Dashboards of digital data from various sensors and systems are very useful. However, a field audit will uncover things that have not been logged in the data in the first place.
Reporting Lag Hides Compliance Failures
Items like late appearing promotional displays and incorrect stock locations are often reported late in the cycle. Even if a company has embedded the required correction action into their metrics, it can take days for the necessary action to manifest itself in the numbers. In the meantime an auditor conducting a field audit will find the error within the first day of their visit and be able to confirm whether the subsequent correction action has actually been completed properly.
Temporary Obstructions Distort Sensor Readings
A delivery cage, a pallet or even a sign temporarily put up in the aisle can affect the readings of footfall counters and sensors that measure dwell time for hours on end. These ‘obstructions’ do not get recorded anywhere in the data and therefore become a complete mystery when looking at the numbers. However, a site visit will very quickly reveal the cause of the anomaly and the problem can be rectified.
Staff Behaviour Differs From Logged Activity
Even when a system logs tasks to have been completed by staff, an auditor can verify whether they have actually been done properly. The auditor will observe that although a task has been logged as having been done by a member of staff to face up shelving, the work was done carelessly. The auditor may also observe that although staff can click-and-collect online, customers are being sent to the click-and-collect point by staff, despite being informed that they can collect online.
Physical Condition Issues Have No Metric
Damaged or worn signage, broken in-store fixtures, or a musty smelling stockroom can cause problems that are never recorded in sales reports. A sophisticated data analysis company can only work with the data it has been supplied with, so it is not possible to identify and analyse a condition issue that has not been captured in the first place.
Localised Competitor Activity Goes Unrecorded
A rival may launch a pop-up shop nearby, or be running a promotion on the next street. These types of localised competitor activity will rarely enter an internal data set. For Data Analysis Company, visit https://shepper.com/.
Good dashboards set the questions and then the field audit supplies the answers. The UK government’s standards for trustworthy data quality (such as those for assurance and verification) mean that ground-truth verification sits alongside quantitative reporting and not below it.
