The Case of Soft Drinks

How PlanoCheck helped an international soft drink manufacturer
collect accurate and exhaustive store data

The Challenge

Our client, a leading soft drink manufacturer, was auditing the field through store checks performed manually by the sales representatives. However, the results yielded by these store checks were not sufficiently reliable and the time spent per sales representative was too significant.

  • 300 sales representatives scheduled to perform 27,300 store visits per month
  • Store checks performed on laptops – entailing significant time and execution difficulties
  • Insufficient time spent on discussions and negotiations with store management
  • Inaccurate store reports due to manual input mistakes
  • Headquarters forced to add duplicate store check audits

Our client made the decision to digitalize store checks using PlanoCheck in more than 30,000 Points of Sales.

  • Using their smartphones and our intuitive mobile application, sales representatives would take photos of shelves and upload them to our cloud.
  • Photos would be immediately processed and products recognized by our power image recognition-based solution.
  • As a result, KPIs would be sent directly to the client’s designated information database for further consolidation using a BI solution.

This project having been a success at the local level, a roll-out was carried out at the European level.

Results at a glance

  • 100,000+ pictures analyzed each month in the UK
  • Data automatically integrated in client’s CRM servers
  • 10+ customized provided KPIs, from product presence and number of facings to share of shelf and competitors’ information
  • Reliability of data, with accuracy rate exceeding 99%
  • Gain in time experienced by the sales representatives estimated to value more than GBP 2,4 million per year (approximately €3 million per year)

Go ahead. Have a look.