Many companies have used digital field audit apps sparingly. They have one or two regional managers who visit stores and measure compliance. This approach reflects the old paper-and-pencil process. But digital apps live on mobile devices, and with an unlimited user model, you can give every employee access. The more users you have, the more you get from your audit tech.
With everyone following checklists and tracking their daily progress, your business benefits far beyond the occasional compliance audit.
- Employees do their jobs better.
- Managers have more detailed real-time progress tracking.
- Employee engagement and motivation increases.
- Leadership has easy access to a rich picture of business performance for analysis.
- Management deploys operational changes quickly with fewer disconnects.
- New employees become productive faster.
- Veteran employees expand skills and take on new responsibilities.
- Teams reinforce brand values with consistent operations across locations.
When every employee has a digital checklist to lean on, they do their jobs better.
Employees and managers are human. That means they’re prone to miscommunications, misunderstandings, and distractions. People can easily forget what they need to do or how to accomplish some tasks.
Company-wide checklists solve the problem by giving each worker a set of daily instructions to follow. Even if they’re preoccupied or didn’t exactly understand what the manager said two weeks ago at the company meeting, they know exactly what they need to do at any time. Checklists can even include photos or videos illustrating how to carry out more complicated assignments. As a result, your teams make fewer mistakes and gain higher efficiency.
With every employee checking off tasks, managers easily monitor progress and catch problems early.
If everyone is tracking their own work and pushing it to the cloud, managers have a real-time picture of what’s been done and what hasn’t at any point in the day. Each completed checklist is tagged with time and location stamps. And they can include photos or videos of the work, so even if managers are offsite, they can keep an eye on the team.
It’s easy to see if something’s been missed and find out why, so problems don’t get out of hand. And if there’s food storage in your business, your digital field app can talk to Bluetooth thermometers to make sure equipment is keeping food at the right temperatures.
Digital audit apps motivate employees by giving them the power of accountability.
Digital audit apps allow your team to take responsibility for their own work and understand how their contribution supports the business as a whole. The checklists make your expectations clear and the audit results demonstrate how each role matters. Employees feel they have a bigger stake in the business, which boosts motivation and engagement.
In essence, field audits and checklists make employees’ jobs easier and more meaningful. Engagement and purpose can even spur people to come up with new ideas for increasing sales or improving the customer experience.
Leadership accesses richer, more detailed business data with input from the whole team.
Sales numbers and expenses help you assess how the business is doing, but they don’t show you what actions or policies may be driving sales up and expenses down or vice versa. With digital audit data from every employee, you easily amass a detailed picture of the actions occurring at every location each day.
Digital apps with data analytics shows you trends of activity over time, by individual, by location, or by region. If one location is ringing up more sales than another, you can compare what each team is doing to see if there’s something different driving more sales. Or if some procedures take more time to complete than they should, you can identify inefficiencies that could be driving up labor costs.
Managers implement operational improvements with fewer errors and confusion.
Occasionally, you’ll want to update and improve operations, and you need to get employees following new procedures quickly. But change introduces confusion and increases the likelihood of mistakes. Digital checklists speed up your transition to new processes while minimizing mishaps because they list out for each person the new steps to follow and provide instructions or photos if needed. Your team adjusts easily, and your business reaps the benefits.
New employees onboard faster with digital checklists in hand.
When bringing on new people, managers are stretched to provide comprehensive training and support while covering their usual responsibilities, especially during the busiest times of year, which is often when new people start.
But if everyone on your team is using a digital checklist, you can hand one to your new workers from day one. These apps deliver training with videos, photos, and text. Recent hires can follow checklists together with experienced folks for on-the-job training. And with everything enumerated in the mobile app, managers don’t have to worry that training is falling through the cracks when things get hectic.
Veteran employees expand their capabilities and value to the business.
It’s not just new hires who need training. Your best employees will want to take on extra responsibility. As you expand locations, some top performers will move into leadership positions, and they need the training to succeed.
The digital audit apps help these experienced workers expand their abilities just as with new hires. They learn additional job roles by following checklists, become familiar with operational standards by accessing training documents and videos, and shadow other employees for active learning.
Digital audits help ensure consistent operations across locations to support brand values.
With every employee following the same set of clear instructions about what to do and how, each team across the company is taking consistent actions and getting consistent results. Your customers have a good experience with your brand regardless of the location they walk into, which strengthens your company’s reputation in the market and attracts more business.
MeazureUp’s digital audit app is designed to help you realize the benefits of universal users.
MeazureUp’s AuditApp and DailyChex are offered through an unlimited user model, so you get the maximum benefits with no additional charges. Every employee in your company can synchronize their work to your standards with a quick and easy click on their mobiles. You and your managers spend much less time monitoring activity and recovering from mistakes and more time developing your business.
Click here for a free trial and see how easy it is to get everyone working toward your success.
