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The truth is in the store
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The truth is in the store

When it comes to field marketing, I have quite some experiences. In previous lives, I have been on the road and have had the joy of alternating miles with visits to sales outlets. And I also know what it’s like to have to manage a team of field sales representatives. Those were fun experiences with some challenges, and one of them was reporting. So, when I learned about the existence of Znapio, I thought it was an interesting app to present to you. 

 

Let me paint you a picture

As a marketing manager, you want to see your ideas implemented correctly in every store, and to monitor the various situations, what better way than seeing pictures. Thanks to them, you will see how beautiful your pop-up display is set up, you will verify if your products are placed in compliance with the planograms, or you will check if every store placed the shelf stopper presenting your current promo campaign, etc. So, you will ask your field representatives to take pictures of every set up in every store. 

It’s a great idea. But you might experience some challenges: you will have one sales rep sending all the pictures unlabelled via WhatsApp, another one sending you a massive PowerPoint with tons of texts, his colleague using a word document where he inserted the pics but he is still working on Word 97 and everything shifts when you open the document, there is another guy of the team dropping a USB stick with all the data at the office only once a month, … So, it can be a mess just to sort it all out and it will take time to make sense of what you receive.

 

Simple, fast and efficient

Thankfully, solutions exists and I believe Znapio is an efficient and simple one. Allow me to give you more details for the different parties involved in the process. 

For the field representative,

  • He can just use the native app with his smartphone or a tablet
  • In a store, when a picture is taken, it is geolocated and tagged automatically by the system. 
  • Instead of writing his own comments, the field agent can just choose between pre-determined answers to complement the reporting
  • His reporting is done on the spot and he doesn’t need to work on it later
  • As it is a fast process, the representative can concentrate on other tasks during his visit and be more efficient during his busy day. 

For the managers,

  • They can access all data collected via a web application
  • As the data is uploaded in real time, they have access to all the information much quicker and can react faster when necessary
  • The comments and data are standardised. So, the managers can easily filter and analyse the campaigns. 

 

My 20/CENT on the concept

Having eyes and a great view of the situation in all the outlets is crucial. But getting accurate data in real time is a tricky story and I am sure that, while reading the beginning of this article, many of you recognised a few examples of what usually happens when you ask your field teams to “collect pictures”. And just for being a solution which is fast and easy to use, Znapio is in my opinion a very practical tool worthy of being presented on these pages.

But I also see extra essential aspects of this app which are worth mentioning. 

First of all, speed and ease are important but so is accuracy. And as a manager, you want to be able to trust your data and pinpoint the issues or little problems fast. I do believe that the use of this app, thanks to its standardised set up and location-based recordings, helps with the accuracy of your field data. 

Also, there is a cool social aspect. Within the app, the team members can see each other’s work, and it creates a positive effect. The field representative can get inspired from their colleague’s work, learn from each other, and it can in some cases even create a positive competition as team members might want to outperform their co-worker. To put it simply, transparency and open information exchange in a team improves cooperation and can create positive peer pressure.

Finally, reporting should be made easy. Field teams actually enjoy the human contact with shop owners, they take pride in their merchandising realisations, but reporting is not always their favourite tasks. I remember it wasn’t mine. And compiling tons of pictures and different comments from different formats into a comprehensive report and analysis was always tedious. Hence, it is great to see a technological solution to manage the collection of data so that field teams and managers can concentrate on the tasks which bring more added value. 

In conclusion, I will sum it up by telling you that Znapio is another great example on how technology can help enhance human performance in retail. 

 

 

 

 

 

For those who want to have more info you can listen to the chat I had with Jari Anttonen from Znapio on the podcast https://podcast.ausha.co/20-cent-retail-s-podcast/jari-anttonen-znapio-the-truth-is-in-the-store  

or 

You can also visit www.znapio.com

 

 

 

 

 

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