Tracking In-Store Merchandising for Future Retail Group

Tracking In-Store Merchandising for Future Retail Group

In brick and mortar retail, Future Group is one of the leading players in India with multiple chains catering to different consumer needs. Some of their most famous retails chains are Big Bazar, FBB, Easyday, Hometown and Ezone.

Needless to say the investment such retail chains make in in-store merchandising activities and the importance of tracking execution of such activities.

Future Group had a similar problem statement for its North India region and was looking for a comprehensive Visual Merchandising solution to track following parameters:

• Discipline of in-store merchandisers
• Coverage of on-going campaigns
• Timely deployment of POSM materials
• Maintenance and inventory of high value assets

Approach

With best-in-class Visual Merchandising workflow and numerous in-built configuration options, Assistive was a perfect solution for what client was looking for. After doing necessary configurations and minor customizations, we were ready for the launch with a live system within a week. Some of the key steps taken to meet client’s end objective were as follows:

• All the on-going campaigns were created and mapped against specific outlets using excel based utility functions
• Configurable questionnaires were created to capture maintenance and inventory data without doing any additional backend development
• Implemented geo-tagged and time-stamped attendance feature to track merchandiser discipline
• Rolled out an easy and intuitive merchandising workflow to capture campaign execution details
• Integration of in-app camera ensured actual images are captured as proof of execution
• Classroom and Market training sessions were held to handhold the users till they are comfortable using the app
• Custom dashboards were created to monitor campaign coverage, POSM deployment and inventory details on a real-time basis
• PDF and PPT based catalog reports containing actual store images were activated to get complete view of in-store merchandising post campaign deployment

Outcome

With successful deployment of Assistive solution in more than 60 outlets across North India, client gained complete visibility of the in-store merchandising operations for three of its key chains – Big Bazar, Easyday and FBB. The key achievements are as follows:

• Significant improvement in discipline of the merchandisers
• With more than 20 campaigns running every month, coverage report helped the client to efficiently track the progress and take quick actions as and when required
• Target vs. Achievement report helped them to monitor actual POSM deployment data
• Gained complete visibility of condition and inventory of high value assets such as Mannequins, LED Banners etc.