Mobile technology has significantly transformed many of business processes and retail data collection is not an exception. Yet, many field service-based companies still rely on paper forms to collect retail data because they are not interested in messing with new technologies and time-consuming field reps training.
Although paper forms are considered to be cheap and time-proven tool for retail data capture, it today’s mobile-driven world using paper can cost you much more than that the cost of paper itself. Reduced productivity, increased risk of data errors, and no real-time data access put you at risk of being outdone by more tech-savvy competitors, who use mobile data collection tools with analytic capabilities to develop their marketing strategies.
There are many advantages that mobile data collection has over paper forms. For field reps, who are permanently on the go, having mobile tools for paperless data collection means making their job less manual and more rewarding. For field team managers, real-time access to corporate data from anywhere and streamlined data workflow are the unique opportunities to manage data collection processes in the most efficient manner. Here are just a few reasons why mobile data capture is the better way. Hope you’ll find your own after finishing this post.
- Organize your data in one place – When you don’t have to switch constantly between a bunch of applications and tools, you can work more efficiently. Mobile data collection allows managing data collection processes in one comprehensive system making it easy to access, manage, analyze, transfer and share retail data. To find the right place for your corporate data, look for data collection solutions, which allow managing all the information on customers and products, monitoring of field reps, and field sales operations, organizing retail auditing, merchandising and field marketing activities, and analyzing various types of data to create automatic reports. The more comprehensive data collection solution you have, the more time you can save, when there is no need to constantly move from one data storage system to another.
- Get retail data faster – Mobile access to data both for office managers and for field reps and instant reporting capabilities provide real-time data exchange between the office and the field. With mobile data collection solution you retail database is always up-to-date and nobody has to spend hours re-entering manually the data collected by field reps. Mobile data collection allows fast capture data due to automated data entry, barcode scanning, drop down lists, automatic timing and one-click photo reports.
- Reduce data-entry mistakes and eliminate fraud – Switching to a mobile app for retail data collection reduces the number of errors costly for your business. Mobile data collection forms consist of required fields required designed in a way field reps submit important information without fail. When they skip any action to be performed, the task is incomplete and they won’t be able to complete the visit and report back. All the data collected by field reps at retail locations, including photos is time-stamped and GPS-confirmed, so the managers know for sure where data collection tasks were performed and how long it took to perform each visit.
VisitBasis data collection software allows creating task templates for everything that needs to be checked and helps you to fully eliminate the chaos of paper forms, Excel spreadsheets and emails, providing a comprehensive field service management solution in one application.
Ready to try the benefits of paperless data collection? Sign up today at www.visitbasis.com for a free trial, or book a free online demo to see how it works.
To try our data collection software for free register at www.visitbasis.com and download the VisitBasis Retail Audit App FREE on Google Play or App Store. To learn more about how our field merchandising system works request a demo or check the links below to watch the demo videos.
