There is no doubt that well-designed visual merchandising increases sales, but let’s just flip that for a moment. When your retail display is poorly managed and maintained, you risk losing customers – and therefore your ROI – before they’ve even got a hand on their wallet.
If your website crashed, you wouldn't leave it to languish unfixed. The same rule should also apply to your retail concessions. Even the most robust of fixtures and fittings can succumb to wear and tear over time, leaving them non-compliant or non-functioning.
Effective maintenance is often easier said than done. With multiple displays in multiple retailers across multiple locations, each with its own in-house escalation process, jobs can often get lost in a long line of administration. And that’s if they are even reported at all.
Rest assured that your maintenance programme can be transformed with good retail management software, but don’t just take our word for it. OPOC’s most recent project with long-standing client, Channel Assist, has done just that for Google Chromebooks.
The benchmark system, which won an FMBE Gold Award for the Most Effective Tactical Campaign, features a bespoke portal using OPOC’s field management software with mobile forms. It allows issues to be reported easily, and fixes to be carried out with peak efficiency.
"Partnering with OPOC enabled us to provide Google with effective, real-time visibility of in-store issues," says Channel Assist’s Alain Brissimitzakis. "It has improved response time and significantly improved compliance of the Chromebook fixtures across multiple retailers."
Read on to find out how the programme has benefitted Google and how it can do the same for you and your business.
Streamline the process
No matter where you sit in your brand’s structure, it’s a safe bet that you want to tick off everything on your to-do list as quickly and efficiently as possible. The same can probably be said for store managers, retail assistants, display manufacturers and parts suppliers.
One of the main aims for the Google Chromebook maintenance programme was to streamline the sequence of events from recognising to resolving an issue. The bespoke, easy-to-use portal saves time and effort at every step for all parties involved.
It does so by funnelling the maintenance requirements from all 400+ Google Chromebook concessions into one easy-to-manage system. This allows stress-free reporting, efficient allocation of resource, rapid sourcing of parts and ultimately, a far speedier resolution.
Implement standardisation
As a brand, you are often relying on your retailers’ in-house escalation processes when it comes to maintenance. This is fraught with challenges including delays in reporting issues, insufficient detail being reported and a process that is not uniform across retailers.
The Google Chromebook portal features a user-friendly interface and process. It enables store personnel to create a support ticket, enter the relevant information and submit it to the Reactive Maintenance Team with minimal interruption to their time.
The portal allows the quick and easy upload of annotated photographs to accurately illustrate the issue in hand. By making it so simple, retail colleagues are far more likely to act on any issues, so your displays remain compliant and in pristine working order.
Deploy the right resources
Differing escalation processes in-store also make it difficult for brands to identify the complexities of an issue. Assigning the correct parts and the right person to resolve it can often take multiple unnecessary and unproductive store visits.
Within 24 hours of ticket submission via OPOC’s software, the Google Chromebook reactive team can identify the fixture, understand the issue, source component parts, and assign the most appropriately skilled resource to complete the task in the most cost-effective manner.
The system allows the team to match the issue to one of three types of resource, depending on the level of skill required to do the work. This ensures that the right person is sent to carry out the work first time, saving time, money and resource across the board.
Create a centralised stockpile
Even if you have overcome the hurdles of receiving an accurate and timely issue report and identified the best course of action to rectify it, your team may still have a job on their hands to source the correct parts for the job from the relevant supplier in time.
Your displays are likely made up of differing component parts from various manufacturers, with availability not always guaranteed as and they are required in-store. This can lead to long delays in issues being solved, and loss of potential sales on the meantime.
During the set-up for the Google Chromebooks programme, Channel Assist developed a display-supplier matrix, sourcing inventory of each component of every display and all POS materials to store within a centralised warehouse, always making parts readily available.
Establish a real-time asset register
Like Google, you are likely working with hundreds of retail sites, each one containing hundreds of fixtures built and installed by various suppliers. Without a standard process in place, it is virtually impossible to keep track of your assets and their current state.
The Google Chromebook portal uses unique QR codes to tag every individual fixture and fitting across every single retailer concession. It is the scanning of this code that initiates the issue resolution process, but it also allows the brand to keep a real-time asset library.
The portal logs stores key information on each fixture, such as who manufactured it, when and by whom it was installed, if and when any issues have been logged and if the subsequent maintenance work has been carried out – all at a glance and easily accessible.
Turn reactivity to proactivity
Reactive maintenance is so important as it keeps your current fixtures in good repair and creates the best first impression of your brand to potential customers. But if this maintenance is properly tracked, it can also provide invaluable data going forwards.
By providing a real-time overview of which fixtures are failing and how, Google Chromebook can build up a picture and recognise patterns. For example, if a certain part is being reported more frequently, the team can decide to proactively service it across all sites.
Similarly, these patterns can be used when it comes to future-proofing any new fixtures. Parts that caused regular issues within the current designs can be tweaked or even eliminated entirely to ensure the same weaknesses are not repeated.
Improve sustainability
Sustainability is now at the forefront of the retail industry, with increased focus on the environmental impact of business. For brands, this not only includes the production, delivery, installation, and end-of-life disposal of its fixtures, but also effective maintenance.
If your current maintenance programme relies on the in-house processes of your retailers, it could be that your displays are beyond the state of repair by the time an issue makes its way back to your team, meaning they need replacing sooner than expected.
By investing in a bespoke portal that standardises the process, Google is now able to avoid this situation, increasing the longevity of its Chromebook displays and reducing the need for premature replacements. Good for the environment and good for the bottom line.
Managing your retail displays needn’t be stressful, and with the right process in place, it can bring multiple benefits to your business. OPOC’s software can also be used for fixture installation reports, merchandising reporting, scheduling field visits and field marketing reporting. To chat to us about how working with OPOC can improve your operations, get in touch with our expert team today.
