Skolkovo Resident Helps Victoria-Group Reduce Deviations from Standards at Retail Outlets by 20%
The Victoria supermarket chain implemented a digital platform developed by the Skolkovo (VEB.RF) resident company Imredi to plan and control staff, monitor store standards, speed up recruiting, and monitor competitor prices. According to the developer, the aggregate economic effect from optimizing and digitizing processes using the Imredi platform amounts to 3.5% of annual profit.
Victoria-Group, which has nearly 100 supermarkets in Moscow and Kaliningrad, used the Imredi platform to ensure the speed and quality of employees’ reactions to events in stores and automate and ensure the transparency of business processes. As a result, in half a year, the chain has reduced time spent gathering and processing data from stores by 25%, reduced the number of complaints and deviations from standards on the retail floor by 20%, and ensured control over operations that influence economic indicators.
Olga Strelova, acceleration director for retail technologies at the Skolkovo Foundation IT cluster: “Ensuring the quality of employees’ work and the standards at sales points is one of the main tasks of any retailer. The Imredi platform digitizes and improves these related processes. We see that staff are doing tasks on retail floors using smart mobile solutions more and more, putting in place instantaneous information and reaction throughout the management chain, thereby increasing the retailer’s operations efficiency.”
During the first stage in February 2021, the team added business and personnel management processes and standard control in shops to the Imredi platform. An employee’s mobile app lists planned and unplanned tasks, checklists and processes, and logged photo recordings of the results. Reports on shops and a daily summary of analytics are supplied to directors through the app or the platform’s web interface; there are also automated algorithms for monitoring activities and detecting deviations (the absence of stock or prices, equipment breakdown, problems in the retail floor, etc.). The Imredi platform also includes chats that allow the user to conduct work-related communication.
Maxim Semirenko, the commercial director at Imredi: “Our experience working with chains such as Victoria, Diksi, Bristol, and others, shows that the retail market needs digital tools – both for shop workers and management. If a problem is detected somewhere, an OSA signal pops up, or other triggers are set off. These are instantly turned into a task and sent to stores or the entire network for verification and analysis. Integration with internal IT systems allows you to automate work with such activities.”
During the second stage in August 2021, the team automated the gathering, systemization, and processing of economic security incidences in the Imredi platform. In the mobile app, there is a list of “shop passports,” including a staff schedule, vacancies, a list of competitors, and other data. By integrating Imredi with ERP SAP (planned for September 2021), the shop director can fulfill basic operations from a mobile device straight from the retail floor, such as looking at or opening vacancies. A list of competitors’ outlets is configured for price monitoring and stock-keeping units (SKU). The app is used for tasks done by field employees, photo evidence, and data consolidation on prices in competing stores.
Ekaterina Timoshkina, the head of the department for retail technologies at Victoria-Group: “I would like note sector expertise and the functional preparedness of the Imredi solution for grocery retail. In evaluating the advantages of automating personnel and store control, we used the platform for our internal processes of maintaining a store passport, competitor monitoring, and incident handling by the economic security unit. The tight deadlines for transferring these processes to another platform were the main requirement because of operational changes in the company group. Together with the Imredi team, we launched it successfully within a few weeks. I think that it is one of the most important indicators that we chose the right IT solution.”