Merchandising Tracking and In-Store Operations: How Future Retail Group Transformed Its Sales Operations

Future Group, a leading brick and mortar retail player in India, operates multiple chains catering to different consumer needs, including Big Bazar, FBB, Easyday, Hometown, and Ezone. The company recognized the importance of tracking in-store merchandising activities and needed a comprehensive visual merchandising solution to track the discipline of in-store merchandisers, coverage of ongoing campaigns, timely deployment of POSM materials, and maintenance and inventory of high-value assets in its North India region.

Approach

Assistive's best-in-class CRM helps in visual merchandising workflow and numerous in-built configuration options made it a perfect solution for Future Group's needs. After necessary configurations and minor customizations, a live system was launched within a week. The following key steps were taken to meet the client's objectives:

• Excel-based utility functions were used to create and map all ongoing campaigns against specific outlets.
• Configurable questionnaires were created to capture maintenance and inventory data without any additional backend development.
• A geo-tagged and time-stamped attendance feature was implemented to track merchandiser discipline.
• An intuitive merchandising workflow was rolled out to capture campaign execution details.
• In-app camera integration ensured actual images were captured as proof of execution.
• Classroom and market training sessions were held to handhold users until they were comfortable using the app.
• Custom dashboards were created to monitor campaign coverage, POSM deployment, and inventory details in real-time.
• PDF and PPT-based catalog reports containing actual store images were activated to get a complete view of in-store merchandising post-campaign deployment.

Outcome

Future Group achieved complete visibility of in-store merchandising operations for three of its key chains - Big Bazar, Easyday, and FBB - with the successful deployment of Assistive's CRM software in over 60 outlets across North India. The deployment resulted in significant improvements in the discipline of merchandisers. Additionally, the coverage report helped the client efficiently track the progress of over 20 campaigns running every month and take quick actions as and when required. The target vs. achievement report also helped the client monitor actual POSM deployment data, while gaining complete visibility of the condition and inventory of high-value assets such as mannequins, LED banners, etc.