Promotion Optimization Institute Report Acknowledges VisitBasis as an “Affordable, Rapidly Deployed” Solution to Retail Execution

Miami, FL – VisitBasis, the startup mobile retail execution solution provider from Hallandale Beach, FL, has been included among the 20 representative providers of retail execution technology evaluated by the Promotion Optimization Institute (POI).

The POI Retail Execution Vendor Panorama 2016 report is a detailed analysis by the POI of the retail execution technology market and its vendors, including Accenture, SAP, and StayInFront, among others.

VisitBasis is evaluated in the report as being “a low cost and largely do-it-yourself solution with a global footprint” and “a starting point for affordable, rapidly deployed, and integrated on your own… merchandising solutions”.

“We feel that the POI Retail Execution Vendor Panorama 2016 captured the essence of what VisitBasis aims to bring to mobile retail execution: Simplicity and affordability, with global reach”, says Sergey Gorbunov, VisitBasis CEO. “As we continually improve our application, we will use this document as a roadmap to further providing exceptional mobile retail execution solutions. It is an honor to be included in a report by such an industry-leading organization.”

The complete POI Retail Execution Vendor Panorama 2016 report can be downloaded at http://poinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/POI-Retail-Execution-Vendor-Panorama-2016-FINAL-1.pdf.

For more information on the Promotion Optimization Institute, visit www.poinstitute.com.

About VisitBasis Tech, Llc.
VisitBasis is a B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) company specialized in the development of cost-effective, cutting-edge and comprehensive mobile solutions that aim to increase sales and reduce costs, improving the bottom-line of businesses that rely on field professionals. The key benefit of VisitBasis app is to optimize retail execution, merchandising, field marketing, mobile data collection, retail audits, territory management, sales rep planning, tracking sales, mobile staff management, electronic product catalog, sales enablement, among others, especially in the consumer product goods (CPG) and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries.

Three Simple Tips on Management a Retail Merchandising Team

Managing retail merchandising teams can be a challenge, especially when a company operates in many different retail locations. One of the biggest problems, a field team manager face when managing remote workforce, is communication. The good news is that in today’s mobile world it’s easy to find a merchandising software solution, which provides the whole team with the up-to-date communication tools.

A comprehensive merchandising software solution strengthens cooperation between office managers and merchandisers, who work remotely, and makes it possible to have productive retail merchandising teams located all over the globe, in different timezones and countries. Here are a few examples of how merchandising software makes it easier to manage merchandising activities in the field.

1. Make sure your merchandisers stay connected – Mobile merchandising application is a unique tool for merchandisers, which makes them feel a part of the team. To feel connected, your merchandisers don’t have to send text messages, make phone calls, send e-mails or even visit the office, but can communicate with the managers and other team members directly through the mobile application. When merchandisers collect retail data using a merchandising mobile application, it can be instantly transferred to corporate database and is available for the managers, so they can send messages to merchandisers making timely remarks, or simply saying thank you for the job done.
2. Keep your merchandisers up to date – Having a merchandising software solution on their tablets and smartphones, your merchandisers are instantly informed on scheduled visits and planned tasks and have 24/7 mobile access to customer information and product catalog, must stock lists, history or orders and returns and etc. Merchandising software provides your merchandisers with mobile access to all the information they need to perform their duties in the field, so they always stay informed and know what to do next.
3. Analyze merchandising performance – The most sophisticated merchandising solutions also deliver excellent reporting on merchandising performance, merchandisers’ activity, and the progress of the task performance, allowing office managers to easily evaluate how merchandisers are performing in the field. In this way merchandising software allows managers to mark merchandisers’ progress and link their engagement efforts to performance.

To get more information on how to manage a retail merchandising team, visit www.visitbasis.com.

3 Ways for Sales Managers to Get and Stay Organized

Sales team management is a weighty work that requires certain personal skills and time. Managing sales teams effectively can help sales reps increase the number of orders and build strong relationships with customers, improving their sales performance. For a sales team manager staying organized is the key to being effective. A sales manager has to analyze large amounts of data, to monitor sales performance, identify trends, adjust business strategy and make all kinds of decisions. None of it is possible if a manager doesn’t have all the necessary information readily available and can’t quickly have access to precisely the data he needs at the moment.

The development of sales team management software solutions provides new opportunities for sales team managers to get organized, better manage time and be more effective. Having access to Web-based dashboards, reports and analytics, sales team managers can significantly improve their performance since they are always able to do the following things:

Access all the necessary information from one place – Sales team management software solutions allow organizing retail workflow in a centralized place, accessible anytime, anywhere. Always having ready at hand complete information on customers, points of sale, sales reps’ performance, history of retail visits, orders/returns, product catalog and so on, field team managers are able to act better and faster. Sales team management software also provides great analytic capabilities for managers. Whether you are processing customer or employee surveys, electronic order forms, questionnaires, market research surveys, retail audit data, or even images from photo reports, sales team management software will present you with the data you need in the shape you need it.

Create a schedule of retail visits in few clicks – Field sales management software offers sales team managers a great variety of opportunities to reduce time spent for scheduling, including planning visits in bulk or individually, rescheduling appointments on the go, adding visits and tasks during a day. With a sales team management software solution it takes less than a minute to plan the schedule of visits for a sales rep for weeks or even month in advance. Moreover, a manager doesn’t have to invest any time at all to notify sales reps of the schedule – all the information about visits and tasks to be performed is instantly in their tablets and smartphones due to automatic synchronization.

Easily manage sales territories – Using field sales management software for territory planning allows clearly defining field reps’ responsibilities, avoiding territory overlap and conflicts between team members. A manager can easily assign and reassign sales reps to customers or vice versa in bulk or individually, use interactive search capabilities to navigate customers and see them on the map, filter customers on the map by name, address, area code, custom properties, export and import customer/user mapping, compare two or more users territories to eliminate overlapping customers, and more.

To learn more about sales management tools, or get your free trial of sales team management software, visit www.visitbasis.com. To get more information on sales teams management you can also read our previous articles.

Raising the Level of Motivation Across the Sales Team

How Your Sales Reps Can Improve Customer Service

How to Research Your Competition Using Field Team Management Software

Simple Ways to Increase Engagement and Empower Your Field Reps

Although it is believed that it’s really hard to cultivate a sense of belonging for remote employees, who have limited interactions with their managers, with new technologies and a little effort your filed team can work as closely together as your in-office team.

The first step in creating cohesion is choosing a comprehensive software solution that allow you to track field reps activities in real time, managing all the operations in the field, including customer relations, retail performance, orders and returns, promotions and another operations that are basic for your organization.

Empowering Field Reps

An up-to-date retail execution software solution can give field reps real-time visibility of how they are performing. Knowing where they are, field reps can work more confident. While feeling they control situations at points of sale, they are still always able to reach out to the manager if necessary. Besides, field reps, empowered with a present-day solution for retail execution, are able to perform their duties more efficiently, having better results and becoming more satisfied with the job done. Having all necessary tools on a single device, which they are used to and familiar with, your field reps become more engaged and productive performing various tasks with ease. Empowered with the right tools for retail performance, field reps are more targeted with their time, devoting more time to customers. Making field reps job less manual enhances employees’ productivity and allows you to use your field force for more rewarding work.

Increasing Engagement

Implementing a retail execution software solution gives managers the capability to monitor field reps actions in real time, including task performance, routes for the day and mileage, GPS-locations of actions performed. These capabilities not only allow managers to assess task performance, but also provide them with the opportunity to engage field reps by using software communication features. Having instant access to information about field reps performance, a manager can quickly send a message to thank a rep for the job done, instantly encouraging more of good performance, or make timely remarks to give a rep the chance to quickly correct the situation. If field reps also have an opportunity to send messages that are instantly available to the management, managers are always aware of the needs of field reps and can resolve point of sale situations, requiring attention, immediately. In these ways instant-messaging functions can help to foster field reps engagement and to keep high level of motivation.

To get more information on field team management, visit www.visitbasis.com, or read our previous articles.

How Your Sales Reps Can Improve Customer Service

A Three-Step Guide to Finding the Right App for Field Team Management

4 Tips to Make Field Reps Love Your Field Team Management Solution

Sales Reps Tips: Improving Customer Service

In today’s highly competitive business environment customers’ expectations from customer service are continuously increasing. Therefore, the performance of sales reps must also continuously improve to provide highest quality of customer service and improve loyalty.

To meet customers’ expectations and specific requirements managers should implement innovative techniques of customer service among sales reps that enhance the speed and quality of service, making customers feel that their needs have priority.

The up-to-date mobile solutions for retail execution provide field reps with the tools that simplify data collection at points of sale, allowing serving customers more effectively. Below you’ll find some examples of how customer service can be improved if your field reps are enabled with a comprehensive mobile solution for retail execution. So, having all the necessary tools at their fingertips, your field reps are able to:

Instantly respond to customers’ needs. Retail execution software provides real-time data workflow and allows reacting to customers’ requests and requirements very quickly. All the information, collected by sales reps at points of sale, including customer survey data, photo-reports, electronic signatures, is instantly transferred to corporate database and is available to managers. Real-time reporting empowers field team managers to identify situations that require their attention and take urgent measures to resolve them.

Serve customers more quickly maintaining high quality. Electronic task templates, sales order/return mobile forms and automated data entry save a lot of time. Retail execution software also allows minimizing data-entry mistakes and provides instant data transfer due to automatic synchronization. Accordingly, instead of filling out paper forms and visiting the office to get the tasks and report, your field reps can spend more time with customers, focusing on their requirements to maximize the quality of service.

Easily show customers they care. Having mobile access from anywhere to all customers’ information, including contacts, history of visits, past orders and returns, survey and retail audit data, and managers’ notes, sales reps can better understand the whole situation at each point of sale. When field reps are empowered with mobile access to data, they are always able to be specific and show the customers they care.

Adopting a mobile software solution for sales reps allow companies to improve customer service by implementing practice of real-time response to customers’ requirements, increasing the speed and quality of customer service, and servicing each customer’s specific needs. To learn more about how to improve your field team performance, or to get free access to retail execution software, visit www.visitbasis.com

Retail Execution Software: Managing Remote Sales Teams

07/22/2015

 

Three Simple Tips on Management Remote Sales Teams

Successfully Managing Remote Sales Teams

If a sales team team is spread across different geographical regions and time zones physical and cultural distance barriers may occur. One of the biggest problems, a field team manager face, is communication. Implementing a retail execution software solution makes it possible to have productive teams located all over the globe. Below you’ll find three simple tips on how retail execution software can help to simplify your remote sales teams management.

Make Sure Sales Team Members Stay Connected

Field team management software gives field reps an ability to collaborate with each other in real time. Thus, they don’t even need to make phone calls and send e-mails to report. Sales reps perform tasks using just their tablets and smartphones, while all the data they collected at stores is instantly transferred to corporate database and is available for analysis.

Keep Your Sales Reps Informed

Having a mobile software solution for retail execution on their mobile devices, sales reps can access to customer information and product catalog, the schedule of visits, the history or orders and returns and etc. This can really help sales reps to stay informed, not asking the information from other team members every time they need it.

Stay Abreast of Sales Performance

A comprehensive software solution for retail execution delivers excellent reporting on retail performance, sales reps activity, and the progress of the task performance, allowing field team managers to monitor all business processes consistently and take data-driven decisions.

To get more information about sales force management, visit www.visitbasis.com, or register free account to get access to field force automation solution for retail execution.

How To Use Retail Execution Software For Generating KPI Reports

Key performance indicators (KPIs) serve as a roadmap to business growth, allowing managers to assess the achievement of company’s goals and adjust marketing strategy, when necessary. Tracking industry trends is particularly important to retailers due to the high volatility of the business. In a changing retail environment it’s critical that data is effectively managed for real-time KPI reports.

At first sight, lots of data is available for field team managers to assess sales reps performance. On the other hand, data gathering, visualization and analysis can be really challenging while managing KPI framework. Field team managers might feel like they have too many balls in the air when it comes to gathering various data for several KPIs. Reporting delays and data inaccuracies due to human errors, big time gaps between data aggregation and getting insights for making decisions determine the complexity of KPIs implementation.

In order for a KPI report to provide a current view of retail conditions, it needs real-time data. Retail execution software can help companies to improve KPIs implementation by allowing managers to get real-time GPS-confirmed data, blend different types of data for more robust analysis, and get the exact data they need at the moment. Lets consider the main ways a retail execution software solution can help companies to aggregate, track and manage data, used for KPI reporting.

Real-Time Data Workflow

Retail execution software not only allows your field reps to automate retail visits and tasks performance, but also provides real-time data workflow to generate KPI reports. Field team managers instantly get the following information:

• Progress in carrying out the tasks
• Work hours
• Field reps/customers timesheets
• Photos, taken in the field
• Actions performed
• Visits and tasks data
• Orders and returns
• GPS-locations.

Moreover, as you implement retail execution software, you’ll be able to generate new opportunities to collect data for KPIs, such as questionnaires, surveys, retail audits, inspections and etc.

Data Management, Made Easy

Retail execution software allows managers to simplify KPIs analysis, making it easy to present data in ratios and percentages and identify trends in the development of markets and sales territories. Real-time reporting empowers field team managers to identify situations that require their attention and take urgent measures to resolve them.

Although retail execution software has the ability to aggregate huge amounts of data, it’s also able to present data in a format that is suitable for particular needs. An effective software solution for retail execution is able to sort out important data and display it on the interactive dashboards. Role-based reporting is one of the most useful features for a field team manager as he can get the precise data he needs at the moment. All the reports can be customized to provide necessary information and empower field team manages to make smart decisions.

See firsthand how retail execution software can change the way of gathering data while managing KPI framework. To learn more about KPI implementation visit www.visitbasis.com, or sign up today to completely automate your retail data collection.

The Essential KPIs to Analyze Field Sales Team Performance

The performance of sales representatives is relatively easy to measure, because there are plenty of objective criteria. In this article we’ll talk about the KPIs related to sales. It’s natural that for field reps, whose primary function is to sell, the essential KPIs are one way or another related to sales. Below you’ll find some recommendationsthat will allow you to develop a set of effective KPIs for your sales team.

Assess the average size of an order. To get this number, divide total sales volume for a certain period by the number of orders. Sales reps, having average order size less than the others either sell customers a smaller number of products, or sell cheaper products. This KPI allows managers to identify weak points of territory division between field reps.

Estimate sales volume. Most of the companies tend to assess the long-term success of a sales representative on the basis of the sales numbers he produces. However the sales volume itself doesn’t provide a meaningful picture of sales performance, and therefore cannot be regarded as an effective indicator. The number itself doesn’t mean much. To create a KPI, that makes sense, sales volume should be analyzed regarding some other numbers. Sales reps normally get quotas for a certain period of time, based on their territory and sales experience. So, there are the following ways an effective KPI can be created:

• Compare a sales representative’s actual performance to his previous performance for the equal time periods (sales growth metrics).
• Compare over time a sales reps’ actual performance to his quotas.
• Compare a sales reps’ actual performance to the performance of his peers.

Evaluate the number of orders and returns. Estimating the number of orders and returns for each field reps over time and comparing to the same indicators for his peers you’ll be able to identify the most productive reps and to take appropriate measures if there are too many returns for a particular sales rep.

Analyze the ratio of order and shipping volumes.

An effective KPI can be generated when comparing of order and shipping volumes (for the same sales rep). The shipping volumes are generally lower than the order volumes due to the fact that the particular products can be out of stock, not been found by a person, responsible for loading, or returned by a customer. Having noticed a significant difference between the ordered and shipped products, it’s possible to find out the reasons of this event and take corrective actions.

Calculate the run rate. A run rate is another KPI that is used to define the performance of a sales rep in the current period and to adjust sales strategy, if necessary, to achieve the required quota. A run rate is an estimate of how much a sales rep will sell over a period of time, and allow managers to project sales through the end of the period. To calculate run rate for a year you have to divide year-to-date sales by the number of remaining sales periods and add it to your year-to-date sales. A run rate can be calculated for any period of time. E.g.: by 15 July a sales rep has sold products worth $5000 in 11 business days. His monthly quota is $13000 and there are 12 more business days left in August. Calculating the run rate, ($5000 (actual sales volume for 10 days)/(11 (the number of past days)*23 (the number of business days in August)= $10455), a field team manager can figure out that if the sales rep continues at the same pace till the end of the month, he will not fulfill his quota. Having this knowledge in the middle of the month, a field team manager still has enough time to correct the situation.

Choosing the right KPIs relies upon a clear understanding of what is really meaningful for a business process. Getting all the data to analyze KPIs at first glance may seem complicated. The good news is that today a comprehensive mobile solution for retail execution is really affordable for any company. A mobile application for field sales reps not just allow them to make orders and returns, using their tablets and smartphones, but also provide managers with the ability to aggregate and instantly analyze sales data. Register today at www.visitbasis.com to get your free access to retail execution software that will allow you to develop meaningful KPIs for your field sales team.

How Retail Execution Software Can Help Reduce Costs and Improve the Bottom Line

VisitBasis is a complete field activity and visit management system that helps companies reduce operational costs and boost retail revenues. Below you’ll find some examples of how VisitBasis retail execution software can improve the effectiveness of business processes in your company.

1. First of all VisitBasis makes it possible to implement a cohesive in-store marketing and merchandising strategy. With VisitBasis Retail Execution App you are able to create task templates defining tasks to be performed at points of sale. The VisitBasis simple but powerful task builder allows creating various types of tasks with different types of answers (number, text, electronic signature, photo, and multiple choices.
2. Your field reps always have mobile access to all customer data including address and location on the map, contacts, assets, attachments like images, videos, Word, Excel, PDF, order history, price lists, recommended quantities; and product information, such as photos, weight, unit type, quantity per pack. It makes much easier to find the required data and allows field reps to be more effective.
3. You can easily create a schedule of retail visits and optimize field reps’ routes to get the shortest route for the day. You are able to schedule visits in bulk for any periods of time. All visits and tasks are instantly displayed in tablets and smartphones of your field reps. This saves a lot of time: you can significantly reduce time spent for scheduling and your field reps don’t have to visit the office to receive tasks. Route optimization contributes to reducing fuel expenses and allows field reps to spend more time with customers.
4. Field reps can perform all the tasks using just their tablets or smartphones. Automated and completely paperless data entry saves time and money while improving productivity and minimizing mistakes. All the data collected in stores is instantly transferred to corporate database which enables a rapid response to situations requiring attention.
5. You can control retail execution process and get the clear picture of current retail conditions monitoring your field reps routes on the map and evaluating the progress in tasks performance in real time. All the data from points of sale that is displayed through the VisitBasis dashboards is GPS confirmed and time-stamped. There is no need to manually enter data to corporate database that releases time for analysis and decision-making.

To get your free access to VisitBasis Retail Execution Software register account at www.visitbasis.com. You’ll get one of the most powerful and comprehensive retail execution tool free of charge to see for yourself how it can help to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of your retail operations.