Why Should You Build A Chain Store?

Once you, as an entrepreneur, successfully operate a store, one of the next steps you plan might be to expand the business scale by building a chain of stores. So why should you build chain stores?

Chain store development increases revenue

Developing the scale of a copper store chain can help increase sales and quickly identify brands. Still, building a chain of stores also has certain risks.
But if the business is fully equipped with the necessary foundation, the problems arising could be solved. We are happy to share with you some helpful information to build an effective chain store!

Why Should You Build A Chain Store?

A chain store raises some certain advantages for your business as below.

Market Development & Sales Increase

The most obvious thing is that developing a chain of stores will help businesses expand their markets and increase sales as more customers come to the chain store to purchase.
This prospect is even higher when the retail market in Vietnam is increasingly active. To know more about the development of the retail industry in Vietnam, you can learn more here.
With that being said, businesses need to be aware that net profits are not surely increased with sales when expanding into a chain. The reason is that the larger the scale, the higher the operating costs.
If you do not have the right workflow or management for your business, you will probably spend much on operation costs.

Price Advantage When Buying In Bulk

When you own a chain of stores, it is easier for you to launch promotions because (1) you get attractive prices when you buy in bulk; (2) Negotiate with a supplier to offer the discounts for your promotions.

Brand Identity Increase, Advertising Costs Cut

When a brand appears popular everywhere in the market, the number of people knowing about the brand also increases. Even if you don't run TV marketing programs, you still could increase brand awareness.

In other words, you will save on advertising costs and make more people aware of your brand.

Boost Brand Value

This factor can also be seen as a result of increased brand identity. The more popular your brand is, the more valuable it will be. This is also considered an unseen asset for the business.

To maintain or develop this property, you need to ensure the quality of activities in the chain of stores, from products and prices to customer service quality.

Brand value is invisible asset of enterprises

One of the most popular methods of building a chain store today is "franchise". As you can see, the individuals and organizations involved in franchising often have different backgrounds.This will somewhat make it difficult to maintain quality throughout the system.

For example, just having a franchise that doesn't do well when it comes to product and customer service can affect brand equity, doing a domino effect.

On-Going Problems In Retail Chain Business

Poor Resource Management

When operating any chain store, one of the important factors is to ensure consistency across the system: product prices, displays, uniforms, and payment methods.

This issue sounds simple, but not every business could handle it. Today, many retail chains focus on the number of stores instead of focusing on quality.

In one way or another, this strategy will put invisible pressure on the business: (1) working capital and (2) supply of trade items to distribute to the entire chain of stores.

Some even do not build a complete workflow and management, causing the stores to operate inconsistently. This problem will affect brand recognition in the market, leading to a decrease in brand value.

Inefficient Branch Management

As mentioned above, the retail chain model needs uniformity in the operation activities. In other words, each store in the chain needs to play its part well.

That one store loses customers' trust could affect the reputation of the entire chain of stores. The retail chain still operates in the traditional way like using paper-based documents to manage, store audit, or attendance, etc.

It might be difficult for supervisors to check and track the activities of each store in general, or employees, and sales in particular. The reason is that paper-based tasks often take a long time to process, not to mention the lack of data collected.

In evaluating the performance of sales staff, the traditional pen and paper-based management could lead to less transparency and emotion.

In case the employee is not satisfied with the evaluation results, there are probably conflicts raised between the management and employees. And no data or visual statistics could prove the evaluation result transparently.

Inadequate Amount Of Goods Provided

An increase in the number of retail stores means an increase in the number of goods offered. Managing the adequate quantity of products for the whole chain store system while ensuring quality is not easy, even if the business has a clear system and working process.

In other words, retail chains lacking management efficiency will face more and more challenges in ensuring the quantity of goods for each store.

No Agreement On Merchandising Standards For Brand Identity

The chain store requires consistency to help increase brand awareness on the market. Still, some retailers are struggling with the implementation of the merchandising standard in stores.

FieldCheck supports store merchandising

Traditionally, merchandising staff have to take photos and send emails to the stores when introducing a new display item. The management will have to spend more time sending to all stores in the system, and it won't be easy to manage the old display standards.

Though staff at stores could still be aware of the new merchandising notification, this can be time-consuming and inconsistent.

Unable To Collect Customer Data

Another on-going problem in some chain stores is the lack or poor ability to collect information and customer demand. The cause of this situation is the lack of a supportive platform to collect data.

So how could the above problems be solved? Let's find out in the section below.

Recommended Retail Chain Business Strategy

Unified Branding

As mentioned above, a key factor in retail chain operations is the uniformity of activities. It is advisable to keep everything in the system in the certain look from the way the products and the stores are displayed to the employee's uniform.

The first thing to do is to build a sound strategy and manage the chain scale. Also, it is best not to focus on the store number only without a detailed plan.

It will help if you collect enough data about the market and customer personas, choose the appropriate locations for stores and reasonable sizes.

The next step is to set up the standards for the chain store. Every store in the system needs to offer the same products and equipment.
Besides, the merchandising and service in the chain also need to be the same so that when customers come to any store, they could notice the consistency in store standards and staff service. This is considered a solution to help build effective brand recognition for consumers.

To optimize this work, you could utilize store management software that integrates merchandising support. The tool will help you create a merchandising item on the platform conveniently and quickly send it to mobile users.

As a result, store staff or supervisors could quickly deploy it or audit stores, respectively, according to the plan without hassle.

Optimizing Workflow Management

When expanding the chain store scale, certainly, the workload will also increase. The more complex the apparatus, the more it is necessary to streamline the workflow to reduce the time it takes to complete the work.

To achieve the desired results in the task deployment, the management level needs to have high skills and flexibility to be able to handle all jobs.

That said, no matter how good the capacity of management personnel is, in the long run, there is a need for supporting tools to help them maximize their work productivity, not to mention help save money and a great deal of time.

Performance graphical analysis

Task management software is one of the effective solutions businesses can apply for their business.

The software helps you solve the problem of task quality assurance in two ways: (1) transparency in the process of job assignment between the managers and employees, resulting in a clear understanding of the responsibilities of each person in the work; (2) the availability for staff to plan tasks, deliver and follow-up on the same platform.

Coordinate The Standard Number Of Employees At Each Store

To effectively manage the chain of stores, it is better to specify a standard number of employees at each store. Having too many employees at a store will make the management process complicated.

Instead of allocating too much staff to the stores, you could try to let computers or technology applications do part of the human work.

Reasonable staff number each store

Ensure The Adequate Goods In Each Store

It is clear that when you run a store, inventory management is one of the fundamental factors to pay attention to. The top criterion is to ensure the goods quantity supplied to the store while ensuring the quality.
Tracking stock availability on a regular basis could help ensure the store's supply. When there is a shortage of goods in the warehouse, staff could immediately report it to order the goods promptly.
Inspectors usually carried out stock audits on paper-based checklists in the past. Still, this method will lead to a problem of document storage and the ability to compile all the audit results in one platform.
In addition, the application of paper-based checklists makes it challenging to send the results or statistical figures to stakeholders.
Aiming to overcome this on-going problem, many suppliers have introduced digital checklists integrated into the chain management tool. This solution helps supervisors quickly and conveniently track inventory goods right on their smartphones.

Easy stock check on FieldCheck

Once the data is input, it will be synchronized immediately to the system and used to create statistical analyzes presented on the platform.
Accordingly, the Admin or management level could overview the status of goods and optimize the process of supplying goods to the stores.

Graphical analysis on FieldCheck

Ready System To Record And Collect Customer Data

Some chain stores are now not interested in collecting customer data to launch loyalty programs or take care of customers.

Customer data management on FieldCheck

You might not know this, but these programs could help boost customer loyalty to the stores, making them feel closer to the brand. They will likely shop in-store more often. Sales increase accordingly as more and more customers stick with the stores in the chain.

FieldCheck store management software simplifies the process of collecting and managing customer information. Employees can utilize their own devices to input customer information.

More specifically, our platform also boasts a phone number verification feature, helping to ensure that the information collected is accurate. Customer data will then be recorded on the system based on real-time.

You can access the customer data management feature on FieldCheck easily. Based on data on purchase history of customers, you could deploy appropriate customer loyalty programs, generating a bond between consumers and businesses.