Online retail sales in the United States increased by 9.1% between 2019 and 2020, from $343.150 million to $374.38 million.
As a retailer with multiple stores in different locations, you may wonder how to effectively manage your stores without compromising customer service.
You will often find that different stores belonging to the same retailer offer different experiences to their clients. This is because the various stores are managed differently making it impossible for them to offer the same services across the board.
As consumer preferences rapidly evolve and competition has never been more fierce retail managers from all types of retail outlets are looking for ways to streamline operations better and make themselves more efficient.
To advance in the retail sector, technology has emerged as the savior, offering unique solutions to achieve maximum productivity and profitability. The retail execution field apps have completely transformed the way managers are going to handle tasks, monitor performance in real time, taking the decisions by looking at the data while they are on the go. By using these apps, retailers will be able to optimize every part of their retail process, from inventory management to merchandising, and compliance rounds to employee training.
In this blog post, we will discuss the importance and benefits of the Retail Execution Field App, which is key to a successful retail environment. Furthermore, we’ll cover the best retail execution field apps and how they contribute to operational efficiency and overall business success.
This post is great for anyone working in Retail, whether you’re a store manager building market knowledge or a start-up
Best Retail Execution Field Apps for Comprehensive Business Management
Before we highlight some of the most basic, but important aspect of retail execution process, let's take a quick look at some of the best retail execution field applications.
It'll give you a better idea of how these programs work against different real-life use cases.
1. Xenia- Overall Best Retail Execution Field App
Say hello to end-to-end retail operations execution across multi-location storefronts with the best retail execution field app and monitoring platform: Xenia!
We recognize that retail store success is created not only with efficient processes but also with innovation, adaptability, and seamless collaboration.
Our mobile-first app brings all of these elements together giving you control and convenience to make your life easier, your store manageable, and help you make sales.
Backed by industry-best capabilities, Xenia Retail Execution solutions follow a feature-centric approach to automate retail processes, empowering retail enterprises through a suite of functionalities that drive operations optimization and accountability.
But how? It’s quite simple.
Key Features
- Store Task Management: Make task delegation as easy as 1, 2, and 3 by ensuring quick task assignment and tracking to enforce accountability and protocol adherence.
- SOPs & A.I. Assistant: By using AI with drag-and-drop templates, users can change the game when it comes to managing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for storefronts, as well as documentation and communication.
- Smart Inspection Workflows: With integrated conditional logic, make quick adjustments and optimizations like fixing inaccurate inspection steps, ensuring peak performance.
- Chats: Instantly reach every member, from line-level employees to management, ensuring everyone stays in the loop and aligned with important updates
- Task Scheduling: Easily identify any loose ends, view missed schedules, and pinpoint the underlying issues by closely monitoring workflows.
- Effortless Multi-Location Management: Benefit from unified reporting, providing a comprehensive view of your entire facilities network for enhanced efficiency and informed decision-making.
Pricing
- Free Forever: Free trial for up to 5 users with unlimited access to all the basic features!
- Starter: $99 / month for the first 15 users with unlimited access to core features
- Premium: $199 / month for the first 15 users with unlimited access to all the core and advanced features + functionalities
- Custom: Need something tailored to your retail operation’s requirements?
Priced on per user or per location basis
Available on iOS, Android and Web
2. ZetesAthena
After Xenia, our next best retail execution solution ZetesAthena Retail Task helps Retailers outpace their competition by delivering a complete software solution to streamline their stores and enhance the customer experience.
This powerful retail solution will empower your store colleagues by automating tasks such as product filling, reducing the availability check on the store floor, managing returns, and much more.
By removing manual work and repetitive tasks, your colleagues’ efficiency will be increased, therefore means you can serve your customers better.
The platform gives real-time visibility of store operations for the retailer. What this does for the retailer is give full control of both the shop floor and the back of the store to make sure tasks are done in real time and accurately.
ZetesAthena provides tools to support store staff that results in faster and more accurate execution of tasks allowing staff to interact with the customers rather than deal with complex software. These include features such as ticketing and price markdowns, picking for Click & Collect orders, and inventory and price checking for customer queries.
Key Features
- ZetesAthena's elegant interface simplifies ticketing and price markdown management, allowing businesses to alter prices easily and effectively.
- Make the fulfillment process for Click & Collect orders more efficient by allowing employees to swiftly and accurately choose products from the sales floor or back-of-store inventory.
- Provide customers with real-time information by allowing workers to verify inventory levels and pricing on the spot, therefore improving the entire shopping experience.
- Improve incoming and outbound logistics activities such as receiving shipments, processing returns, and coordinating transfers between stores to ensure smooth operations and timely delivery of goods.
Pricing
- Contact vendor
3. Storefront
Storefront is another fully featured, completely integrated retail field app offering retailers true value by driving revenue and reducing operating costs.
What makes Storefront unique is its single, web-based software solution that integrates visibility, accountability, and execution. Accessible on all mobile platforms and major browsers and featuring real-time KPI dashboards, statistics, and advanced reporting, Storefront empowers your entire organization to make better decisions and increase performance.
Store force uses permission-based access to make sure that only the users that need to see certain types of information, see that information. For example, store managers have access to the information only specific to their store and that is relevant to their side of the business. This personalized approach drives user acceptance, user accountability, and user ownership as the product belongs to the stakeholder group that it’s directed to and not one particular person.
The StoreForce Solution also provides intelligent recommendations and identifies areas of opportunity with Predictive Analytics and feedback based on sales and traffic trends
Key Features
- Access a vast collection of retail reports geared to specific operational factors, offering useful insights into performance indicators, sales trends, and consumer behaviors.
- Customize reporting restrictions to reflect unique business objectives and user preferences, ensuring that stakeholders have access to relevant data to influence decision-making and action.
- Establish standard and alternate hierarchies inside the company to simplify reporting and analysis at many levels, ranging from local stores to regional or national viewpoints.
- Create customizable KPI dashboards that provide real-time performance indicators, allowing users to follow progress, discover patterns, and accurately quantify the effect of projects.
- Provide field teams with task dashboards that simplify workflow management, job assignment, and progress tracking while assuring alignment with operations objectives and priorities.
Pricing
- Contact Vendor
4. Compliantia
Compliantia delivers real-time and configurable cloud-based reporting, for the unique needs of retailers, that is simple to use and very secure.
The software has many new features that simplify and streamline store audits, increase efficiency, and drive results for the business. One of the notable new features is the scrollable photo carousel on the Compliantia Compare screen – which lets you see a photo overview of store activities right from your dashboard.
The simple design empowers retailers to instantly take a pulse on operations, loss prevention, and merchandising efforts across their store network.
Compliantia streamlines audits to compliance by going above and beyond checklists--action plans, photo verification, maps, KPIs, signatures, and scheduler add to the depth and thoroughness of the audits.
Get the full picture on audits assessing every aspect of store operations, from operational efficiency to merchandising displays to loss prevention risks. With Compliantia Compare, retailers can conduct top-to-bottom store audits necessary for maintaining operational excellence and delivering the best possible customer experience.
Key Features
- Create efficient and secure communication routes between shops and headquarters by assigning tasks and tracking implementation in real time.
- Third-party data, such as sales, human resources, or inventory, may be securely imported and shown on any device with the Compliantia Compare app. This interface provides more visibility into critical operational KPIs, allowing merchants to make data-driven choices.
- Track, assign, and respond to client complaints, feedback, and general information with easily.
- The ticket monitoring tool in Compliantia Compare allows shops to prioritize and handle concerns more quickly, hence increasing customer happiness and loyalty.
- Automate file transfer protocols to speed up data sharing across systems, improve data security, and reduce manual involvement.
Pricing
- Custom -Contact vendor
5. Zenput
Another strong contender for the best retail execution field app is Zenput. It is a full-featured platform for streamlining your operations.
It’s used by operations leaders who are actively managing restaurants, convenience stores, and other retail chains to get things done efficiently and effectively.
Zenput stands out with its ease of use and strong collaboration features, connecting your field employees and store teams to your operations leaders. By giving your team members prescriptive guidance and providing you with real-time visibility into task completion rates across all your locations, Zenput enables you to give your customers a better experience, improve store performance, and spot quality issues before they impact your brand.
Key Features
- Monitor corrective measures to ensure that issues are remedied in a timely way, reducing interruptions and increasing operational efficiency.
- Receive automated reports summarizing accomplished work and remaining tasks, which provide insights into operational performance and drive ongoing development.
- Gather real-time incident information from field staff, allowing merchants to reduce risks, improve safety measures, and increase workplace security.
- Use Zenput's task management tool to ensure that key jobs are executed on schedule and in compliance with operational norms.
- Access standard dashboards that provide a high-level overview of the company's performance on key metrics, allowing stakeholders to track progress and find opportunities for improvement.
Pricing
- Contact Vendor
6. Zipline
Next on our list of best retail execution field apps is Zipline, offering store teams everything they need to know to do their job.
The cloud-based store communication solution helps you track store execution, engage teams, and optimize for profit on one easy-to-use, mobile platform.
What sets Zipline apart is the ability to align and streamline communication across the entire retail organization – from head office to district managers, to the field, and even to your stores and teams.
Built for retail, by retail, Retail Zipline created an easy-to-use, straightforward User Interface, making it easy to understand for all individuals. Retail Zipline helps organize products by category, type, sale, season, etc., making the assortment of the products easy to manage making your merchandising easy to do and your inventory easy to manage.
Key Features
- Organize items by category, kind, season, or sale to help merchants manage product assortments and enhance merchandising tactics.
- With Retail Zipline's customer management tools, you can overcome client-related difficulties while providing great service, and assuring customer happiness and loyalty.
- Track and manage inventory levels with Retail Zipline's inventory management tools, enabling businesses to optimize stock levels and reduce stockouts.
- Drag-and-drop file sharing, automatic reminders, and embedded multimedia material can all help expedite communication and engage associates more effectively.
- Use dynamic and simple reporting tools to discover bright spots and areas for improvement, allowing merchants to make educated decisions and enhance performance.
Pricing
- Contact Vendor
What is Retail Task Management Software?
A retail task management software is a perfect solution that will help retailers with multiple stores manage their stores without experiencing any hitches.
The software will help you: manage store tasks effectively to improve operations; automate your processes and save time, since everything that you used to do manually will be automated; reduce labor costs; improve accuracy; Create more time for your staff to interact with your customers thus improving on your customers’ experience.
The Jobs such as shelf replenishment, inventory checking, and processing returns, are automated by the system thus saving time and allowing more teams to concentrate on work that has a positive impact on your stores.
The system also helps in labor management as Regional Managers can quickly make workforce adjustments depending on the store trends either at individual stores or multiple stores across specific regions.
Time Tracking: The typical worker is only productive for two hours and 53 minutes every day. Easily keep track of the time spent by your team on each task you assign to them. You can easily measure your employee’s productivity as you can have an easy look at their operation. You can also tell the projects that consume much of your time thus you can be able to determine where to invest your resources.
Mobile Access: The system is compatible with mobile devices meaning even if you are not in your office you can be working. This means your team can send and update important data in real time while they are in the field through the use of mobile phones or tablets. All they will need is a portable gadget like a mobile or a tablet.
Real-time Reporting: You can see the status of each task in real-time with the visual dashboard. Now your employees are much more accountable to what functions need completion through the use of metrics that let you see what each employee is getting completed. Since reporting is done in real-time, your business decisions can be made with more current data. This, in turn, enables you to be much more efficient.
Store Audits: Moreover, a Retail execution solution enables you to keep your stores continually updated and at the standards required by your company. The system will review the store level by prompting the store auditors or the field managers to fill the review reports as per schedules.
Store Calendar: Keep your assigned tasks in one place giving you the ability to track the assigned task as well as follow up on any scheduled activities. It also alerts you anytime an action is due so as not to let down the customers.
Ticket Tracking-: This feature of the right retail execution field app is important especially when you want to know if the client’s complaint/order was addressed or not and it also helps in showing the client's feedback is documented to avoid next time mishandling of the client’s order.
Task Management: The average worker spends 51% of every workday on low to no-value tasks. An ideal retail execution solution enables one to manage and streamline activities in an organization by assigning tasks to different teams and keeping track of their completion.
The system is so smart that it even gives a reminder on the jobs that are due, flagging off any time-bound project, this guarantees that jobs are completed within the stipulated time.
Which is the Best Retail Execution Field App For My Business?
Overall, the importance of retail execution field apps in revolutionizing how retailers run their businesses and customers’ happiness is too insightful.
These digital tools help to streamline business; aid in compliance and provide a delightful experience to customers at a remarkable level.
Therefore, as retailers continue to grapple with the changes in the industry, they need to research and invest in the right digital solution.
Among these retail execution solutions, Xenia offers a comprehensive approach to dealing with today’s retail challenges.
As mentioned alreayd in this post, the program helps retailers achieve operational excellence by offering an intuitive task management feature, customizable operations templates, and real-time reporting. Using digital innovation to facilitate business growth is increasingly becoming a requirement rather than an option for success.
So, go ahead and give digitized solutions and a shot, and see how things pan out for you in near future.