Set Up Store Visits and Capture Data

Dorothea is ready for the last mile of the journey. With everything else in place, she can set up the visit execution data model. She uses the Visit object to store information about each visit the field rep executes.

Here’s her visit data model, showing how the Visit object interacts with the other objects she’s already set up.

Dorothea looks at the Visit object to identify the key attributes.

• Place: This is a foreign key reference to a location, address, or a retail store. For Consumer Goods Cloud, this field must be a reference to a Retail Store record.
• Visitor: This is a foreign key reference to the User or People objects. The visitor can be an internal user (field rep), or a guest user. Currently, only the User object is supported.
• Planned Start and End Time: These fields capture the date and time when the rep is expected to start and complete the visit to the store. The rep’s route planning is based on the store’s operating hours and the planned date and time of the visit.
• Actual Start and End Time: These fields capture the date and time when the rep actually starts and completes the visit.
• Special Instructions: This is a text field where the sales manager can provide instructions to the field rep for tasks that are not defined through the action plan. For instance, the sales manager can provide some notes to the field rep to follow up on items from previous visits.
• Visit Priority: This is a custom picklist that the store manager can use to define whether a visit is of high, medium, or low priority. The field rep can plan their day accordingly.
• Status: This picklist stores the status of a visit. Valid values are Planned, In Progress, Abandoned, and Completed.

In the last unit you learned about Assessment task definitions and action plan templates. Now it’s time to look at the output of these two objects: Assessment Task and Action Plan.

When Dorothea created a Visit record, she defined which store a field rep can visit and when. Now she has to define what the field rep does during the visit. She can use action plans for that! To apply an action plan, select any of the action plan templates and select the Visit record as the target object. The action plan template is reusable and can be applied to multiple visits.

Let’s look at an example. Dorothea created an action plan template record: NTO Stores–Compliance Checks Template. She added the following items to it.

• Inventory check (Metrics: count of products)
• Planogram check (Metrics: facings, share of shelf, out-of-stock)
• Promotion check (Metrics: overall compliance, display units)

She associates this action plan template to upcoming visits to four stores using action plans. The field reps perform the same set of tasks during these four visits. Instead of having to manually add tasks for each visit, sales managers can simply select an action plan template that has the right set of predefined items and associate it to multiple visits.

Sometimes a field rep needs to perform an additional task during a store visit, one that’s not defined in the action plan. For example, an Alpine Group sales manager wants a field rep to visit a store and upsell a new flavor of summer cooler. This is an Assessment Task that the field rep must execute in addition to the three items that are part of the action plan.

Any task that a field rep executes as part of a visit is an assessment task, whether it’s part of an action plan or not.

Here’s what the assessment task and retail visit data model looks like.

Each assessment task has a reference to the Assessment Task Definition record that defines the task and also to the Retail Visit KPI record that captures the actual data. The following key attributes are captured as part of an assessment task.

• Task Type: The task type is referenced from the assessment task definition. It can be planogram check, inventory check, promotion check, order capture, in-store survey, or other.
• Assessment Task Definition ID: The lookup to the task definition helps connect the task to the associated metrics. For example, if an assessment task has a lookup to the task definition of a planogram check task, the related assessment indicator definitions such as Facings, Share of shelf, and Voids are also derived. For details, review the Assessment Task Definitions topic in the previous unit.
• Is Required: This indicator on the Action Plan Template Item object defines whether the task is mandatory. For example, out of all the tasks sales reps can perform during a visit, a sales manager indicates that the promotion check is mandatory.
• Status: This is a custom picklist that stores the values for a task’s progress. The possible values are Not Started, In Progress, Abandoned, and Completed. Based on the real-time progress of a task during the visit, the status dynamically changes.
• Sequence: This is an integer field that stores the sequence of a task in the task list that's displayed to the field rep during a visit.

Up until now, you’ve looked at the objects that take care of retail planning and visit execution. But what happens when a field rep captures the values for actual count of products, or the actual compliance details of a promotion or planogram? What happens to that transactional data?

All the data that the field rep captures for various metrics gets stored in the Retail Visit KPI object. This object is the runtime equivalent to the Retail Store KPI object. It relates the following.

• A Visit record
• The associated Assessment Task records
• A Retail Store KPI record

All target values in the Retail Store KPI object can be compared with actual values in the Retail Visit KPI object.

To analyze store performance, sales managers like Gustavo can build Salesforce reports and dashboards using the information in the Retail Visit KPI and Retail Store KPI objects. With targets defined for promotions, products, product categories, planograms, and other custom objects and the actual data captured by field reps, sales managers have comparative data at their fingertips. They can monitor and evaluate metrics around promotion compliance, planogram compliance, store-product compliance, and so on. Based on the analysis, it’s easy for Gustavo to take corrective measures, change promotion strategies, manage orders for product replenishment, and so on.

Dorothea has now fully explored the Consumer Goods Cloud data model and is super proud of her analysis and set up. She can’t wait to see how it helps Alpine Group achieve greater levels of efficiency in business planning and retail execution.

In this module, you saw how Dorothea successfully set up the Consumer Goods data model and architecture for Alpine Group Nutrition & Beverages.

Now that you’ve followed Dorothea on her journey, consider how you can adopt, implement, and customize Consumer Goods for your specific business requirements. With Consumer Goods Cloud, you can help sales managers in your company stay organized and efficient. Meanwhile, field reps in your company can use the Retail Execution mobile app to perform tasks and execute visits faster and with more accuracy.