Best Practices, Product

How to create checklists for the retail network that will work ❓

Apr 09, 2021 3 min read

Qvalon Blog article content

Regular assessment of the network branches’ activity, with the help of checklists, increases the efficiency of the company’s work. The main thing is that such monitoring should be systematic and have maximum coverage: operations, employee responsibilities, etc. Otherwise, it will not be possible to identify all the weaknesses in internal business processes.

The evolution of the quality control process

Checklists are a list of actions to be taken. Shopping list, schedule for the day — these are also a kind of “control point”, only in the most primitive version. More sophisticated tools for internal audit are used in commerce. These include QVALON, a cloud-based service to automate branch office audits using a mobile application. Its application makes it much easier to monitor the efficiency of outlets and helps to eliminate weaknesses as soon as possible.

man with checklists for the retail network

Using the electronic checklist system allows to:

  • detect violations;
  • delegate the task of their elimination to the responsible person;
  • keep records of errors;
  • compare the time frame for each staff/branch member to resolve an emergency situation, make cuts by any criteria during the selected time period for any number of branches in the network.

However, this only works if the settings are correct.

Here’s what it takes:

  1. Provide input data: information about stores and number of users (auditors). This information is entered into the system by the QVALON support staff member, which allows you to build an organizational structure for the system. The connection between users and stores can be either direct, or via binding by region, division, etc. It all depends on the client’s preferences.
  2. Load the checklists. First, the work is carried out on the “control points” already used by the company. Structuring of checklists occurs in the process of their loading into the system when the client chooses questions from the uniform electronic directory.
  3. Improve the network quality control tool. Based on the results of the first checks with the use of electronic checklists, the client sees what strategic changes should be made for the most effective audit of the company’s business processes.

For example:

  • more departments can be involved: connect security, HR, etc.;
  • make new objects for the audit: sales outlets or new employees;
  • increase the number of questions in the checklists;
  • improve the form of feedback on identified violations — for example, to establish a deadline for correction of violations, and, in case of non-compliance, to delegate the task to the head of the responsible employee, and so on, up the hierarchy.

Who manages the system?

After the initial configuration of the IT solution, the client receives administrator rights and instructions on how to use the cloud service. The customer representative is trained to simplify acquaintance with QVALON: he learns how to create and structure checklists, generate reports, etc. In case of any questions, support specialists are always ready to help.

What if the company has no experience with checklists?

In order to get a turnkey strategy for evaluating the business processes of the network branches, you can use the services of QVALON methodological consulting.