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Retail Common Use Cases
Retail Common Use Cases
Learn from the experience of other retail companies
Yuval M avatar
Written by Yuval M
Updated over a week ago

This is your 'How To Build My Company App' if you are a retail company. We gathered examples of best practices from leading companies in the market to help you identify what can be relevant for your company - check it out!

Retail companies use Connecteam for 

  1. Automating Day-to-Day Activities and Operations

  2. Streamlining Communication 

  3. Raising Team Standards

  4. On-boarding New Employees

  5. Employee Training

  6. Drilling Down on Loss-Prevention and Shop-Lifting

  7. Shifts Schedule Management

  8. Compliance Purposes

  9. Making Company Protocols Available

  10. Human Resource Needs

  11. Tracking Work Time For Payroll

1. Automating Day-to-Day Activities and Operations

As day-to-day operations are a core element for retail companies, checklists and reports are commonly used to reduce friction from day-to-day activities, automate information flow, improve response time, and gain better oversight. Here are some popular examples:

  • Store opening and closing checklist

  • Store weekly summary report (to be filled by store manager: training, sales, visual marketing, key issues, etc.)

  • End of day cash reporting

  • Refunds and returns report

  • Employee purchase record

  • Expenses reimbursement form

  • Tax exemption report (including photo of receipt)

  • Product expiration check and reporting

  • Reporting a damaged product 

  • Auditing Planograma compliance

  • Reporting virtual merchandise sightings (filed by any team member in one of the company's locations)

  • Stock order request form

  • Stock transfer request from one store to the next

  • Cleaner checklist (for quality assurance on the performance of the store cleaners)

  • Maintenance ticket

  • Vacation and sick leave request form

Note: All documents are digitally logged, can be easily shared as a PDF or exported to Excel. There's no limit on the number of documents stored and the number of submissions doesn't affect the price of the service.

2. Streamlining Communication 

Retail companies are heavy users when it comes to communication. Communication takes place at all levels, for example: HQ>Store managers, HR>All teams, Store managers>their employees, between shift managers, etc. Common communication practices include:

  1. Employee directory: making it easy to find the contact details of team members with full permission management.

  2. Chat groups and channels: to streamline day-to-day communication easily and efficiently, utilizing internal groups for sites or small teams, professional groups, and separating between 'work' and 'private life' chats.

  3. Realtime push notifications and updates: for both formal and informal announcements. A few examples of these announcements include updates from the visual marketing team to store managers, announcements and guidance from HR to the entire teams, introduction to new collections, brands or promotions, sharing success stories across the organization, employee recognition, etc.

3. Raising Team Standards

In retail operations, team standards play a key role in the success of the company. Retailers build upon Connecteam's capabilities to raise team standards and build an improving culture of excellence. 

This includes shadowing practices during training, manager observation reports to boost standards, encouragement of reporting from employees and communication of success and excellence to distribute best practices among the company.

Manager observation reports examples:

  • Store visit checklist for inspectors (appearance, visual merchandise, team appearance, team service, operations)

  • Team standards - customer service observation (to be filled by a manager)

  • Team standards - appearance observation (to be filled by a manager)

  • Team standards - visual merchandise (to be filled by manager, to include pictures)

  • Employee performance review

Team members reports examples:

  • Excellent service received (filled by any team member in one of the company's locations)

  • Visual merchandise sitting (filled by any team member in one of the company's locations)

  • Customer incident report 

Training shadow practices examples:

  • Cashier hands-on training checklist (one-on-one to be filled by trainer)

  • Emergency protocol (one-on-one test for emergency response, such as fire, theft, etc.)

  • Helping the 'just looking customer' (observation form, for on-the-job-training)

4. On-boarding New Employees

As an industry with high employee turnover rates, on-boarding is a crucial element when it comes to operational efficiency, sales excellence and customer service. Retailers most commonly utilize Connecteam to provide new employees with a structured, clean and simple on-boarding experience that puts everything they need in one place. Some examples include:

  1. Downloading the app prior to arrival in order to gain access to all relevant information and on-boarding guidelines.

  2. Filling user information form (contact details, emergency contact, photo, etc.)

  3. A welcome note and background about the company (usually accompanied by a short video)

  4. Frequently Asked Questions section

  5. On-boarding related paper-work

  • Health and safety - watch the video, go through the presentation and sign to acknowledge

  • Loss prevention policy - read and sign to acknowledge

  • Employee handbook - read and sign to acknowledge

  • Uniform agreement - read and sign to acknowledge

  • Disabilities support policy - Read and sign to acknowledge

5. Employee Training

In-app training is used to reach every single employee and keep track of progress and execution and ongoing trainings. Different job roles will conduct their own related training based on their seniority level and position. Common training practices include:

  1. Point of Sale training

  2. Customer service

  3. Consumer body language

  4. Do’s and Don'ts

  5. Operations training (stock management, product quality issues, stock order, etc.)

  6. Visual Merchandise training

  7. Product knowledge - brands, products, collections, promotions etc.

  8. Helping multiple customers at once

  9. Helping the ‘just looking’ customer

  10. Detecting counterfeit - how to recognize fake bills?

  11.  Health and safety training

  12. Sexual harassment prevention training

Many companies build on their existing training resources - Google Drive, Onedrive, Sharepoint, presentations, etc. - making it all available in one place to the relevant employees.

6. Drilling Down on Loss-Prevention and Shop-Lifting

To ensure loss-prevention and fight shop-lifting, retailers often:

  1. Submit end of day cash report for each POS.

  2. Get all employees to read and sign their loss-prevention policy and also make employees aware of the consequences if they fail to do so.

  3. Fill in 'Loss-prevention inspection forms' and reviewing random high end products

  4. Provide a follow-through protocol for dealing with such situations

  5. Communicate in real time on high-risk individuals and incidents. (Don't open email from, no one approves cash withdraw but, etc.) 

7. Shifts Schedule Management

Retailers often user Connecteam's job scheduling feature to plan manage and distribute shifts. This is usually done at each store individually for their teams.  

  1. Providing all relevant information including time, position and special instructions.

  2. Utilizing push notifications to make sure employees arrive on time and to notify the manager if someone runs late.

  3. Keeping records of clock in and clock out time, along with the location tagged.

  4. Allowing for shift notes, comments and pictures when needed.

  5. Allowing employees to accept and reject shifts (optional - can be disabled).

8. Compliance Purposes

When it comes to compliance, 'Read and Sign' forms are common, as well as periodical refresher training courses. All documents are logged and automatically sent as a PDF copy to predefined email(s) that can be customized per each form, and users can export a summary report at any time.

Read and sign documents include for example:

  1. Employee handbook acknowledgment

  2. Health and safety 

  3. Uniform agreement 

  4. Sexual harassment policy

9. Making Company Protocols Available

The most common protocol related resources retail companies usually make available for their employees on the app include: 

  1. Employee Handbook

  2. Health and safety protocols

  3. Code of Conduct

  4. Sexual harassment policy

  5. Uniform policy

  6. Loss prevention policy

  7. Aid to Disabled individuals  policy

10. Human Resource Needs

HR teams and executives in retail companies leverage Connecteam for automating processes and to gain better control over workforce related issues:

  1. Recommend a friend: making it easy for the workforce to recommend friends for a position which helps increase their recruitment reach.

  2. Vacation and sick leave request management: users receive an automatic update if requests were denied or approved.

  3. Personal information form for on-boarding new employees: personal info, contact info, emergency contact, documents such as tax forms /photo ID, etc.

  4. Updating contact information: address, name, mobile number, email, bank account change.

  5. Employee satisfaction surveys or performance reviews.

  6. Manager forms and materials: how to conduct an interview, termination related paperwork, the Do's and Don’ts, FAQ and more.

11. Time Tracking

Taking advantage of mobile phone availability, retail companies use Connecteam for time tracking and payroll sheets:

  1. For clocking in and out of shifts, in some cases using a Kiosk station (iPad).

  2. Setting predefined reminders to make sure employees are clocking in and out on time.

  3. To manage and approve leave and time off for employees.

  4. Exporting payroll sheets, per shift or as a total.

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