I recently finished reading Traction by Gino Wickman. Among the six key components proposed for a successful business is Data, and more specifically, the scorecards being used to measure the health of individual departments. Define what these KPIs are, track them, measure them, and review the score regularly to take a pulse on the health of your business.

This got me thinking about how this could be applied to retail, and the scorecards that retailers use to measure the health of their stores—namely, footfall, sales, UPT, returns, spoils, staff churn, Click & Collect, etc. But should we be looking to supplement these basic KPIs with more focused metrics around the specific actions and behaviours of both staff and customers? 

Yes, we can measure store footfall and calculate sell-through, but what actually happens in between? Should we be doing more to track and improve the micro-behaviours taking place in the customer's path-to-purchase? It's simply not been possible to collect such data, until now...

How do we go about strengthening our Store Scorecard?

Technology is a big catalyst for accessing granular insights into the true health of our stores. Take Mercaux as an example: through the deployment of its in-store Unified Commerce platform, the customer’s entire in-store journey—from entering the store through to product discovery, basket creation, and checkout (or abandonment)—is being measured. So instead of a simple conversion rate of footfall to checkout, we can begin to track products requested but out of stock, preferences for colours/styles/sizes, baskets created but abandoned, the impact of in-store appointments, registrations to CRM databases, and orders originated in-store but later purchased online. The list goes on...

And this is before we even get to staff performance. How many customers are staff serving? Are they offering alternative items when products are out of stock? Are they actively cross-selling to encourage bigger baskets? How many sales have they saved? How many conversations are they having with customers at home to encourage remote sales? What tasks have they completed from their task management list? How quickly are they bringing stock from the back-of-house?

Now that we can track more granular-level data and open this black box of in-store data, we can start implementing strategies to improve it, with the objective of driving more sales and customer loyalty. By marginally improving just a few of these metrics, we can see an uplift in our most important store KPIs. The use of these technologies can also extend the impact of the store to customers shopping remotely. So, consider extending the scorecard to include attribution for sales that happen later online but originated in-store. Your ISV partners should be able to support you in this. Although they offer store technology, it doesn’t have to be confined to the four walls of the store. The better solutions out there will help improve overall omnichannel business performance.

By keeping a strong pulse on our stores, store managers and retail leaders can predict impacts on store KPIs ahead of time, identify areas for improvement and growth, and pinpoint best practices to replicate and reward across the business to further drive growth.

The key piece of advice here is not to be overwhelmed by the volume of data and insights that a platform like Mercaux can deliver. Instead, really identify the key metrics from the wealth of intelligence that will make the biggest impact on your business, and focus on improving a few at a time to show incremental gains before moving on to the next. Beneath these insights are human interactions, so we must use these insights to support our associates in providing an exceptional in-store experience, which includes service, atmosphere, and merchandising.

And for staff...

It’s extremely important to communicate clearly to staff that the measuring of these metrics is a way for management to support them in their own successes, not as a way for management to track their every move. By understanding better the behaviours of our staff, we can more effectively support their development, and help them hit their personal and store targets on a more regular basis by focusing their attention on the right actions in their daily routines.

Additionally, this technology should feel like an extension of their skill set, not a replacement. It needs to be intuitive to use and have an immediate impact in supporting them in the more administrative or tedious aspects of their role, whilst quickly demonstrating the way in which it enhances the customers’ experience. 

They should want to use this technology in their everyday engagements with customers, so it’s crucial that training is simple and easy to understand, and that the UI/UX (the look and feel) is as natural as picking up their own personal phone. This is where the adoption of the technology will be at its greatest.

So, as a Store Manager or Retail Leader, what are the most important steps you need to take to enrich your Store Scorecard?

The list below are considerations you may wish to address when thinking about developing your own enriched Store Scorecard. Cherry pick the ones that you feel would be most beneficial to you and your business model:

• Identify the primary and secondary store KPIs that you feel are most important in driving sales and customer loyalty. Don’t be constrained by how you go about getting these measurements. Think more about the what before we progress to the how.
• Consider the entire in-store customer journey—from product discovery through to checkout and beyond (e.g., communications after a customer has left).
• Produce a list of these on a spreadsheet in the first column and add the method of collecting this data in the second column. If you’re unsure of any—leave it blank.
• Go to your business intelligence unit, or if you don’t have one, share your challenge with your store ISVs or SI partners.
• Add the methods of data collection to the spreadsheet along with costs.
• Form a scorecard committee and engage colleagues at all levels of the organisation to ensure buy-in - including your store associates.
• Ensure store colleagues are adequately trained on how to use the new methods of data collection and assign champions in each store to support adoption.
• Begin measuring to give yourself a baseline to work from.
• Set goals for improving your core KPIs over the next given period of time.
• Communicate these goals to your staff (preferably through the technology being used).
• Support your store colleagues by setting tasks to help guide them in their daily routines.
• Share quick wins with your team so they can see the early wins and how they’re impacting store goals and individual performance metrics.

Finally, you want to ensure that any additional investments in in-store technologies are generating an adequate ROI with respect to the uplift in store performance. Ensure that your ISV partners are supporting you in these measurements, so that the uplift in performance is being achieved against a modest increase in cost.

And then, it’s a case of measuring, reporting, and putting actions in place on a regular basis to continually improve upon the store scorecard.

Here at Mercaux, we've recently released a brand new solution, Store Associate Dashboard, where you can provide your staff with clear direction on the activities they should be prioritising in store to help hit personal and store KPIs. Visit this solution page to learn more.