Importance of Real-Time Monitoring App in VM Execution

You have been managing a team of 500 + Visual merchandisers across different geographies who visits metros, tier 2 towns & rural areas as well. Biggest challenges which brand managers face are:

1. Uncertainty of data for reporting
2. Authenticity of the information passed on to management
3. Time consumption in converting data into meaning full information
4. Tracking manpower beat plan & productivity
5. Non-awareness of the time a VM consumes in outlets & while traveling
6. Communication of new guidelines

While there are many other challenges in VM execution which a brand manager faces but aforementioned points encapsulate the most important ones. These challenges create the necessity of existence of an application which can solve all these problems while being economical on budget.

Here are the few pointers which an ideal monitoring app should have:

1. Real time data synchronization: It’s imperative to get real time status of the execution on field as there are sequence of tasks which needs to be performed & are inter dependable. Once status of task execution is available then only another task can be initiated. For instance, product billing to outlets should be done immediately after VM execution other wise VM execution will not serve the purpose.
2. Data authenticity: To ensure that data is not manipulated, an ideal app should serve the purpose of self-assessment at the time of execution. It should not allow user to do manipulation in data being captured. For instance, a user or VM should be able to capture the data for a particular outlet only when he is in an acceptable proximity of the outlet which can be 10 meter to 50 meters. An ideal app should have geotagging feature as well.

3. Intuitive & interactive UI: UI of the application should allow the user to play with the data to get the desired information. It should be able to extract the reports in personalized dashboards which should be accessible by all the users.

4. Route tracking & productivity monitoring: An ideal app should trigger the alarm as & when productivity is going below acceptable levels or it should automatically pass on information to users on periodic basis as per the desired criteria.

5. Time consumption monitoring: It could be possible that productivity per day per VM is as per desired criteria. However, the deployment is not as per the guidelines or as per the desired quality. This happens when field team is visiting the outlet but not investing time to ensure quality & guidelines adherence. An ideal app would be able to apprise management with all the data & information along with insights on user time spent.

6. Notification enabler: While managing such a large team, effectiveness of communication flow is the biggest challenge for a manager. Communication/guidelines has been delivered & read by all employees or not is a biggest question. Application should be able to send notifications to each employee & track the delivery & read status as well.