Why Store Audits Are So Important

The retail industry is more competitive than it has ever been. So, it’s vital that businesses run as efficiently as possible and a store audit can help them to do so.

There are multiple reasons why a store audit is important so to make it easy to digest, we have made a rundown of the essentials. 

The Framework

Store audits (also known as retail audits) can offer a number of benefits as they help ensure that stores are up to standard. Furthermore, they can help to improve efficiency in the store, increase transparency, improve employee satisfaction and a lot more.

Let’s take a closer look at concretely why they are important and how they can help your business.

Increased compliance drives sales

Each store acts as a brand ambassador for the company. If a store’s customer service isn’t quite up to standard, it can and will hurt the company’s image and, potentially, its bottom line. 

Similarly, if a brand promises a certain quality product or even store aesthetic, not meeting this standard can have a disastrous impact. Conducting store audits ensures brand compliance with pre-established agreements to provide consistency to customers, thereby driving sales.

Improved operational efficiency

Audits, particularly store audits, are excellent ways to identify inefficiencies within operations. By conducting regular audits and tracking the results, managers can easily spot problem areas or bottle-necks that need improvement. 

Identifying these problems is much quicker with an audit. In turn, this means that managers can implement solutions more efficiently as well, which improves overall operations and enables stores to run more seamlessly.

Transparency between stores and the HQ

It can be daunting for store employees to have visitors from the head office. However, regular and clear communication between the two bodies will build trust. 

An auditing tool creates transparency as the head office can monitor the audits and see what goes on in their stores. This also enables them to provide feedback to store employees. Having this transparency helps to build trust and ensures that everyone knows what is expected of them.   

Those conducting the audits should also ensure that the scoring process is clear to store employees. It is not fair to create unclear expectations for employees as this builds mistrust of the process. This can lead to non-compliance as a result of a lack of motivation or understanding.

Empowering staff with digital store audit solutions

Digital auditing solutions allow the auditing process to be more collaborative and efficient. Including employees in the process makes them feel heard and valued. Thus, it helps to build employee satisfaction. 

Manually conducting audits can be time-consuming and may not allow for adequate engagement with employees. An auditing solution, on the other hand, allows employees to complete sections themselves - such as daily store checklists. This empowers employees to take charge of these duties and ensure compliance.

Makes offline processes measurable 

Without an auditing solution, it’s not easy to track daily operations over time and different locations. Digital retail audits help to keep track of offline, in-store processes. This way, businesses can monitor store performance over time.

This also enables them to compare different store branches to see which ones do better and why. It also helps the HQ level to understand which areas and stores would need help to improve operations. 

Critical for strategy implementation and execution

The world is changing at a rapid pace. Changes in income and accessibility play a large role in consumer habits. As such, businesses need to work efficiently to keep up with these changes. 

This means that retail businesses will need to develop and implement effective strategies and the store audit is the ideal tool to help with this. These audits give relevant insights that is specific to the company. Which in turn allows businesses to adjust strategies to better suit the changing needs of their customers.

Final Thoughts

The retail industry is extremely competitive and allows little time for problems to be left unattended. Effective store audits can make managing everything a lot easier. Even better, digital auditing solutions are available to streamline the auditing process and analysis even further.

If you're looking to implement a mobile tool for your retail audits, we've got you covered. Falcony | Audit is easy-to-use, fast to set up, has customisable workflows, vast integration possibilities and more. Contact us for more information.

We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.‍

By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.

More information at falcony.io.