement AccuStore, you will benefit from informed, data-driven management decisions that improve customer experiences across your chain. Contact us today to take control of your stores' performance.

If you think the words “retail audit process” refer to a high-stakes exercise that yields a deluge data of limited value, we’re here to challenge that assumption. Believe it or not, a retail audit can be empowering – especially when the methodology behind it results in useful, action-ready insights.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to retail audits, AccuStore can help you construct a process that fulfills your unique performance and compliance goals. Our retail audits incorporate the following steps:

Assemble the audit team: Experienced, specialized auditors can help you uncover pertinent data and make informed business decisions. This audit team should understand the retail space and be aware of the unique challenges your stores face. What’s more, auditors should utilize the latest technologies to expedite the transmission of data to decision makers.
Identify all audit objectives: Establishing what to measure is the foundation of your audit. Your checklist of objectives should include every compliance-related business dimension and use numerical scoring for quantitative analysis. Consider the checkout line: wait times under two minutes might receive a score of 5 while wait times longer than six minutes receive a score of 1. Applying numerical standards will help you compare performance over time and understand audit results in context.
Craft audit questions to minimize errors and inconsistencies: Speaking of context, getting good data often means asking the right questions. The questions you ask should be clear and repeatable. Clear questions help audit teams record accurate responses while repeatability ensures consistently relevant (and, therefore, consistently comparable) results across multiple audits.
Ask for photos: It’s hard to argue with the facts, and including photographic evidence with your audits adds visual validation to the standard checkbox approach. Wondering why your visual merchandising received a 3 out of 5? An image will tell the whole story – in an instant. So will multimedia and other interactive data formats, all of which AccuStore can deliver.
Measure, adjust, and re-audit: With your team, checklist, and technologies ready, it’s time to move forward with your audit. The audit team will explore your facilities, collecting data and assigning scores. The best part? When they’re finished with the audit, you will have all the data you need to make informed decisions. Forget about confusing reports of questionable value – a sophisticated audit process results in sophisticated data. And it’s a process you can repeat for relevant, comparable intelligence.

AccuStore’s retail audit process relies on professional surveyors who are well-versed in the challenges retailers face. A retail audit takes just minutes to assemble and distribute across the AccuStore platform and promises fast, accurate, consistent results across your chain. Contact us today to discover hidden compliance obstacles and take control of your stores’ performance.