🚀 10 Ways to Improve Site Audits

A retail audit helps retail and hospitality brands execute brand standards, programs, and procedures in areas such as operations, merchandising, loss prevention, health and safety and security across all sites, on time and in full. The audit is sometimes called an assessment or simply a visit.

Below, 10 tips to improve site audits across your retail and hospitality business.

Let’s dive in.

1. Be Clear

On time, in full, at every site

Bindy is a proven platform used by hundreds of retail and hospitality groups. Don't take our word for it. Run a free trial and see how easy it is to execute programs and brand standards.

First, define and describe standards clearly and unequivocally. This point seems obvious but is often overlooked by overly succinct, sometime cryptic, copy used to define operational standards.

The description of the standard should be long enough to clearly and unequivocally describe what constitutes success, state the objective and identify the facets/components that make up the standard.

The Experts' choice

Want to save 40% on software licensing costs for retail communication and execution? Run a free trial of Bindy.

2. Provide context

Put the standard in context. Explain why it’s needed and why it’s important. By explaining “why” a standard is important, you help raise awareness at store level. This may in and of itself, increase compliance.

3. Illustrate your standards

A picture is worth a thousand words, illustrate your standards! Most people are visual. While you should be as clear as possible in describing the standard, the use of a “best-practice” picture, attached to each standard, goes a long way towards visualizing the end goal and achieving standards.

4. Give access

It’s important to make standards accessible and widely available! Standards are useless unless they are disseminated and reviewed frequently by store, operations and head office personnel alike. An old, dusty standards binder does not help you achieve compliance; a living and actionable store audit does.

5. Foster participation

Get store managers and assistant managers to sign off and participate in the review of the visit. This give them the opportunity to give their input and feedback. Your managers are on the front lines.

Most operators are keen to drive their business forward, and their participation is absolutely critical to the success of their business and the brand.

6. Create an action plan

Use the action plan as a vehicle for improvement. Retail is all about execution and action plans support execution. An electronic checklist and action plan are means to an end. The action plan is an opportunity to apply corrective actions to problem areas.

Generating the action plan should be a) automated and b) weaved into the workflow of the district manager’s visit. If each problem area is an ailment, the action plan is the cure. Don’t leave the store without one!

7. Promote continuous learning

Remember to treat each and every visit as an opportunity to dispense “continuous training”. Learning and training, particularly textbook learning, can be abstract, but a store visit isn’t.

A store visit is measurable, actionable field training. It provides a unique opportunity for store and district management to observe, correct and train. Manage expectations and create a culture of continuous improvement.

8. Leverage people and tools

Realize you need both great people and great tools. Rely on software tools to do what software does best: record, calculate and aggregate. Rely on people, in this case, your operations group, to do what people do best: provide judgement and insights based on experience.

9. “Be cruel, to be kind”

(Hamlet, Act 3; Scene 4, William Shakespeare). The district manager walks a fine line. If a district manager is too harsh, they risks jeopardizing the relationship and the lines of communication with the store, which is essential to its success. If a district manager is too lenient, they risk overlooking factors that will limit the long-term success of the store.

This balance is notoriously difficult to achieve. When in doubt, remember the aforementioned quote. In order to be kind to the store, to look out for its long-term success, the district manager may need to be “cruel”, set high expectations and hold the store to the highest standards of execution.

10. Repeat…

Standards change. Turnover happens. In retail, compliance is an ephemeral end-goal. It is never “achieved” nor set in stone. Review your standards at least once a year, look for trends, repeat unacceptables and be prepared to repeat the cycle of visits, corrective actions and continuous learning all over again.

Learn more about store execution at Store Execution: Purpose, Scope And Best Practices.