Introduction

If you own or operate a retail store, you know that today’s shoppers take advantage of technology in order to find the best shopping experiences and prices.

Every customer who walks in seems like an expert with a pocketful of coupons. They’ve done their research and downloaded their discounts ahead of time. Then, after pulling out their smartphones, they start scanning barcodes. Finally, when they find a cheaper price online somewhere, they demand that you make a deal and match that price, or they’ll take their business elsewhere.

It often feels like consumers are now in control. With just their smartphones and a few minutes, they can find the best prices, the best products, and the best services.

However, that’s not much truer today than it’s ever been. Shoppers have always had the upper hand because they’ve always had the option to walk out the door.

To succeed now, retailers need to change strategies and “fight fire with fire.” That is, they must use technology themselves to meet customers’ demands: discounts, deals, convenience, and an “experience.”

Technology, Now Essential

This means that technology is no longer an amenity — it’s a core part of your business and essential to turning those smartphone-wielding shoppers into customers and gaining an edge on your competitors.

Retailers need to use technology to meet customers’ demands: discounts, deals, convenience, and an “experience.” 

There’s a lot of money at stake here

According to a recent study by Cisco, implementing technologies like mobile-enabled shopping, interactive signage, and improved delivery systems could lead to a 15.6 percent improvement in profitability for a large, national retailer. 

Whether you’re a national or regional chain or a mom-and-pop store, these sorts of gains are attainable for any size retailer.

Of course, operating a retail store involves more than customer engagement. You have to move inventory, forecast trends, and document sales histories. You also have to make sure the HVAC system functions properly and the bathrooms are clean. And especially since the advent of e-commerce and then the Great Recession, you know that efficiency is king in your marketplace.

Technology, including mobile apps and point-of-sale (POS) software, is the way to solve many of these challenges. Yet knowing where to start — and what tools to choose from the burgeoning tech marketplace — isn’t easy.

To help, this eBook walks you through four ways to use technology to improve your store’s operations, your efficiency, and, ultimately, your bottom line.

You’ll find practical solutions for using technology to achieve these essential goals of modern retailers: 

• Prepare for and pass inspections 
• Fulfill orders and deliveries 
• Manage and motivate employees
• Engage customers

Chapter 1: Prepare For And Pass Inspections

For a long time, small retailers operated largely off the radar of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). After all, most small retailers don’t have many hazardous materials or heavy equipment on hand. Moreover, they don’t perform dangerous activities, like welding, on-site.

That began to change as recently as 2010 when OSHA and other regulators came to realize the sheer number of people who work in retail operations — nearly 10 percent of the U.S. workforce — and the devastating consequences of unsafe working conditions. In 2010, two years after a worker was trampled to death by a mob of shoppers during a Black Friday sales event, the Department of Labor launched a campaign focused on improving crowd management in major retail stores. This was followed by regulations to protect late-night retail workers from workplace violence, and most recently, in 2015, the tightening of occupational injury recordkeeping and reporting requirements for retailers in a number of areas, from automotive dealers to specialty food stores. 

Today’s retailers are evaluated on everything. 

Federal, state, county, and municipal inspectors inspect retail operations for illness and injury prevention plans and emergency evacuation plans. They also seek to make sure your establishment is in line with regard to policies on fire prevention, ergonomics, electrical safety, ladder use, corridor and walkway accessibility, and sexual harassment. And that’s just a start.

Today’s retailers are evaluated on everything from whether exits are properly marked, illuminated, and unobstructed, to how employees handle food and hazardous chemicals, whether floors are free of hazards, and whether proper signage is displayed when floors are wet.

How can technology help? What technologies work best?

Simple but Smart Solutions

Technology has a reputation for being costly, time consuming, and complicated. But it doesn’t have to be. Considering that your employees likely have varied tech experience, the last thing you want is to give them something they can’t use. That’s why simple solutions like mobile apps, which the majority of employees use on their own, work best.

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets put information at your employees’ fingertips — including the many safety regulations they need to track and enforce in your store, but might not always remember in the rush of the job. By equipping your managers and employees with something as simple as a mobile safety checklist, you can lower your risk of an essential safety measure slipping through the cracks — and leading to a costly lawsuit or even workers’ compensation claim.

Why checklists? Again, the goal is to keep it simple, and there’s really nothing complicated about a checklist.

Checklists can help you systematically ensure that your safety procedures are clear, effective, and easy for your employees to access and follow. OSHA offers dozens of safety plans from which you can build your own checklists.

But OSHA’s plans are paper-based, and new and increasing regulations make it difficult to get by with paper filing, which requires a staff person to manually key in information from the forms to a computer. In addition, when OSHA inspectors show up at stores, they typically want documentation on the spot — so there’s no time to sift through paper documents. A better option is to turn your paper forms into digital, mobile versions. Software programs (like the one we offer at Canvas) make it fast and easy to create mobile apps, which means you don’t have to know how to code.

Benefits of Mobile 

With mobile safety apps, your data is always available, so store managers can see what safety measures are accounted for, and what still needs to be done. All in all, you’ll speed up and simplify the compliance process, while increasing the accountability of your staff.

With mobile safety apps, your data is always available, so store managers can see what safety measures are accounted for, and what still needs to be done.

It’s a bit like having a whole suite of OSHA safety posters on your tablet or phone, except in this case, the posters are interactive and updatable — and your 21st-century employees are much more likely to use them.

Consider the many ways mobile checklists can improve how you manage safety in your workplace:

• Completing store and merchandising inspections
• Identifying risks and alerting folks of them immediately
• Creating emergency plans 
• Labeling hazardous materials 
• Maintaining equipment 
• Training new employees
• Preparing for OSHA and local government inspections

Using mobile checklists to manage your safety program can speed up your response time in significant ways. For instance, something as simple as a torn rug can be reported as soon as it’s noticed, with an alert sent straight to your maintenance team. The expedited response time, in this and other cases, can do a lot to prevent unnecessary trips, falls, and injuries. In addition, you’ll have a documented trail to see precisely what happened, when, and how your staff responded.

Meet Core Goals and Objectives 

With store inspections, mobile checklists make the process more efficient and effective, while allowing you to meet core objectives and goals. You can use checklists, for instance, for general inspections of your parking lot, restrooms, HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems, water fountains, and so on. Or you can use them for more specific reasons — like making sure your store is “on brand” with your overall look, feel, and marketing and business goals.

Mobile checklists are easy to update and tailor to your company’s unique needs. By doing so, you’re giving your staff the tools and information they need to do their job well.

Using mobile checklists to manage your safety program can speed up your response time in significant ways. In addition, you’ll have a documented trail to see precisely what happened, when, and how your staff responded.

Chapter 2: Fulfill Orders And Deliveries

Keeping your store in top shape is key for the safety of both employees and customers. But unless you can get your merchandise into your customer’s hands when and where they want it, none of that matters.

Delivery and fulfillment are critical in today’s marketplace, with a company like Amazon.com — almost always the low-price leader — continuously upping its game by promising faster delivery, creating membership programs, and even testing drones for same-day delivery.

But wait, you say, you’re a brick-and-mortar storefront.

However, as global competition and e-commerce heat up, even the smallest local shops are pursuing multiple channels for selling their goods. That means you should be doing a lot more at your store than just point-of-sale purchases.

That includes selling items through appropriate online channels such as Etsy, eBay, and Amazon itself. It also means offering customers innovative ways to shop.

Besides operating an e-commerce space on your website, allow customers to buy online and pick up in the store (BOPIS), which turns your store into a small fulfillment center.

Delivery and fulfillment are critical in today’s marketplace.

It’s all about offering your customers both greater convenience and a better price.

However, the purchase orders and deliveries that come with e-commerce and BOPIS involve a lot of moving parts and logistics, especially in today’s global marketplace, where products are purchased and shipped all the time from one country to the next.

Unfulfilled orders, damaged merchandise, and late deliveries can damage your company’s reputation and result in lost customers. And in-store order fulfillment, once as simple as ringing someone up at the cash register, has become as complex as e-commerce with the advent of BOPIS. There are many technologies, including mobile apps and mobile payments, that can help.

New Marketplace, New Solutions

Still, using the old pen- and paper-based forms that have served retailers so well for decades?

You’re missing out on productivity and cost savings. Mobile forms and purchase orders, for instance, can be automatically populated as your employees complete them. With paper forms, someone has to key in information by hand, transferring that info from paper into the computer, costing money and time, and increasing the chance of errors.

Using mobile apps reduces printing, storage, and distribution costs.

Mobile-based forms are faster to complete and are almost always more accurate. And using mobile apps reduces printing, storage, and distribution costs.

Likewise, mobile forms can accompany your employees on the go, whether they’re straying from checkout to help customers on the floor or attending a local, national, or international market or fair. Showing up at these events with paper-based systems will come across as outdated and put you at risk of losing key information. It will also slow down your processing time for orders and deliveries.

As retailers venture beyond their brick-and-mortar stores, and as they need employees who can fulfill multiple roles at once, mobile payments are becoming another must-have in the industry. Just be sure to choose a payment option that integrates fully with your mobile purchase order app. At Canvas, for instance, our retail apps sync with PayPal, which means you can use them on the go to take orders and collect payments — all in a series of fast, simple steps.

Chapter 3: Manage And Motivate Employees

Your employees are a top asset and represent your business to your customers. They’re also the source of a lot of work for managers and operators. From training and scheduling to managing workflow, ensuring competence, and conducting performance evaluations, there’s a lot to stay on top of and track.

Your biggest challenge might be keeping your employees engaged. According to a 2012 study by Dale Carnegie Training, 45 percent of American employees are only partially engaged — and a full 26 percent consider themselves disengaged. The cost of this disengagement? The Dale Carnegie researchers say that the employee turnover rate is approaching 65 percent — and that businesses in the United States lose $11 billion every year due to all of this turnover.

In the retail industry, turnover rates are notoriously high, especially for part-time employees. In 2014, for instance, 66 percent of part-time, hourly retail workers left their positions, compared with 27 percent of full-time workers, a study from the Hay Group found (as discussed in The Wall Street Journal). What’s more, according to a CNBC report, the majority left for voluntary reasons, such as being unsatisfied with their jobs.

What can lower the retail churn? Higher pay rates won’t hurt, but experts say motivation and engagement efforts are key, too.

There are a few tried-and-true methods to motivate employees and make them more productive, including economic incentives, providing meaningful feedback frequently, and training managers properly. 

Motivation and engagement efforts are key to helping lower retail churn.

Technology as a Solution

The right tools and technologies can help you manage and improve things like employee productivity, motivation, and engagement. For example, mobile POS devices serve as mobile catalogs and cash registers that retailers can use to sell products right off the floor. These small devices come with credit card sliders and merchandise scanners. And they allow individual employees to play the combined roles of sales associate, help desk, and cashier — and store owners to get by with fewer employees.

With mobile POS devices, mobile applications used on smartphones or tablets can help with employee management and engagement in a number of ways:

• Mobile recruiting apps allow you to screen potential employees for numerous factors, including engagement and personal fit.
• Management apps give store managers easy access to tips and strategies to improve their skills, helping you avoid one of the biggest drags on employee engagement: bad management.
• Collaboration apps facilitate communication and teamwork among staff members. Employees can use these apps to create, edit, and share files — and to produce and discuss their own ideas for improving productivity.
• GPS mobile apps allow you (or your managers or employees) to track where your employees are in the store and what they’re doing, so you don’t waste time searching aisle after aisle when you need them.

In addition to motivating employees, it can be difficult to know which employees are carrying their weight and which ones aren’t. Apps can help you track labor costs and eliminate paperwork in a few important ways, including: 

• Time cards/sheet tracking 
• Tracking sales and other meetings 
• Producing and hosting training guides and checklists
• Ensuring quality, safety, security, and merchandise inspections

Perhaps the biggest benefits of equipping your team with mobile devices and apps are that your employees will feel armed and empowered with information — and your customers will view your employees as knowledgeable, valuable team members who can answer questions and produce results.

The biggest benefits of equipping your team with mobile devices and apps are that your employees will feel armed and empowered with information — and your customers will view your employees as knowledgeable, valuable team members who can answer questions and produce results.

Chapter 4: Engage Customers

This is Where You “Fight Fire with Fire”

“Customer service” and “customer experience” are no longer enough. Competitive price points aren’t even enough.

In today’s retail world, customer engagement trumps all and is a key to success. According to a 2014 poll by Gallup, in consumer electronics retail, “fully engaged shoppers make 44 percent more visits per year to their preferred retailer than do actively disengaged shoppers.”

While discounts and deals continue to rank highly with shoppers, what most customers want are innovations that make the retail experience more convenient, efficient, and engaging. Ultimately, they want an experience that guides them through and streamlines the process and delivers value at the end.

Customer engagement extends well beyond customer loyalty cards and other discount and refund programs.

How Can You Engage Customers?

Real engagement starts once shoppers enter your establishment. Once there, have an in-store app and your customers will be there waiting. According to a recent survey by Cisco, up to 73 percent of correspondents said they would use a retailer’s app while shopping. These apps serve as a guide to your merchandise, alert shoppers to deals, and help shoppers locate items and pass along online reviews or ingredient lists.

Customers want innovations that make the retail experience more convenient, efficient, and engaging.

The most advanced retail apps function like question-answering robots — but you don’t have to spend that much to start engaging your customers. Here are a few ideas:

• QR codes: Get your customers to scan these codes with their smartphones and send them a product video, image gallery, or special offer.
• Mobile payments: Sixty percent of today’s customers are interested in mobile payments, the Cisco survey found. And you’re already federally mandated to update your POS systems to handle pin-and-chip-based credit cards by October 2015 — and do away with swipe-and-sign credit cards for good. Stay ahead of the curve by taking steps now to equip your POS systems with a mobile payment solution, especially one that integrates with your orders (such as the Canvas mobile apps we discussed earlier, which sync with PayPal).
• Digital receipts: Your customers no longer store receipts in boxes underneath their beds, so why give them something they’re just going to lose or trash? Instead, digital receipts allow you to cut your paper bill, while giving customers a more convenient way to track their purchases. Digital receipts also let you send discounts or rewards right to your customers’ smartphones, where they can immediately post about their purchases on Facebook.
• Beacons: These transmitters, located around your store, can interact with your customers’ smartphones if they’ve installed your in-store app. They alert customers to discounts and awards.
• In-store digital signs: Using beacons and in-store apps, these signs can alert customers to deals tailored to their interests, and then guide them through your store. They also can be used to show estimated wait times at your now “smart” checkout lines. This is an expensive proposition, but 77 percent of shoppers would love to see it happen.

In many ways, the scramble of retailers to implement the right tools and technologies is an “arms race” of sorts, with customers using their phones to find better deals — and you using tech to keep them in your store.

The end goal of these tools is to generate engagement and loyalty by being more responsive to your customer’s needs than ever before.

The Time Is Now

No matter the size or type of store you operate, you’re looking to improve employee productivity, cut costs, and bolster your operations and efficiencies. And technology, especially mobile apps that can help you manage inventory, fulfill sales, and engage customers and employees, is mandatory in reaching those goals.

The most important thing to realize is that technology does not stand still and will continue to evolve as customer preferences, shopping habits, and even employee work habits change.

Use technology to interact with and get to know your customers — and to streamline many other parts of your operations, from the way you meet safety compliance to how you track inventory and fulfill orders and deliveries.

Moving these systems from paper to digital will give you data that you can use to make smarter decisions, run your day-to-day operations more effectively, and even build your store’s brand and increase your profits.

At GoCanvas, we offer hundreds of mobile apps created by and especially for modern retailers. Browse our selection of existing apps, let us convert your paper forms into apps, or create your own apps with our easy-to-use technology.

Ready to Rethink How You Work?

GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.

Introduction:

It’s the 21st century. No business has any business using paper for all its processes. Paper slows companies down and gives competing organizations the edge.

A vice president at Hewlett Packard once wrote, “The way an organization manages its information will be the difference between rising above and falling behind in an increasingly competitive market.”

Digitizing information is the first step. Making the switch from paperwork to GoCanvas mobile forms can make a huge difference in efficiency, accuracy, and ultimately the bottom line for any business — large or small.

But there is much more a company can do to ensure its competitiveness. Improving and automating workflow is the next stage in the evolution and growth of a company that is digital-first.

Workflow automation takes information traditionally captured and shared via paperwork and moves it to mobile devices — thus automating how that information is shared and built upon, which saves time, increases accountability, and reduces errors.

“It is essential to push the right information to the right person at the right time, rather than force them to go search for it,” said logistics software company CEO Tom McLeod. And he’s entirely correct.

Consider how much time you could save if inspection reports, work/service orders, audits and timecards could be automatically sent to the next person to add their data, comments, approvals, etc., and then that person could forward it to someone else for their input without even having to think about it.

One estimate says that each employee spends 11 hours per week storing, retrieving, or looking for paperwork that has gone missing. 

The Big Picture 

Take a look at the row of filing cabinets lining the back of your office. Those filing cabinets are not only taking up valuable real estate, but they are also likely to be full of documents that you don’t reference often. In fact, studies show that more than 85 percent of what is filed is never looked at again. What’s more, some of your filed documents may be duplicated information that you have stored somewhere else.

In addition, a recent survey from PwC found that 7.5 percent of all documents are lost. Add up all that time storing, retrieving, or looking for information that has gone missing and you’re looking at a significant time investment; one estimate is 11 hours per employee per week!

A recent survey of field service providers found that efficiency is the top strategic initiative for service companies, but 35 percent are not using any sort of field software solution to automate their workflows and processes.

Chapter 1: Eliminate Delays in Workflow Processes and Documentations

The good news? A well-conceived workflow automation system can solve many common problems.

It’s the next logical step for a mobile workforce — to allow field technicians, drivers, or other remote workers to be just as connected to the back office as someone sitting at a desk there. Real-time access to scheduling information — and automatic updates if something changes — keeps employees in the know. Immediate digital transfer of estimates, invoices and work/service orders means customers don’t have to wait around to find out how much a job will cost them or how to pay.

In this ebook, you’ll learn about three major ways to harness the power of workflow digitization and automation to benefit your company:

• Eliminate delays in processes: No more waiting for timesheets to be signed or for estimates to be approved; working across locations and time zones is just as easy as if all your employees were in the same place.
• Achieve checks and balances in approval processes: Ensure that expense reports, equipment checkouts, and maintenance reports are reviewed immediately by the right people.
• Take advantage of richer data: Photos, diagrams, signatures, and bar codes can all be easily implemented with digital forms.

In this eBook, you’ll learn how workflow automation can be put to the most effective use for your business — to improve your bottom line and boost the top line.

Consider this common example. At the end of the week, employees take their completed paper time cards and turn them into the office or to a supervisor. But then that information has to be re-keyed into a computer, checked for accuracy, and approved by another supervisor.

Even one small delay in this process can put a lot of pressure on key employees. Great Lakes Fusion, a growing construction company, sometimes had timecards arriving as late as Monday, and with payroll going out on Tuesday the compressed schedule caused serious stress for the back office.

With GoCanvas, though, time cards can be filled out directly from an employee’s mobile device, and with the GoCanvas Workflow tool, the timecard automatically gets sent to the correct supervisor’s devices, and he or she can look it over and sign off on it immediately.

Paper And Mobile Face Off In Our Side-By-Side Comparison… 

The U.S. Department of Labor plans to propose new federal overtime rules in 2019, which will require employees making less than a certain amount (to be announced) who didn’t previously track their hours to start doing so. If you have employees who fall within this group, you may need to implement a whole new timecard system. Why not start with a digital one to avoid the hassles and inefficiencies of paper?

Of course, there are plenty of other examples of how workflow automation can help eliminate delays. Consider the cable installation company, whose salesperson must get approval on a job estimate from her supervisor before sharing it with the customer. With a paper form, that approval could take hours — or days if it gets buried under something else on the supervisor’s desk. The more people need to touch a specific form, and the more days it takes, the more likely you are to have something go wrong.

Or take the case of an inspector for a trucking company, who spots several problems during the course of his inspection and needs to communicate his findings to the service technician team.

With GoCanvas Workflow, job estimates and inspection information can be captured digitally. Each section is immediately saved and stored in the cloud. Whoever needs to see the next section is notified on their smartphone or tablet, which ensures the form doesn’t get ignored.

And it’s easy to implement. One trucking company that wanted to add Workflow to an existing GoCanvas app was able to do so in just five minutes! 

Certarus, a North American leading CNG transportation company, has to manage employees from Calgary, Canada, to Houston, Texas.

The company decided to turn most of its paperwork — from time cards to vacation requests to invoices — into one single GoCanvas app that all employees can access from their mobile phones.

Since implementation, Certarus’ 35 employees have made more than 15,000 submissions through the app. Imagine the time it would take to handle, process, and file 15,000 paper forms. 

Soon after the initial implementation, Certarus added Workflow to its app so that supervisors can easily sign off and approve forms. Now it’s simple to get a second set of eyes on invoices, time cards, and more, in an app that employees and managers are already completely comfortable with, on a device that’s already at employees’ fingertips

Chapter 2: Achieve Checks and Balances in Approval Processes

Typically, a form needs to be seen by more than just the person who filled it out. And in some industries, notably construction, inspection forms have to make their way between multiple users for input, feedback, and approval before work can continue.

It’s not hard to see how paperwork can get lost, slow down processes, or introduce uncertainty.

Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than in the world of expense reporting. IT professional Aijaz Shaikh writes:

“When employees submit their expenses for their manager to approve and for the accounting team to process, they often feel like they lose visibility of what happens next in the process. Their biggest question is when they’ll be reimbursed for their expenses. It often leads to late payment that staff has to bear.” 

Indeed, whether it’s handing a stack of papers and receipts, or faxing info to the main office, the result is the same: lots of room for lost pieces, errors, and delays.

But with GoCanvas Workflow, a digital report is sent immediately to the employee’s manager, who can review the report, check for any typos or inconsistencies, and approve it or send it back to the employee to fix.

This takes seconds, whether the employee is across the hallway — or around the world. And there’s no chance that a form can get lost on the way or sent to the wrong person.

Of course, inspections and expense reporting are just two areas where multiple users can and should weigh in. Other areas where defined checks and balances can be helpful include manufacturing, where quality assurance professionals can flag a problem and send a note back to the line so that the person responsible can make the needed fix and sign off that it’s been addressed.

Or consider the benefits of a detailed digital equipment check-in and check-out log: with GoCanvas Workflow, supervisors can approve equipment check-out requests to ensure that a crucial piece of equipment isn’t double-booked. They can also approve check-ins to confirm that equipment is physically present when — and where — the employee says it is. The result? No more lost equipment and an end to costly downtime.

Chapter 3: Take Advantage of Richer Data

Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. If a plumbing issue is more complicated than a simple leaky faucet, it could take a long time for a plumber to precisely describe it in words — oftentimes a service provider will resort to shorthand and not fully describe the situation. But one photograph can illustrate the problem at a glance.

One New England construction company would take digital photos to go with their paperwork, but then employees needed to spend hours matching photos to forms.

But by going digital, you can take the photos directly within your mobile form. The photo is always attached and included with the form for easy reference — and it’s stored safely in the cloud.

And just because you’re using a digital form instead of paper doesn’t mean you can’t include a signature. With GoCanvas, a customer, employee, or supervisor just signs right on the screen using his or her finger.

GoCanvas also incorporates barcodes (so users can scan a barcode on a display and retrieve information, such as how much inventory should be stocked in that space); and can capture GPS coordinates, do calculations, and harness reference data to pre-populate forms with the correct information.

Workflow adds to the ability to capture rich data — like photos, signatures, and GPS coordinates — by making it easy for multiple people to add that data. Perhaps one employee sends a photo from his location at the first worksite but a second employee needs to add another photo or a signature. With Workflow, that process is automated and takes just seconds.

Conclusion:

If you’re still using paper, your business is falling seriously behind the competition. Digital information isn’t just easier to find, sort, and manage, but represents a whole new way of working, where the information you need at any given moment comes directly to you instead of waiting to be sought out. Workflow automation saves time, increases accountability, and reduces errors by making it easy for multiple people to access, contribute to, and approve important documents. 

Ready to Rethink How You Work?

GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.

Introduction:
If you run a retail store, you have a lot to worry about.

Inventory management, marketing, customer service, and appearances can have a huge impact on how customers view your store. On top of that, you’re busy navigating the enormous changes underway in the retail industry, from the soaring e-commerce market, where global sales hit $1.3 trillion in 2014, to the growing list of options like beacons, mobile payments, and Buy Online and Pick-up In the Store (BOPIS).

Business as usual is no longer an option. You have to make some big shifts to keep up, and that’s a tall order.

Retailers are faced with a scary reality: change or become obsolete.

“Technological innovations and a hyper-connected world have significantly influenced consumer behaviors and expectations,” explains Bashar Nejdawi, president of the technology retailer Ingram Micro Mobility, in an article for Forbes. “As a result, retailers are faced with a scary reality: change or become obsolete.”

You’re probably already paying attention to how clean and safe your store is — and that’s a good thing. But with so many other major priorities on your plate, you might not know how important it is to really focus on cleanliness, overall appearance, and safety, and you might not know how to juggle these things while also managing everything else.

But cleanliness, safety, and appearances matter. Your customers are definitely paying attention to the look (and smell) of your store — including its exterior and restrooms, which are often overlooked — and making purchase decisions based on those factors.

In addition, cleanliness and safety go hand in hand. Clean, dry floors are less likely to be sites for slip-and-falls. Clean cooking equipment, if your establishment serves food, helps make sure you’re serving safe products to your customers. Disinfectants prevent germs from spreading to your employees or customers.

Mobile forms and checklists can be a powerful way to ensure your store is clean, attractive, and safe, and can help your staff work more efficiently vs. relying on traditional paper forms. This eBook will show you how.

You’ll learn how mobile can help you:

• Make your store look great inside and out. 
• Keep displays and inventory up to date. 
• Prioritize safety for customers and employees.
• Boost efficiency and grow your bottom line.

Technology can help you get ahead in the global retail industry. To learn more, don’t miss our guide, “4 Ways Technology Helps Retailers Thrive in the Modern Marketplace.”

Chapter 1: Make your store look great inside and out

Looks matter in the retail industry. If you have great customer service and competitive prices but your signage and displays don’t lure customers in the door, you’re not going to have much success.

Consider, for instance, that in a study conducted by Harris Interactive, 99 percent of shoppers said poor cleanliness would negatively affect their perception of a store. Shoppers also said unclean restrooms and bad odors were worse than poor customer service.

Another study found that 14 percent of consumers would stop visiting a store that was not as clean as they would like, and another 29 percent would only dash in to get something they couldn’t find elsewhere.

99% percent of shoppers said poor cleanliness would negatively affect their perception of a store. 

95% of customers use outside appearances to decide where to shop.

But it’s not just the inside of your store that matters. From your parking lot to trash cans, everything needs to be in tip-top shape. A 2011 survey by market research firm Morpace found that 95 percent of customers use outside appearances to decide where to shop, and more than half (52 percent) would avoid a store because of a dirty appearance from the outside.

Displays, walkways, signage, bathrooms, parking lots, trash cans — your customers notice it all. And keeping it all in shape isn’t easy.

What challenges do retailers face keeping up appearances? 

• Stores with lots of SKUs just have a lot to keep track of, resulting in potentially messy displays.
• Employees can’t clean and help customers find items at the same time — but customers want both service and cleanliness.
• If you only have one set of bathrooms, then closing them for cleaning interrupts traffic flow.
• Let’s be honest: your customers don’t always put things back where they found them.

The good news is that of customers who have chosen to shop at a competitor due to unmet cleanliness expectations, 93 percent said they would come back if that retailer made a clean store a priority.

Furthermore, shoppers who want clean stores “aren’t looking to do a white-glove test,” as Retail News Insider put it. They just want stores that meet five qualifications: 

• They smell clean. 
• They are well-lit (cleaning light fixtures is a good way to ensure good lighting).
• They have a clean checkout area. 
• They have neat and orderly product displays.
• They have well-maintained restrooms.

93% said they would come back if that retailer made a clean store a priority

What can help?

The basics of keeping a clean store are pretty simple, and they’re the same things your parents taught you as a kid: put things back where you found them and clean up after yourself. But of course, cleaning an entire store is more complicated than cleaning your childhood bedroom. Consider these tips:

• Create a daily cleaning routine for your staff. They won’t forget anything if they know that the floors are always mopped before the windows are cleaned.
• Train them to mop up any spills or messes as soon as they’re made, and deal with any hazards ASAP.
• Details matter. Don’t just mop floors and wipe down sinks — pay attention to door handles, ceiling vents and fans (which are often overlooked), and hard-to-reach corners, including those hidden by shelving or other furniture.
• Ensure all employees, or at least every employee on cleaning duty, are properly trained on cleaning policies and procedures, have access to adequate supplies, and understand what “clean” means.
• Describe the end result: “Doors and door handles should be free of handprints and scuff marks,” for example.
• Consider a cleaning checklist, which can help you ensure that nothing gets missed.

Use mobile to make cleaning more effective 

If you’re investing all this effort in a clean, clutter-free store, the last thing you need is for your employees to be carrying around pieces of paper to help them remember everything that needs cleaning and organizing. Yet many retailers still rely on paper forms and haven’t yet made the switch to digital forms and other technology-based solutions that make cleaning more efficient and effective. With mobile forms, your employees can have all the information they need at their fingertips, without excess paper — and when they’re done, they can email the completed checklist (and even photos of the sparkling clean store) to their supervisor, corporate, and others immediately to analyze results.

Chapter 2: Keep displays and inventory up to date

Your inventory is your biggest investment, and getting it right takes a lot of work. Customers don’t like seeing outdated inventory or empty racks. They don’t like having to ask, “Is there more in the back?” and having the answer be “I’m not sure.” But as you know, keeping track of what’s coming in and going out isn’t always easy.

Small and medium-sized businesses can’t always afford pricey inventory management software, but as retail operations move to a more “omnichannel” strategy, things can get pretty complicated. In all likelihood, you’re selling online through multiple channels, as well as managing the inventory in your brick-and-mortar store(s). Plenty of retailers even use their stores as fulfillment centers from which they house and ship goods when online orders come in. These added variables make it all the more important — and all the more challenging — to accurately predict and manage inventory.

Beyond that, customers’ needs and wants are changing daily. And the growth of online me ga-retailers has led customers to expect flexibility, a wide range of inventory, and that they can have what they want right now.

Customers don’t like seeing outdated inventory or empty racks. They don’t like having to ask, “Is there more in the back?” and having the answer be “I’m not sure.” 

It can feel overwhelming sometimes but technology can help.

What technologies support inventory and stock management? 

• Inventory tracking software, which allows you to track inventory by type, cost, quantity, and volume. 
• Database programs, (such as Microsoft Access) that you can tailor to your specific needs — as long as you can code.
• Mobile apps, which put inventory data and information in the palm of your employees’ hands.

The big guys, like Home Depot, have dedicated mobile devices that let workers help customers locate products, give information about products, and even check customers out before they reach the register.

Even the most basic of these mobile apps are a huge step up from tracking inventory manually.

Luckily, there are plenty of mobile apps out there that can give you similar superpowers for a much more affordable price. Use them to track inventory (and know where it is in your store), and keep track of sales so you can crunch numbers and see what products are flying off the shelves. Even the most basic of these mobile apps are a huge step up from tracking inventory manually.

Consider, for example, how these apps can help: 

• With this mobile inventory tracking sheet (bar-code enabled), you can track a wide range of data on your products and supplies, such as beginning and ending dates, item number, description, quantities on hand, and the last date in which the item was inventoried.
• Use this mobile app to manage food inventory if your retail store has a restaurant. You can record purchasing units and unit prices, along with inventory units for meats and poultry, seafood and fish, dairy, produce, grocery, dry goods, and bakery items.
• Keep your inventory organized with this mobile item-inventory sheet. Calculate the balance of inventory on hand, know when items are received and shipped, and track location.

Another bonus of strong inventory management? It’s actually good for employee morale. One company owner told Successful Business News, “Not only does this mean we don’t have to disappoint our customers, but…[our employees] don’t have to deal with the frustration of not being able to fulfill an order.” To say nothing of how mobile can improve the process of doing a full-store inventory — is not usually a fun task for your employees.

Use mobile apps to track inventory and keep track of sales so you can crunch numbers and see what products are flying off the shelves. 

Chapter 3: Prioritize

A clean store is a safe store. And safety matters for customers and employees — and your bottom line.

You might not think of your retail business as a target of OSHA fines. After all, retail establishments don’t use much heavy equipment, handle many hazardous materials or chemicals, and don’t perform dangerous work like welding. But injuries still happen, so OSHA is cracking down on the retail industry, issuing thousands of dollars in fines for everything from failing to keep passageways clean and clear, obstructing exits, and storing boxes in a way that makes them prone to falling.

New regulations went into effect on January 1, 2015, requiring all retail employers to report work-related deaths to OSHA within 8 hours, and work-related serious injuries within 24 hours. 

According to the law firm Epstein, Becker, Green, OSHA has been “very aggressive in its enforcement efforts and in seeking large penalties.” It intends to encourage its inspectors to impose the highest possible penalties going forward.

In addition, OSHA has tightened its reporting requirements and added a recordkeeping requirement for many types of businesses that previously did not have to keep injury records. New regulations went into effect on January 1, 2015, requiring all retail employers to report work-related deaths to OSHA within 8 hours, and work-related serious injuries within 24 hours.

The good news is that you are not likely to see many very serious injuries at work in retail, but that doesn’t mean your employees and customers can’t get hurt or even die from unsafe conditions — and cost your company big. Just think of the slew of personal injury lawsuits that have arisen after Black Friday shopping events due to a lack of crowd control. As CNN reports, one anonymous website, blackfridaydeathcount.com, even tracks the number of injuries (98) and deaths (7) that have occurred in stores on Black Friday.

But poor crowd control at major retail events isn’t the only safety hazard of concern. Many of the retail citations in 2013 were related to poor “housekeeping and cleanliness” and “trip and fall” hazards, all of which can be prevented by keeping your store clean.

If you’re still relying on paper forms to keep your store clean and safe, a potential problem might remain a problem for hours, even days or weeks, after it’s noticed. To understand why that is, imagine that a clerk spots a loose shelf in the back of the store, covered in heavy merchandise. She may fill out a paper form documenting the problem and leave it in the office, but your maintenance team doesn’t know there’s a problem until they physically come to the office to collect the forms.

If you’re still relying on paper forms to keep your store clean and safe, a potential problem might remain a problem for hours, even days or weeks, after it’s noticed.  

If you equip your team with mobile forms though, that same clerk can document the problem (with photographs, if necessary), and maintenance will receive a notification immediately.

How else can mobile apps help?

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets put information at your employees’ fingertips — including the many safety regulations they need to track and enforce in your store, but might not always remember in the rush of the job. By equipping your managers and employees with something as simple as a mobile safety checklist, you can lower your risk of an essential safety measure slipping through the cracks — and leading to a costly lawsuit or even workers’ compensation claim.

Why checklists? Again, the goal is to keep it simple, and there’s nothing complicated about a checklist, which can help you systematically ensure that your safety procedures are clear, effective, and easy for your employees to access and follow.

You can use mobile checklists to:

• Identify risks and alert folks of them immediately 
• Create emergency plans 
• Label hazardous materials 
• Maintain equipment 
• Train new employees
• Prepare for OSHA and local government inspections

You can also use checklists for general inspections of your parking lot, restrooms, water fountains, and warehouse. Or you can use them to look for specific safety issues like precariously balanced boxes in a storeroom, wet floors, conveyors in your warehouse, forklifts, and more.

Stay compliant easily

The Co-operative Group, based in the U.K., is one of the world’s largest community-focused food retailers, with 2,800 food stores and gas stations across the country. Until recently, the company’s field management team was still using paper and pen to conduct on-site store audits. By switching to mobile, the results of safety inspections are sent to the head office immediately. And by using mobile to collect data, results from all 2,800 stores can be collected together for detailed, real-time data analysis.

A paper trail — minus the paper

Customers or employees who slip, fall, and injure themselves at your store may even sue you. As the law firm Selman Breitman advises, some cases are legitimate: people get badly injured, and a hazard at the store was to blame. But sometimes plaintiffs exaggerate or even fabricate claims. In these cases, good record-keeping can be one of your best pieces of evidence. Video surveillance isn’t always available (and doesn’t always show a scene in enough detail), but good cleaning logs and incident reports are practical.

A cleaning checklist app can take all this data and store it for you in the cloud.

A “proper cleaning log,” Selman Breitman lawyer Fred Heiser explains, shows that an area was inspected on a certain date by a certain employee, and if it was found to be dirty or hazardous, what the problem is, when it was discovered, and how it was fixed. If keeping track of all this paper makes you start to break out in hives, consider that a cleaning checklist app can take all this data and store it for you in the cloud. That gives you a paper trail — minus the actual paper — to see precisely what happened, when, and how your staff responded so that you can defend yourself in the event of a lawsuit.

No matter the size or type of store, you need to keep everything clean, up-to-date, and most of all, safe. You need to do these things on top of building a roadmap for success in a fast-changing — and intensely challenging — global retail marketplace. Part of that roadmap involves using technology to streamline and improve how you operate. However, the technology doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive. There are plenty of costly options on the market, but they’ll take you a long time to get up and running, not to mention ongoing employee training. 

Considering that your employees likely have varied tech experience, the last thing you want is to give them something they can’t use.

That’s why simple solutions like mobile apps, which the majority of employees already use on their own, work best. 

Say goodbye to paper and move your business into the 21st century with Canvas’ suite of mobile forms. Browse our selection of existing apps, let us convert your paper forms into apps, or create your own apps with our easy-to-use technology. 

Ready to Rethink How You Work?

GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.