As per Deloitte's 2024 Retail Industry Outlook report, improving the omni-experience through investments in physical stores presents a significant opportunity for driving growth in 2024.
Businesses nowadays are more competitive than ever before, and customers have become accustomed to simple and quick checkout processes. Competition is so intense that even a little variance between two businesses might be enough to lose a sale.
And it makes sense from a customer's perspective; imagine finding out that a product you want is either out of stock (OOS) or in the wrong place, which can be a common and frustrating experience for any retail therapy enthusiast.
But as the battle of the racks and shelves intensifies, businesses are finding it challenging to keep their products in the spotlight.
Did you know: Brands lose as much as 25% of sales per year as a result of bad retail execution and monitoring techniques, and the staggering $634 billion that retailers across the world attribute to out-of-stocks is even more astounding.
Here, you'll find all the information you need to implement a successful plan for retail execution software.
In addition to that, we have highlighted the best retail execution solutions to help you streamline all your store tasks with ease and comfort - and that too, over a multi-unit, multi-location setup!
The Top 8 Retail Execution Solutions
Before we delve into other important aspects of retail execution, it’s best to get a quick look through modern-day’s top retail execution solutions. Doing so will give you a fair idea of how these software work in different retail industry verticals.
Take a look below!
.svg)
1. Xenia - Overall No.1 Best and Free Retail Execution Software Solution
Say hello to end-to-end retail operations execution across multi-location storefronts with the best retail execution and monitoring platform: Xenia!
We recognize that retail store success is created not only with efficient processes but also with innovation, adaptability, and seamless collaboration.
Our mobile-first app brings all of these elements together giving you control and convenience to make your life easier, your store manageable, and help you make sales.
Backed by industry-best capabilities, Xenia Retail Execution solutions follow a feature-centric approach to automate retail processes, empowering retail enterprises through a suite of functionalities that drive operations optimization and accountability.
But how? It’s quite simple.
- Centralized Dashboard(s): Enables all kinds of retailers to streamline their end-to-end operational activities over a centralized dashboard. Plan and execute simultaneous workflows over multi-department; multi-unit setups easily without switching over different panels, 3rd party apps or vice versa.
- Real Time Collaboration: Use dedicated in-app chat rooms to keep store managers, retail staff and everyone in the loop or communicate in targeted work orders. Real-time live tracking keeps you in control of what’s going on.
- Ticket Routing & Maintenance Requests: Route tickets to relevant departments through workflows. Create any type of maintenance request & avoid near misses, without affecting your 5-star customer experience.
- Multi-Unit Checklists: Create brand new retail store checklists and templates for seamless retail process integration, or select & download our customizable templates within minutes.
- AI-Powered SOP Builder: Offers an in-app dedicated AI-powered SOP creation tool to enable unlimited SOPs creation for any number of retail operations.
- Log Builder Customization: Enables detailed data collection and analysis, allowing businesses to make informed decisions based on operational insights. Businesses can leverage a consolidated approach to plan, deploy, and monitor multi-unit retail tasks simultaneously.
The platform is highly focused on in-store execution, making sure that each product is perfectly placed in every store. Multiple robust features are provided to match the different workflows across storefronts and to maximise productivity and streamline operations.
Looking to see how retail operations pan out through Xenia in real time?
Key Features
- Store Task Management: Make task delegation as easy as 1, 2, and 3 by ensuring quick task assignment and tracking to enforce accountability and protocol adherence.
- SOPs & A.I. Assistant: By using AI with drag-and-drop templates, users can change the game when it comes to managing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for storefronts, as well as documentation and communication.
- Smart Inspection Workflows: With integrated conditional logic, make quick adjustments and optimizations like fixing inaccurate inspection steps, ensuring peak performance.
- Chats: Instantly reach every member, from line-level employees to management, ensuring everyone stays in the loop and aligned with important updates
- Task Scheduling: Easily identify any loose ends, view missed schedules, and pinpoint the underlying issues by closely monitoring workflows.
- Effortless Multi-Location Management: Benefit from unified reporting, providing a comprehensive view of your entire facilities network for enhanced efficiency and informed decision-making.
Pricing
- Free Forever: Free trial for up to 5 users with unlimited access to all the basic features!
- Starter: $99 / month for the first 15 users with unlimited access to core features
- Premium: $199 / month for the first 15 users with unlimited access to all the core and advanced features + functionalities
- Custom: Need something tailored to your retail operation’s requirements?
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. Yoobic
Second place on this list goes to Yoobic, a popular retail execution and monitoring software.
With the help of Yoobic, retailers can accelerate their store visits and promotional execution procedures, as well as engage and effectively train their frontline staff to enable each store (franchisees, affiliates, members, and more) to provide a consistent customer experience.
Businesses can easily create microlearning content using the Yoobic mobile learning platform, utilize gamification to boost learner engagement, and leverage robust analytics to assess the results of their training initiatives.
To top it off, Yoobic facilitates seamless communication among users, fostering teamwork, and enabling effective monitoring of user comments.
Key Features
- Promotion Execution: To track deployment in real-time, provide comments with ease, and have complete remote visibility into your whole network.
- Store Requests & Maintenance Reporting: Using automated dashboards, examine compliance and see images of the displays put in place at each business.
- Checklists and Forms: Digitize all your visit, audit, and inspection checklists with YOOBIC.
Pricing
- Contact the vendor for pricing
3. Zipline
Zipline is a task management solution that leverages messaging, surveys, inspections, and assessments, among other retail execution field tools, to assist retail businesses in streamlining operations, execution, and communication among frontline workers.
Originally created by a team of retail experts, the platform simplifies retail training and helps increase interaction with frontline employees.
With Zipline's retail execution solution, you can integrate frontline communications, task management, resources, insights, and more. This will make your work more meaningful and help everyone feel more connected to the business.
All in all, it's an easy-to-use platform designed with the retail sector in mind.
Key Features
- Task Management: Zipline is great at keeping track of assignments and projects, which helps to streamline communication and get retail jobs done faster.
- Communication Tools: Retail teams can stay connected and informed in real-time with the communication channels provided.
- Scalability: Anyone from mom-and-pop stores to huge corporations can find what they need with this software.
Pricing
- Ask the vendor for pricing details
4. Repsly
Simplifying field activity management, improving data collection, and facilitating communication between field reps and management, this retail execution and monitoring software is a must-have for businesses.
As a robust retail exeuction solution, Replsly is more of a household name in the industry these days. If you haven't heard of the tool, or used it before, feel free to give it a shot!
Moving on, Repsly includes features such as data reporting, time monitoring, and GPS location tracking, making it ideal for streamlining field operations and acquiring insightful data about field activities.
Provide your clients with on-demand access to the data they care about most — from photo galleries and merchandising data to completion rates and everything in between — to elevate your level of service.
Key Features
- Promotion Execution: Improve the efficacy of your in-store promotions with scalable execution analytics and in-flight compliance monitoring.
- Field Sales: Give your sales force the retail execution field tools they need to make a daily difference in sales, increase shelf share, and cover more area.
- Merchandising: Set up your team to monitor planogram compliance on a large scale, push execution at the shelf, and reduce out-of-stocks.
Pricing
- Ask the vendor for pricing details
5. Reflexis Store Task Manager
Owing to a multitude of custom solutions in Reflexis, retailers can ensure that all stores consistently implement merchandising promotions, resets, new product launches, recalls, and operational improvements.
With this tool, upper-level management, especially, can keep tabs on all the goings-on in the retail location in real-time, organize their plans, set priorities, divide up the job, communicate more efficiently, and more.
Reflexis Task Manager offers a user-friendly interface, streamlining store execution and potentially saving retailers millions of dollars by reducing wasted time and effort.
This platform serves as the cornerstone of the Reflexis Real-Time Store Operations Platform's integrated family of products, empowering retailers to optimize their operations effectively.
Key Features
- Workload Distribution: Reduce unnecessary overtime and keep workloads balanced by automating evenly distributed job assignments.
- Role-Based Assignments: Automatically delegate work to colleagues according to their interests, availability, and abilities.
- Task Prioritization and Completion Tracking: Frontline workers can keep tabs on everything that's occurring all day and set priorities appropriately.
Pricing
- Ask the vendor for pricing details
6. PAZO
Thousands of retailers use PAZO, a task management software for retail, to improve internal communication, complete everyday mundane tasks, simplify operations, and gain clearer visibility across all of their locations.
Workers and Teams can stay in the loop for improved data interchange, maintenance of storage, and cooperation on planogram compliance.
With PAZO, business owners can enjoy seamless task management, from assigning tasks and managing issues to conducting audits on time and enhancing operational efficiency.
Key Features
- New Product Launch: Coordinate efforts related to VM, training, and products. Obtain comprehensive store-level visibility.
- Employee Onboarding & Training: Facilitate the onboarding and training of retail workers while guaranteeing complete compliance.
- Daily Sales Report: Automate sales tracking to ensure efficiency. Monitor outliers closely and view small wins in real-time.
Pricing
- Ask the vendor for pricing details
7. QVALON
QVALON is a full-service retail operating solution that prioritizes better compliance and execution in-store.
To ensure smooth operations in retail settings, the platform provides retail execution field tools such as analytics, problem monitoring, and checklist management.
In order to facilitate operations streamlining, enhance accountability, and provide actionable insights for ongoing development, QVALON has developed a system.
Key Features
- Audit: Proactively address issues before they impact store performance.
- Learning: Educate your staff on company standards and retail processes.
- Collaboration: Seamlessly integrate video chat and messaging to enhance teamwork and communication in retail execution and monitoring.
Pricing
- Ask the vendor for pricing details
8. WorkJam
WorkJam is a collaboration focused cloud-based retail execution system designed to streamline recruiting, job management, staff communication, and training processes.
By enhancing compliance, users can reduce labor expenses, minimize absenteeism rates, improve sales conversion efficiency, and simplify labor expectations. This platform becomes invaluable on the front lines, ensuring seamless communication with all shift members, regardless of location, while maintaining compliance.
And if we were to take it one step further, we'd say that WorkJam Tasks shortlists qualified workers and assigns them tasks and steps, enabling companies to maintain consistent operational standards across all business operations.
Key Features
- Simplify Tasks And Daily Operations: Pay attention to the important things: productivity, employee engagement, brand standards, and site execution.
- Task Management: Ensures consistency throughout your entire organization by integrating employee communication, learning, staffing, audits, and task management.
- Realtime Reports: Being able to see job completion and bottlenecks in real time allows you to manage each site proactively.
Pricing
- Ask the vendor for pricing details
The Significance of Retail Execution and Monitoring Solutions
Business processes like Retail Execution (REX) are implemented to ensure that a consumer goods company's overall brand and promotional strategy are effectively implemented in-store.
Whether it's product placement, promotional displays, accurate pricing, or complete inventory, retail execution serves as the engine that fosters the connection between a brand and its customers.
Success depends on executing the right actions at the right times across the appropriate channels.
In-store activities such as retail audits, promotional checks, asset merchandising, sales orders, and collecting proof-of-performance information are commonly conducted. These tasks are often carried out on a mobile device, especially when offline data access is necessary.
For example, when implemented properly, featured displays can boost CPG sales by an average of 193%.
However, the true strength of retail execution and monitoring goes beyond in-store actions. Its power lies in real-time planning conducted before implementation. All businesses that sell, service, or offer products in a physical retail shop can benefit from retail execution software.
While retailers are the most ideal candidates for RES, third-party teams who visit retailers' locations to execute tasks are also worthy of consideration.
Today, we have AI and big data-driven software in the market, but when RES first came out a few decades ago, it was to assist field representatives who worked for merchandising service organizations (MSOs) and consumer packaged goods (CPG) corporations.
Field teams used to rely on verbal communication, clipboards, and phone calls to keep tabs on, confirm, and report performance to leadership, limiting transparency and clarity.
Today, retailers and other businesses are now able to make use of RES's expanded execution capabilities thanks to the technology's steady evolution over the years.
Make The Right Call…
For brands and retailers, choosing the best retail execution software is not only crucial but downright essential. Retail execution and monitoring software boosts company efficiency by analyzing consumer and customer data, improving throughput, informing on product availability, and assisting with returns.
With so many choices for retail execution solutions, it's important to carefully consider which software solution will serve your business best. But then again, it's not that easy. Since there's an abundance of digitized solution, there's always a chance for you to end up signing up for a program on impulse.
To help you avoid the typical buyers' remorse syndrome, we recommend going on a trialing spree to see whether your business requirements really meet the retail solutions' advertized features.
From then on, you can easily sign up for a paid solution to port over your existing ongoing operations right away!
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, Today!
Whether it's rstore task management, or complex retail execution processes over a sprawling multi-location setup, we understand the headache!
Xenia offers a complete suite of features that enable retail businesses to overlook their on going processes- and that too, without compromising on accoutability, scalability and customer experience.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Quickly design and implement standard operating procedures (SOPs) across locations using drag-and-drop templates. Customize everything from daily opening routines to complex safety checks.
💪 Team Task Management
Simplify daily operations and maintenance. Assign tasks, track completion, and manage repair requests in a few clicks. Keep your teams focused and facilities running smoothly.
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for daily opening and closings, performance review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
📲 Chats & Announcements
Communicate effortlessly within your team. Send direct messages, create group chats, and make announcements. Ensure everyone is aligned and informed, from the back office to the frontline.
📊 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
🛠️ 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.
⚙️ 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.
👍 Concrete Brand Standards
Put your brand standards in a clear and operational checklist to be attached to work assignments.
📋 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.
.svg){kind=icon}
.webp)
%201%20(1).webp)
.svg)
%201%20(2).webp)
%20For%20Businesses%20in%202024.webp)
.webp)
