Task management in retail has a long-standing history, as retail headquarters need to effectively communicate critical operational decisions to stores. This includes everything from arranging displays to identifying discounted goods, removing items from shelves, and ensuring cleanliness.
In 2023, retail spending in the U.S. reached $45.05 billion, surpassing marketing spend. Forecasts indicate that retail spending will continue to grow, with an expected increase of over 20% through the next year, reaching $55.35 billion in 2024.
Managing tasks in a retail setting involves communicating expectations to store teams, outlining specific responsibilities, and setting deadlines for each activity. A whopping 97% of organizations believe that project management is critical to business performance and organizational success, according to a PwC study.
However, complexities often arise, such as misunderstood instructions, data loss, and overlooked or improperly executed tasks. Retail operations managers understand the frustration of repeatedly emailing different outlets to verify job accuracy. Without a comprehensive understanding of current shop operations, planning for the future becomes challenging.
This is where retail task management software becomes indispensable. Digital platforms enable the organization, delegation, monitoring, and reporting of shop procedures and tasks.
Such software including the best retail audit software empowers store teams to operate more independently while providing headquarters with valuable insights into store compliance and execution.
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6 Best Retail Task Management Software For Retail Businesses
Let's dig right into the best retail task managment solutions to get an idea of things going on from a practical point of view.
Furthermore, we'll talk about some of the entry level challenges, which retail operators go through from time to time. It'll give you a better understanding of the industry and vice versa.
1. Xenia - Retail Task Management & Execution Software
Introducing Xenia: every retail manager's dream software that fully centralizes and streamlines end to end retail process execution.
Regardless of whether it's simple accountability issue that concerns employees spread over multiple retail store branches, or day to day operations, maintenance processes, tasks or anything like that, this retail task management software has enough bells and whistles to get it done.
By centralizing all your checklists and daily tasks within one intuitive app, Xenia creates a seamless digital environment for your retail workforce.
Whether it's cashing, delegating store-to-store work activities, setting up recurring work orders, retail store opening and closing, or conducting health & safety checks, Xenia ensures consistent process completion and logging, regardless of shifts, seasons, or staff experience levels.
Our customizable templates, tailored to any job, make task delegation effortless. Simple digital checklists track progress in real-time, preempting issues before they escalate.
On top of that, communication flows seamlessly in real time, enhancing collaboration between retail managers, concerned store teams, head offices and vice versa. The retail executio nsoftware uses an in-app collaboration modulethat can be either used through tasks, or through dedicated chat rooms, involving stakeholders that are critical to the discusion.
Some of the key features of this program are showcased below.
Feature Highlights
- Operations Template Builder: Leverage a powerful builder and customizable pre-built templates to streamline work practices, inspections, and compliance.
- Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): Use SOPs as comprehensive guidelines and step-by-step instructions for carrying out various tasks and processes in the retail environment.
- Scheduled Work: Improve productivity by standardizing tasks with clear due dates and using mobile team notifications.
- Task Management: Eliminate the need to use the pencil by making assignment responsibilities more apparent via the use of images, notes, and templates.
- Work Requests and Approvals: Streamline oversight by consolidating request processing, shortening the approval time, and closely monitoring all associated costs and assets.
- Team Communication: It is possible to improve teamwork by combining quick chats, group updates, company-wide announcements, and task mentions.
Pricing
- Free Plan Forever: Up to five users: All fundamental features are covered.
- Starter: $99 per month (for up to 15 users)
- Premium: $199 per month (up to 30 users)
- Custom: Request a Quote.
For pricing, and more details, fee free to Book a Demo
Available for up to 5 users
Premium for $99/month for the first 20 users (with free trial period)
Available on iOS, Android and Web
2. ThinkTime Task Management
ThinkTime is a cloud-based service that facilitates retail task management and assistance ticketing for retailers.
From large-scale company-wide efforts to small-scale to-do items, ThinkTime offers a unified, straightforward, and easy-to-use platform for it all.
A customized dashboard is provided with each allocated work along with its priority level, allowing colleagues to effectively manage their time.
Ensure that no retail team is overwhelmed by coordinating the flow of work from week to week with field and corporate authorities. You can visually communicate to your team the relative importance of each request with ThinkTime Retail Task Management. Each retail team can avoid being overwhelmed by coordinating with field and corporate management to evenly distribute work from week to week.
Feature Highlights
- Add Requirements: Make it mandatory to ask for detailed comments, images, or surveys. Using a mobile device, store employees can monitor the status of tasks even while they're not in the office.
- Validate: After stores approve a task, they assign a follow-up assignment to the field managers to ensure completion. Get critical tasks done according to your specifications.
- Automate: With ThinkTime's 'StoreLink' service, data may be automatically pulled from other sources like your ERP and displayed in the same straightforward visual manner.
Pricing
- Contact the vendor for pricing
3. ZetesAthena
With ZetesAthena, users can intelligently manage tasks in the store and track progress in real-time.
Equip your employees with robust Retail app that streamlines and automates repetitive processes like stock checking, returns processing, and shelf restocking. Users will have comprehensive command over both front- and back-of-house operations, allowing them to assign assignments to the appropriate employees at the correct times.
Employees will be able to spend more time interacting with consumers thanks to a robust tool that expedites and improves the execution of operations.
Software as a service (SaaS) is the delivery model for this solution, which means that it is completely managed and includes hardware maintenance and support. With the help of the MCL Mobility Platform, clients are also able to improve and adjust their operations to meet the demands of their future businesses.
Feature Highlights
- Store Inventory Management: With ZetesAthena, you can manage your inventory procedures with real-time visibility, which will boost sales productivity and customer happiness.
- Task Management: Get reminders when projects are due or unfinished with this retail task management software. Set priorities, delegate responsibilities, and track progress with ease.
- Click and Collect: We assist large European retailers in efficiently managing their Click and Collect operations with the ZetesAthena platform.
Pricing
- Contact the vendor for pricing
4. StoreForce
The StoreForce Solution is a web-based software suite that integrates visibility, accountability, and execution. It is available on all major online browsers and mobile devices.
To deliver success to every level of a retail organization's structure, the Solution makes use of statistics, real-time KPI dashboards, and a sophisticated reporting component.
With the Solution's permission-based design, store managers have access to the data that matters to them for running the business, while corporate users can see estate-wide data that is pertinent to the programs and initiatives they've implemented.
Feature Highlights
- Retail Workforce Management: Make the most of your sales prospects by creating optimized schedules that send the appropriate colleagues to the right places at the right times.
- KPI Performance Management: Get real-time data and insights to boost your company's bottom line. Adapt tactics and routines as needed to meet and surpass sales goals on a regular basis.
- Retail Execution: By consistently implementing your plans across all shops, you can deliver on both the consumer experience and the brand promise.
Pricing
- Contact the vendor for pricing
5. CompliantIA
Bindy, formerly known as Compliant IA, is a secure, flexible, and real-time platform developed with multi-unit merchants in mind. One new feature of Compliantia, is a scrollable image carousel that users can access from their dashboard.
This will provide them a visual summary of everything that's occurring in their businesses.
Retailers can use the software's app on their smartphones, tablets, or laptops to conduct operations, merchandising, and loss prevention audits of their businesses.
Action plans, picture verification, maps, key performance indicators, signatures, and a scheduler are all part of the comprehensive audit procedure. Get up-to-the-minute site details on the go with any device. Analyze patterns, both good and bad, and identify underlying reasons.
Feature Highlights
- Forms and Inspections: Tailor-make forms and workflows swiftly to match specific needs, facilitating efficient data gathering and management.
- Sites and Field Teams: Offer field teams and site staff an easy-to-use platform, featuring an interactive map, shared calendar, and inspection scheduler, boosting productivity and coordination.
- Real-Time Data Access: Retrieve site data instantly from any device, anywhere, enabling quick responses and informed decisions based on trends, performance insights, and root cause analysis.
Pricing
- SMB: $119 per month, Unlimited Users, 10 inspections/month
- SMB: $359 per month, Unlimited Users, 50 inspections/month
- ENTERPRISE: $959+ per month, Unlimited Users, Yearly quota (100/1,000+ sites)
6. Zipline
Retail Zipline is the answer for top-tier stores that want to engage and execute their store teams to create unique in-store experiences.
Retailers can improve profits, engage staff, and monitor store performance with Zipline, a cloud-based shop communication tool. Now there's a simple method for retail companies at all levels—from corporate to district managers to individual stores—to work together.
Overall, it is a user-friendly platform developed specifically for the retail industry.
Zipline improves retail businesses' communication by making essential information easier to understand and use.
Feature Highlights
- Employee Communication: Facilitate seamless communication between employees through a centralized platform, enabling instant messaging, announcements, and updates to enhance collaboration and teamwork.
- Task Management: Streamline task delegation, tracking, and completion with an intuitive task management system, allowing for the assignment of tasks, setting deadlines, and monitoring progress to ensure efficient operations.
- Store Audit: Conduct comprehensive store audits efficiently with built-in tools for checklist creation, scheduling, and execution, enabling thorough inspections of store conditions, compliance with standards, and identification of areas for improvement.
Pricing
- Contact the vendor for pricing.
What is Retail Task Management Software?
Retail communications software, commonly referred to as retail task management software, is typically procured by the corporate office of a retail brand to aid store workers in understanding their responsibilities.
88% of individuals express a desire to enhance their time management and organizational skills. Surprisingly, only 21.7% indicate the use of database software for organizing assignments, with an additional 23% relying solely on memorization for their to-do lists.
Selecting what to purchase and determining budget allocation is just one of many decisions made daily at retail headquarters. They require assistance in deciding which promotions to run, how to promote them, and how to measure their effectiveness.
Teams also evaluate options such as switching suppliers for receipt paper to potentially save costs. Additionally, considerations may include pricing strategies, such as whether to charge $4.99 for socks instead of $4.95.
Each of these decisions impacts the operations of stores, influencing customer greetings, window display arrangements, employee schedules, and inventory.
Stores must be promptly informed of such decisions. Implementing a retail task management system serves as the bridge between headquarters' strategies and their execution in stores.
Task management software commonly provides teams and store managers with time-bound checklists of store-related tasks. Workflow management applications are typically designed with mobile users in mind, recognizing that retail associates often work without a dedicated desk.
What to Look for in a Retail Task Management Software?
Automation for Increased Efficiency
When it comes to streamlining retail operations, automation is leading the way.
Automating dull and repetitive processes allows systems to take care of things like staff scheduling and inventory updates.
This not only reduces the likelihood of human mistake but also frees up valuable time for employees, which in turn boosts output and quality of service.
Real-Time Updates and Data Analytics
The benefits of real-time updates and comprehensive data analytics are offered by modern tech-based task management systems. All parties involved are able to make better decisions when they have access to the most recent information in real-time.
However, data analytics can offer useful information about company trends, consumer habits, and performance indicators. As a result, stores may better anticipate problems, act on data, and enhance their operations in real-time.
Scalable Solutions
When picking a task management system, scalability is quite important, particularly for companies that are expanding. When a retail company grows, it often needs to move to new sites or adjust to new demands. A scalable solution can help with this. This safeguards the company for what's to come by making sure the task management system can adapt to new needs.
Integration Capabilities
A task management solution needs to be able to interact with current systems without any hassle. Systems in this category include those used in human resources (HR) to handle personnel data, in point-of-sale (POS) systems to monitor sales, and in inventory management (IM) to efficiently regulate stock.
Task management becomes more efficient and less fragmented with integration, which offers a comprehensive and unified perspective of corporate processes.
Bottomline
To sum up, any corporate-owned retail brand operating multiple brick-and-mortar locations stands to benefit significantly from implementing a Retail task management software. Centralizing tasks and communication through a unified platform ensures consistent execution by store teams aligned with corporate objectives.
This consistency not only enhances customer experiences but also fosters clarity among store associates regarding their responsibilities and expectations.
Unify Team Operations, Maintenance and Safety Compliance with Xenia
Xenia unifies daily operations, maintenance management and quality assurance to help ensure teams and facilities are effective and efficient.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
Operational Execution
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
💪 Team Task Management
Assign work digitally to defeat pencil whipping and disorganized teams. Complete tasks, chat with teams on any device, track time, collect photos, and ensure high quality work.
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for daily opening and closings, performance review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
📲 Chats & Announcements
Centralize team communications with in task chats, one-on-one chats, team messages and company wide announcements
📊 Team Performance Reporting
Use Xenia's analytics dashboards to view staff work reports. Filter by asset, location, category or due date and export the report in PDF or Excel
Maintenance Management
🛠️ Work Orders
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
🧰 Preventive Maintenance
Create a preventive maintenance calendar to ensure asset uptime is not compromised. Attach images, templates, videos and notes to every task and assign to a team or individual for completion.
📲 QR Codes
Generate and attach QR codes to equipment and facility locations to enable fast and accurate inspections and data logs.
⚙️ Work Order Requests
Receive, approve and assign work order requests from tenants, regular customers and vendors. Enable requesters to submit, track, and communicate with your team, without access to operations templates or unrelated work orders.
📁 Equipment Work History
View work history for every asset and sub asset in Xenia. Review performance data and enable corrective actions to improve your operation.
Safety Compliance & Quality Assurance
👍 Concrete Brand Standards
Put your brand standards in a clear and operational checklist to be attached to work assignments.
🔎 Smart Inspection Workflows
Xenia's operations template builder has built in conditional logic into each step. This allows you to trigger actions based on a form response such as creating a corrective action on a failed inspection step, sending a notification to management for out of range meter readings, and much more.
✨ Corrective Actions
Operationalize inspections with fast work order assignment arising from a failed inspection step. All corrective data is stored in the checklist submission for auditing and accountability.
📋 Analytics and Reports
View live dashboard summaries of tasks, employee performance, template submissions and more. Filter, organize and export compliance reports to PDF and Excel formats to simplify compliance management.
Unify End to End Retail Operations With Xenia's Digital Solutions
Streamlining chaotic retail operations, multi location procedures and daily activities isn't easy.
We get it!
Xenia unifies everything with the help of dedicated iretail execution tools to maintain a consistent quality needed for your on-site assets.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
💪 Inspections, SOPs and Logs Within Minutes!
Take the lead on your church facility management activities by creating detaild templates with unlimited steps and diverse reponse times.
📆 Plan Ahead With Scheduled & Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for daily opening and closings, performance review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
📲 Dedicated Mobile App
Download and install Xenia's official iOS and Android app on your smartphone to centralized your on-site facility management activities.
📲 Chats & Announcements
Centralize team communications with in task chats, one-on-one chats, team messages and company wide announcements
🛠️ Work Orders Management
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
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