Many businesses faced with the challenge of keeping track of store data, inventory, and store visits might be tempted to throw more people at the problem. However, WebSan Solutions Inc. tackled this problem with an app, and for that they have struck diamond in the Top Solution Supporting Business Agility category at the 2019 CDN Channel Innovation Awards.
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The multi-award-winning enterprise developed a Microsoft-based solution that gives one of their clients visibility into their sales and inventory, and helps them to stay on top of store visits and to manage retailers, merchandise locations, and contact information.
WebSan managing director Andrew King said the app was a perfect-fit solution to the specific challenges facing their client.
“They weren’t in a position resource-wise to send personnel to each of their stores,” he said. “And they were using paper to record notes pertaining to each store, which as you can imagine would get misplaced. Complicating matters was the fact that they didn’t have any procedures in place to handle carryover notes when they had a turnover.”
WebSan’s app allowed its client’s in-store service team to optimize store visits. The app helps service team members to plan their visits better, and get a clearer view of such things as store-level sales and inventory. Store visits are recorded, and notes are stored at a single centralized location. Sales reps are now accessing the same information, no matter what store they visit. In addition, the customer service team back at the office receives live updates of store visits, and can instantly action any request by sales staff.
“Our app has worked wonders with our client when it comes to their relationships with store managers and personnel, and in the amount of critical information they have been able to capture from store visits,” said King. “Our client now has much more focused merchandising, and they’re able to provide each of their stores with best practices from top-performing stores in similar geographies across North America.”
WebSan Solutions’ client now has a much deeper understanding of what drives top store performance, and a better idea of what constitutes a truly successful store visit. In the past six months alone, they have seen a 20 per cent lift in year-over-year same-store growth in the northeast.
