Mobile App for Retail Chain Audit
Today we are going to talk about a new project for the First Form system: a mobile app designed to audit the Sportmaster retail chain.
Sportmaster's executives conduct audits every month, and this workflow needed to be streamlined and accelerated.
Division managers visit the stores, and the logistics managers visit the logistics centers.
There was a bottleneck: the findings had to be recorded twice. First, on paper in the field, and then, in the office, in Excel tables to be emailed to the top management.
This inconvenient workflow made it extremely difficult to track if corrective actions were taken or not. The top managers checked the actual status when they visited the facility during the next audit.
What we needed to do:
- accelerate the audit/reporting/analytics workflow
- track corrective actions taken locally
- facilitate collaboration.
The SM Lab team used the First Form platform to automate the audit of points of sale and logistics centers.
The team had already fine-tuned dozens of business processes for Sportmaster Group using the First Form platform. They had also undergone training at the First Form Academy.
First Form is a low-code BPM system. You can set up business process automation without a software developer.
SM Lab has independently implemented a solution for PoS/logistics center audits, both as a web app and a mobile app.
It is much easier to schedule visits now: the manager initiates a visit and enters the audit details into the system themselves.
The manager selects the facility to visit and specifies the items to be audited.
First Form offers pre-configured checklist templates. There are a lot of them: about 50 for logistics center audits only. To simplify searches, there is a pre-defined checklist package for each user role.
A checklist template can be edited to add or remove items.
Checklist template examples
Items to be audited in the field
You can add notes and more items to the selected template. For instance, you can print out a hard copy checklist report.
The auditor fills in the checklist in the app, and the results are instantly uploaded into the corporate system.
If any item fails, the auditor immediately initiates corrective actions and specifies the deadline. The responsible person is appointed automatically based on their role. The auditor can also select this person manually.
The embedded calendar shows the scheduled audits of our stores and logistics centers.
The employees receive notifications through the app, and the manager of the store/logistic center is sent a mail with the audit results.
The employee can check out the task, or re-assign it to a colleague.
Overdue audit comments are highlighted in red.
The audit reports and analytics are just a couple of clicks away.
The visit records are saved in a standard format. They are compatible with any BI system to generate any reports you may need.
A range of views is available.
The mobile app built on the BPM system has streamlined retail chain audits.
- Audit periods: reduced by 40%
- Data acquisition and consolidation time: reduced by 80%
- Number of discrepancies found: dropped by 70 %
- Corrective action periods: shortened by 70%.