When Merchandising and Marketing teams leverage the latest technology they have the opportunity to drive productivity gains that ultimately impact sales. In this post we explore 5 ways to enhance sales performance using technology to improve visibility, accountability and execution control.

Whether you’re setting out to capture a few data points on a department scheduled for reset, conducting a full store survey in preparation for a remodel or setting up a routine store conditions audit, preparation is key. You owe it to yourself to consider the who, what, how and why of field information capture before embarking on a project. Here are the Top 10 Best Practices for conducting retail survey projects:

If your organization is like most brick-and-mortar retailers you will have felt a significant shift in the last five years brought on by the financial crisis. Many organizations have moved their focus from square foot expansion to maximizing square foot performance; achieved in some cases by shrinking the store footprint. As you might expect technology is playing an increasingly critical role in helping retailers maximize performance. One such technology is mobile data collection, focused on task management and capturing store conditions.

One of the most common regrets I hear in my conversations with retail teams is; “We just don’t know with any certainty what exists across our network of stores”. The people who are charged with executing merchandising, remodel or maintenance programs are often forced to adopt a generic solution because of a knowledge gap – the delta between what we think vs. what we know.

The results of a recent study on in-store merchandising practices, suggests there are significant opportunities to improve Merchandising Compliance. The research conducted by RIS News, paints a gloomy picture of lost opportunity sales. The results indicate most of today’s national and regional retail chains fall short because their processes are broken and outdated.

With increasing costs of doing business and high competition from industry rivals, businesses are feeling the pressure of maintaining reasonable selling prices and gross margins. So, suppliers and retailers are finding new ways to package better through store profiling, in order to improve the return on investment in stock, marketing, and pricing.

Store design and planning is one of the most important things that retailers need to address to stay profitable. With a proper store layout, merchandise will sell itself, but when the design is untidy and congested, even the best product can go unnoticed. The idea of planning your store design is not just to make it look appealing, but also create an environment that entices customers to spend more time in the store, and possibly spend more money impulsively.

Within the retail industry, merchandising plays a crucial role in identifying with a company’s target consumers. If operations are executed with a focus on visual merchandising, the final presentation should blend together and incorporate a well thought-out process that the target audience can appreciate.

When running your retail business, effective and organized database management is imperative for keeping things running smoothly. When it comes to collecting and storing data, about your customers, your shelf space, your floor plan and your products, creating a user-friendly, error-free experience for your staff and customers will provide significant benefits to your business. Here are some tips for optimal database management.

Retail competition is fierce out there, and with new shopping opportunities popping up every day, retailers have to do all they can to keep driving conversions. Here are some tricks to turn shoppers into buyers.

Merchandising managers play a key part in achieving sales performance within retail operations. Their role is to drive merchandising and productivity standards and to manage and maintain the overall budget. To complete this role effectively, merchandising managers must have direct access to real-time data on current product inventory, Planograms, sales history and other metrics. Cloud-based data from merchandise management software is set to become a critical tool in carrying out this work in coming years, and within this post, we’ll look at why merchandising managers must embrace the cloud.

Businesses require a refined store layout to ensure their customers can find the product they need with ease, to direct the flow of traffic through the store, and to ensure effective promotion of priority items. Our team has many years’ experience helping retailers and merchandisers create highly effective layout plans for their stores, and in this latest post we present our five tips for a smart store layout.

Cloud-based services are helping revolutionize many industries. Within the retail field, cloud technology is transforming the way companies implement a range of processes. Merchandising management, for example, is one of the processes that can now be driven by cloud technology. In this latest post, our team looks at the benefits of digitizing the merchandising management process and the impact cloud technology can have on merchandising within brick and mortar businesses.

By refining their merchandising strategies, growing retailers can boost their flagging sales figures throughout the year.

Retail has been experiencing a major shift in demographics over the past few years. While retail has always been about knowing your customer; in the last number of years that rule has become more critical than ever.

Store Attribute Databases have been around for many years and have proven to be a powerful tool in helping retail teams plan and deploy everything from in-store marketing programs to new planograms.