Major retail businesses are turning away from manual stock control processes in a bid to reduce inventory inaccuracies and boost profitability.
Leading global Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) business, Mayfair, which supplies confectionary products to retailers across the UK, has recently swapped paper-based audit forms for new mobile data capture solutions to speed up and improve the stock audit process to ensure it never runs out of stock again.
This comes after a recent survey of UK shoppers found that 57% of consumers would choose to look elsewhere or wouldn’t buy a product at all if their chosen retailer was out of stock, resulting in a loss of £485 billion for retailers each year.
Mayfair has significantly improved the accuracy of its audits and reduced the amount of time required by auditors to capture information, such a stock counts and images of store shelving, by adopting the new WorkMobile® for Retail mobile solution. As a result, confidence in buying decisions has been improved and stock level inaccuracies have been reduced, ensuring the retailer is always supplying the right products.
Other retailers replacing paper audit forms for electronic alternatives are also reaping the rewards of greater efficiency and accuracy as they are now able to create reports more accurately in real-time on a mobile device, meaning decisions on stock levels and product displays can be made much more quickly. As a result, retailers across the country adopting a digital-first approach are improving the level and quality of service for customers.
Dr Moneeb Awan, managing director at WorkMobile®, said: “While conducting retail checks, auditors must collect a lot of information accurately, in order to monitor stock levels and identify gaps accordingly. This data is extremely valuable to retailers, as they need to be regularly monitoring stock levels in order to know how well products are selling and when shelves need to be refilled.
“By making the change from manual audit processes to mobile-based forms, such as WorkMobile® for Retail, retailers can collect data accurately and in real-time, enabling them to make quick, informed decisions on stock levels.”
Haseeb Iqbal, head of risk and compliance at Mayfair, said: “WorkMobile’s® digital forms have helped us to transform the way our data is collected and analysed from over 200,000 retailers nationally. By using paper-based methods of data collection, it’s always a challenge to ensure that audit information is captured and relayed into the back-office systems timely and accurately. It’s also very time consuming and doesn’t make the job easy for our field team, who often have to travel across a number of different sites throughout their day.
“After reviewing our processes, we recognised the need for a mobile solution that would enable our auditors to complete questionnaires quickly and easily, while operating from various locations. The project with WorkMobile® has proved to be a huge success and has enabled us to significantly cut down the time it takes for our field team to complete a report, meaning that our line managers can make quicker, more accurate decisions. We are now looking to purchase more licenses from WorkMobile® later this year to enable the solution to be used in our other departments.”
WorkMobile® can replace any paper form irrespective of its size and complexity. Forms can be created automatically and shared with a workforce of thousands in just minutes. Data is securely captured, transmitted and stored using the latest encryption technologies and international standards.
All manner of data can be captured, including date and time, location, photos and signatures, on or offline.
Watch the Workmobile features demo here.