What to do following a store audit
Store audits can often reveal challenges for your business that you may not have been aware of previously. Following an audit, a business must put a strategy in place to adapt the changes required to make their business succeed - Or even survive. Your audit may also highlight that your competitors have a significant advantage over you and will hopefully identify a way to make your business more competitive within your market.
Certain changes may be quicker and easier to implement on your business than others. Changes such as changes to your loss prevention plan may take time and much consideration. It is important, however, for a business to monitor these changes as they are implemented and analyse the difference that it is making.
One of the easier changes that a business can implement is store displays and product placement. Analysing your sales closely following this is important to see if any difference is made. Pricing changes can be implemented easily once the changes have been confirmed with management. This, along with the above product placement adjustments, can make a significant change to business sales. In some circumstances, an audit could reveal issues with staffing and this could be considerably more difficult to address and change.
The difficulties presented following an audit can also be the reason that many businesses will also complete further audits in the months following to work out a clearer way to implement changes. Regardless of whether your audit results show many issues or very few, it is highly important to communicate your results throughout the entire team, from senior management to assistants. Every member of your team is vital to the success of the changes you need to implement. The aim of any audit, whichever type you undertake, is to improve the performance and productivity of your stores as well as making your business valuable.