The activity plan is a chance to apply corrective activities to trouble spots. It designates an individual responsible for rectifying each problem (anything deemed substandard or non-compliant by the district or sales manager during the audit) and a deadline for goal. By doing this, the arrangement fosters ownership and accountability at store level. It also allows district managers and franchisees/store managers to work cooperatively, for instance by survey each other’s notes and remarks and including their own. Lastly, the plan breeds efficiency. It allows for corrections to happen without incurring large time and labor overheads by reducing the time-consuming back-and-forth and ad-hoc communication between the franchisee/store manager and the district manager.
It has often been said that you can’t deal with that which you can’t measure. Measuring and assessing compliance with standards has many benefits in and of itself. Measurement allows trends to emerge, repeat unacceptables to stand out and performance to be aggregated and sorted. However, the advantages of retail audits reach well past estimation. How great is estimation except if you apply remedy? How great is a report unless you weave continuous improvement into the process? How good is problem discovery without resolution and closure?
At its center, the arrangement is a vehicle for improvement. Success in retail hinges largely on execution. The action plan is, by design, execution. The arrangement is a chance to apply corrective actions to problem areas. It designates an individual responsible for rectifying each problem and a target date. It allows district managers and store staff to work cooperatively, see each other’s notes and include their own. It allows for corrections to happen without incurring large time and labour overheads.
Building efficiencies into the plan generation and follow-up is critical to the success of the field audit program and the degree of profitability of such a program. Given the importance we place on the plan, it should come as no surprise that, for every store visit, the association saves $73 when using best-of-breed retail audit software with much of the savings attributable to action plan efficiencies.
For more information click here Retail execution software.
