Case Study
Since deploying GoSpotCheck, Swisse administrators have gained more insight into their field operations than ever before.
Swisse is a fixture of the Australian supplement industry, and the company's products can be found all across the globe. Achieving success on an international scale comes with its own set of challenges. To monitor their expansive footprint across the Australian continent, Swisse relies on a dedicated field team to visit stores and verify that merchandising guidelines are followed in full.
The field team reports back to Swisse's Melbourne-based support office, but is otherwise separated from the Swisse headquarters by thousands of kilometers. Maintaining crystal-clear insight into retail and display conditions under these circumstances is challenging, to say the least. But, employees like Trade Marketing Manager Robyn Branigan were intent on enabling Swisse’s field team with the help of best-in-class execution management software.
Employees
First year of operation
Field team members
Global HQ offices
We found that we were just struggling to really get a true understanding of what actually was happening out on the road.”
—Robyn Branigan, Trade Marketing Manager
Swisse stakeholders devised a comprehensive set of brand guidelines that extended to store displays. Ensuring that these merchandising standards were consistently met by both store managers and field employees proved to be extremely challenging.
Swisse officials struggled to achieve a clear understanding of what was happening in the field on a daily basis and to determine how successful their frontline employees were at confirming compliant store displays.
In particular, brand administrators wanted more consistent updates on point-of-sale displays and in-store merchandising.
Employees on the road tended to collect, record, and disseminate data on a case-by-case basis. One worker might take handwritten notes, while another would input information through a spreadsheet.
Swisse had an internal communication platform in place, but employee use was inconsistent and sporadic. Not all team members uploaded images through that platform, and some would only share information regarding displays in good standing—thus skewing collected data.
Because there was no formalized method to gather information at the store level and submit reports to administrators, the Melbourne office was unable to gain total visibility into field operations.
Beyond the uncertainty surrounding POS displays and store merchandising standards, administrators were also concerned about how much money was wasted on promotional materials that were never used or poorly implemented. Merchandising resources composed a large portion of Swisse's annual budget, and officials needed to be certain the company was getting a sizeable return on its investment.
Unfortunately, an internal audit revealed that a large portion of the company's 2016 POS display materials never made their way to the intended destinations. If this waste became an ongoing trend, the effect on Swisse's bottom line would be immense.
Another concern was the degree to which store managers complied with Swisse brand guidelines. Field teams reported an alarming number of violations to the Melbourne office, but officials lacked concrete data on how and if promotional agreements were followed.
To meet all of these needs, Swisse wanted a tool that made field operations more efficient, empowered productive frontline employees, and helped maintain high-quality merchandising standards.
Administrators identified a list of absolute must-have features included in any viable execution management solution:
The Melbourne office planned to enact more strict field management processes, mandating that all frontline employees document displays in a timely manner. This would not be possible without a comprehensive platform capable of quickly and efficiently capturing images from the field and sharing them with the home office.
Robust image analysis also ties into the company's larger goal of ensuring stores complied with display guidelines, while empowering brand reps to document merchandising conditions with ease. In addition, the solution would need to be intuitive and easy to use so field teams could effortlessly navigate dashboards, find the specific features they needed, and quickly submit reports.
Given this criteria, Swisse implemented GoSpotCheck.
Swisse officials were wary to roll out a new execution management platform too quickly and disrupt normal field operations. After a successful trial period that included positive feedback and encouraging results, Swisse introduced GoSpotCheck to all field members within Australia. At every step along the way, teams ran demos and training sessions from the Melbourne office to help users get fully acquainted with the platform.
[GoSpotCheck has] been so easy to use and so easy to implement, and the support that we've received from the GoSpotCheck team has been incredibly helpful.”
—Robyn Branigan, Trade Marketing Manager
Since deploying GoSpotCheck, Swisse administrators have gained more insight into their field operations than ever before. After reviewing store displays, administrators can provide frontline employees with valuable feedback and guidance on adhering to merchandising best practices. The end result is powerful POS displays that fully align with brand guidelines.
The Swisse field team uses GoSpotCheck to fill out quick questionnaires surrounding display compliance and execution. This has proven especially effective to collect data during seasonal promotions in real time, which often include specific holiday displays or time-sensitive offers.
Swisse has also gained new insights into not only when stores were not adhering to their agreed-upon display conditions, but the reason behind noncompliance. Although some store managers may fail to comply, data demonstrated there is a variety of other reasons that lead to misalignment and poor execution.
In some cases, the details of the activations were not properly communicated to store managers. For other stores, the promotions did not gain enough traction with customers to be worthwhile. That kind of detailed feedback is eye-opening for any business and offers the opportunity to make course corrections and improve customer engagement on a local level.
With the help of GoSpotCheck's real-time data-capturing capabilities, field employees and office teams can work together to identify areas for improvement and work with the store managers to implement changes moving forward.
Those same features have assisted Swisse with goals to reduce waste and improve POS displays. GoSpotCheck provides a window into POS display conditions, letting administrators see precisely how many posters are hung at each location and what promotional materials are being used.
Now that Swisse can accurately identify exactly how much content is needed for each location, the company’s promotional marketing budget can be easily streamlined and balanced.
While rolling out GoSpotCheck, Swisse leaders discovered the brand's merchandising guidelines were not always followed—leading to a mismatch of displays. Receiving visual confirmation of store conditions has helped Swisse increase consistency and keep all promotional materials in line with its strict branding standards.
We’ve seen consistently—and with our most recent campaign—that the quality of the merchandising has gone up quite significantly. It’s just been really great.
Thanks to Swisse's meticulous deployment strategy, the platform's intuitive interface, and GoSpotCheck's continued support, the GoSpotCheck implementation went over smoothly. User adoption remains high among the Swisse workforce, and the GoSpotCheck team continues to be extremely responsive and available to answer any questions or concerns at any time.
Since deploying GoSpotCheck across its entire Australian field operations, Swisse has gained critical insights into its displays, merchandising, and promotions. The productivity and cost-saving benefits are immense, and frontline employees now have ample time to collect valuable data and submit reports.
For a brand-conscious company like Swisse, the devil is in the details. GoSpotCheck provides the execution management microscope needed to examine every aspect of merchandising and ensure each in-store display and marketing material truly represents the Swisse name.
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