Maximum value from customer visits or How SAP Sales Cloud helps organize visits and boost Sales

Imagine a store for your products or brand. What should it look like? In which sections should your products be located? Which shelves do you want to occupy, and how will the products be positioned? What other criteria will increase your competitiveness? What will the pricing policy be? How will you check for out-of-stock or damaged items? How often will your sales representative visit stores? What should they do there? Are there checklists to be used regularly?
This is not limited to retail stores. You can create a concept for auditing beauty salons, opticians, or coffee shops. Any business that requires object control can benefit from streamlining visit and audit processes. The system will help grow your business only when you have a clear understanding of your goals, KPIs, and processes.
Two ways to work with visits:
Visit Execution – This is the basic option focused on managing sales representatives' visits. It provides control over task completion during a visit, including customer interaction, survey completion, and follow-up actions. The system lets you set parameters like visit type (e.g., training, debt collection, or discussing a commercial offer) and configure a task list for each type.
Perfect Store (Ideal Store Concept) – This is an advanced feature for Visit Execution, additionally digitizing audit results. Commonly used for retail chains, it includes an enhanced interface. It allows for quantitative assessments of how well a store and its “locations” (or “Point of Engagement” (PoE)) meet your standards, calculate KPIs based on shelf and stock analysis, and more. You can assign a scheme and list of PoE for each type of store to check, and add a list of tasks, surveys, and questions to each PoE that need to be answered. These "locations" do not necessarily have to be physical. They can include the entrance area where the presence of ads must be checked, the administrator’s station for document exchanges, the shelf area, refrigerators, or storage rooms. By understanding how to quantify audit results, you can set up KPIs for both individual “locations” and the overall performance of the store. Based on survey results (e.g., planogram compliance, damaged or expired goods, price compliance), the system can calculate indicators online and immediately suggest correction methods. As a result, the business will have a digitized understanding of where improvements are needed and where problems need to be addressed.

The solution allows for effectively organizing the schedule of visits, considering the customers’ working hours and preferred days, recommended frequency of meetings, and route specifics. You can create a list of customers to visit based on selected conditions and check the route on a map. The system helps prevent situations where customers might be overlooked. Automatic reminders about the next visit or reviewing customers without scheduled meetings ensure comprehensive coverage of the customer base.
A key part of preparation is defining the actions that need to be performed during each type of visit. For every type (e.g. for merchandisers, quality auditors, or sales representatives), you can configure your own list of tasks, surveys, and questions that will be generated during the visit, considering customer parameters. For example, during visits to retail customers, tasks like promoting holiday-themed products with marketing materials can be automatically scheduled in advance of the holiday season. Automatically generated task lists are also an excellent onboarding tool.
The routing feature optimizes travel routes between customers, saving both time and resources. Two-way integration with Microsoft Outlook enables creating and viewing visits on common devices, while the built-in capabilities of the mobile application provide access to necessary information from any device, even on the go (although, of course, we do not encourage working while driving :).

The Check-In and Check-Out functions allow recording the time spent with the customer and capturing the user’s geolocation at the start and end of the visit. Typically, sales teams are wary of such tracking, so it’s important to emphasize that the solution only analyzes geolocation when it is voluntarily recorded in the mobile application. It respects user privacy boundaries and does not affect battery performance. Tracking not only ensures the accuracy of visit execution but also provides transparency for managers. At the business's request, online notifications for managers can be configured to reflect deviations, or analytics can be generated regarding the completeness of visit execution.
Another control function is the ability to prohibit visit completion until all mandatory actions are completed. For example, this might include checking accounts receivable, verifying plan-vs-actual performance, or filling out surveys on the minimum mandatory listing (MML) in the store. Of course, human factors remain present, and no solution where task execution is logged can guarantee 100% real completion by the user. However, this can always be validated through sales performance indicators.
The system can also suggest actions to address issues if the store's KPIs do not reach the desired level. For example, correcting product placement or updating price tags before the visit is complete. Additionally, during the visit, users can create orders directly from the visit execution screen. The system can suggest product lists based on previous orders, surveys, MML, cross/up/down-selling, and artificial intelligence recommendations.
An example of a visit view can include a map displaying inspected areas, a list of actions, and the results:

The system allows for the data collection on completed visits, including notes, survey responses, and attachments. This information enables the creation of analytical reports to assess the efficiency of the sales team and plan next actions. Imagine your sales agents only fill out surveys during visits, providing data on quantities and prices, while you get consolidated results on the quality of the audited stores.
Different types of surveys are available: Store-check (product surveys) – used for gathering information about your products and competitors’ products (e.g., to record shelf prices, check for approved prices, verify planograms, or evaluate the MML); Checklists with a list of questions – allow for written responses or choosing answers from a predefined list; Customer satisfaction surveys – used to gather feedback from customers. There is also an option for automatic product proposal when creating sales orders immediately after completing a survey or automatic creation of a service request if a problem is identified. This is convenient and saves time.
Thanks to analytics, businesses gain a comprehensive overview of store performance, KPI results, survey results, and the workload of sales agents. All visit results are available for reports and dashboards. Reports can include data on the time spent on visits, responses to questionnaires, and other collected information.
An example of visit results might display previous and current inspection results, KPIs based on survey outcomes, and corrective actions to improve the situation: