How Much Do Field Audits Really Cost?

Not every retailer is aware there are highly efficient, largely automated systems for handing retail audits (also known as store visits and store walks) today.  Some organizations have devised their own process, typically a “checklist” of some sort, usually in Excel.  It’s not very efficient but it does the job and appears cost-effective.   Is it?  How much do retail audits cost anyway, with and without automation?  Let’s have a look.

Getting a district manager to a store takes time.  In the very best of circumstances (a short drive, no flying), let us assume it takes 45 minutes to get a District Manager to a store and another 45 minutes to get her to her next appointment.  District managers covering a large geographic area will of course take longer but the point of this exercise is to be conservative with our assumptions and numbers.

A regular visit is assumed to take 2 hours.  Another hour is spent calculating the score, creating the action plan and printing and signing copies.    Post visit, the district manager is expected to follow up on the action plan.  With paper and Excel-based processes, this usually requires follow-up phone calls and emails.  Let’s assume this takes an hour.  The Excel or paper form is usually sent electronically or mailed to head office where  it can be keyed-in to a central repository and stored.  Let’s assume this takes 30 minutes.

With these assumptions, an Excel or paper-based retail audit takes 365 minutes of time.  Using the industry average salary for a district manager of $68,781 (including benefits, see payscale), this translates into a cost of $213.48 to the organization. As any VP or Director of Operations knows, this is money well spent.  In any multi-unit environment, ensuring compliance with service and merchandising standards is a key guarantor of success and risk-mitigation.

Which is not to say, you can’t do better!  Compare the Excel and paper-based costs to those of the Compliantia solution.

While our web and mobile service does wonders, it can’t get you to your appointment faster.  So let us again assume 45 minutes to get the district manager to the store and another 45 minutes to get her to her next appointment.  Let us assume the visit itself takes the same time, 2 hours.  However Compliantia automatically scores the visit and, being fully electronic, does not require a paper trail.  That’s 20 minutes saved.  The Compliantia Action Plan is automatically constructed from all non-compliant items found during the visit.  Creating the action plan is simply a matter of assigning non-compliant items to individuals.  For this reason, instead of taking 45 minutes, it only takes 15.    Follow-ups are also largely automated.  At any time, the DM can log-in to the application to see any visit with at least one outstanding action plan item.  The DM can follow up electronically and assign tasks.  No more phone calls and hard-to-track emails.  For this reason, the time it takes to follow up is cut from 60 minutes to 15.  Lastly, being electronic and real-time, there is no need to mail or re-key data with Compliantia.  This results in a saving of 30 minutes.

End to end, a Compliantia field audit takes 240 minutes of time.  Using the same industry average salary for a district manager, this translates into a cost of $140.37 to the organization.  The organization saves 125 minutes and $73 for every field audit conducted using Compliantia.

For more information on the costs and ROI of retail audits, please refer to The Cost of Non Compliance.