Retail Field Operations Post Covid-19

As we start to look at transitioning to #thenewnormal, most areas that involve staff being in public places will come under review. Businesses will have a duty to keep staff moving through zones as quickly as possible for their own safety and that of others around them.

As restrictions begin to lift, we will see a gradual return to standard practice, but there will be some amendments along the way. We are yet to know when we will reach a point where we are COVID-19 "risk-free," which means an element of social safety will be present for a while to come. 

The issues with previous standard practice

Those of you, with field sales staff operating in retail, would know that they typically perform several tasks beyond merely selling. Some of these tasks create roadblocks that not only can deter paying customers, but they may also now cause potential social distancing concerns

In a pre-COVID-19 world, auditing a display could be considered a necessary evil as the data is critical to success. We derive many valuable insights from the data sourced in-store. This data, along with other information from sales, marketing, and the supply chain, collectively form the critical secret sauce that allows top-performing businesses to be top-performing businesses.

Post-COVID-19, there is a duty of care for retailers and onsite contractors with all possible roadblocks coming under review. The days of having a salesperson stand and gathering data for anything up to two hours may no longer be feasible.

The benefits of change

Reviewing these processes also means a review of operations costs. This, of course, may turn out to have added benefits. The cost of staff varies based on skill sets and experience, however even at the lower end of the scale, paying someone two hours to do a job that a machine can do more accurately in two minutes seems a little dated. Even without a prompt from a pandemic.

Restrictions and lockdowns have pushed us to accelerate technology such as video calling to replace travel and face to face interactions. Although this is technology that has been around for decades, it’s only now being accepted as a viable means of daily operation. Productivity and connectivity are being upheld, and it’s unlikely that any big business will ever return to their previous process as the benefits are clear. 

It still surprises me to see field staff in retail outlets using hard copy, printed planograms, physically auditing a display. The cost of the time to perform this and the cost of print, seem positively dated, not to mention the potential inaccuracy. It’s worth considering that in specific scenarios, computers are significantly better than humans. A good example would be reading small print product codes and referencing against a list in a location with extreme lighting. It’s a tedious and repetitive task, and humans often become distracted, whereas computers can reference millions of records very quickly without ever getting tired or losing focus.

Adapt or die

A recent trial done in Australia saw a manual task that took 15 minutes reduced in time to 23 seconds due to automation. The task involved auditing information on a price board displayed at the front of stores. Not only is the process now much quicker, but it’s also incredibly accurate and contains visual records should the information ever come under question.

Where many of us crave the old normal to return, bringing the comforts we are used to with it, we need to accept that it is unlikely for some time, if at all. I also pose the question, do we want it to return? Wasn't it a problem that brought us to our current predicament? Perhaps now is the time to adapt and improve for the betterment of society? Whatever the outcome, our inevitable change is just around the corner.