Why It Matters
What isn’t measured usually isn’t executed. POPAI UK and Ireland, the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland arm of Point of Purchase Advertising International (POPAI), reported that 79% of retailers assume in-store displays are executed rather than checking, and that up to 30% of point-of-purchase activity is never or rarely measured.1 Measure the outcome on the shelf, not only the activity behind it. NielsenIQ cautions that service level and in-stock rates alone can’t show whether a product is actually on the shelf for the shopper.2 Its 2021 analysis put United States (US) on-shelf availability at 92.6% on average, with about $82 billion in consumer packaged goods (CPG) sales lost to empty shelves.2Best Practice
Build a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Tree
Arrange your KPIs from the activities your team controls to the outcomes you want. Leading measures tell you early whether the work is happening; outcome measures tell you whether it’s working. When an outcome slips, walk down the tree to find the cause.
For what each KPI measures, how to calculate it, and which FieldKo data feeds it, see Retail Execution Metrics.
A typical diagnosis: OSA is falling in one region. Coverage there is fine, but call compliance dropped and time in store is short, so reps are rushing visits and skipping the stock check. The fix is in the call plan, not the shelf.
Pair Activity with Outcomes
Activity KPIs on their own reward busyness: a rep can hit every visit and still leave empty shelves. Outcome KPIs on their own don’t tell you why. Report at least one leading measure next to each outcome measure, and review them together.Set Targets That Fit the Store
- Start from a baseline. Measure a few weeks before you set targets, so they’re grounded in your stores rather than a guess.
- Set targets per segment. An A store and a C store have different standards, so they need different targets. Bain recommends store-specific KPIs and adjusting targets as conditions change.3
- Agree targets with the business. Sales and trade marketing leads should sign off on targets and perfect store weights before you report against them.
- Keep definitions fixed. Changing a target’s definition mid-year makes every trend line meaningless.
Run a Review Rhythm
A KPI only helps if someone looks at it on a schedule and acts on it. Weekly team review (managers with reps):- Coverage and overdue stores from last week
- Call compliance by rep, and the reasons for missed visits
- The out-of-stock list and the lowest-scoring stores
- Agreed actions for next week’s visits, with an owner for each
- Trends in OSA, perfect store score, and call compliance against last month
- Promotion compliance for each campaign that ran
- Order value per visit and strike rate by region
- Whether targets, tiers, or standards need to change
Keep the Data Trustworthy
KPIs are only as good as what reps record.- Document your definitions. Write down what counts as a facing, an out-of-stock, and a compliant display, and train reps on them. Different definitions make teams impossible to compare.
- Use the same denominator everywhere. Decide which stores are in scope for coverage and which products count for OSA, and keep them current.
- Reuse questions and picklist values. “Out of stock” and “OOS” (short for out of stock) are two different answers in a report.
- Verify where work happened. Check-in location checks and photo evidence show that a visit took place at the store. See Capture Photo Evidence That Holds Up.
- Spot-check a sample. Each week, review a handful of shelf photos against the answers given.
How FieldKo Helps
The other report recipes are Call Compliance and Strike Rate, Time in Store and Attendance, Share of Shelf and Planogram Compliance, Promotion and Display Compliance, and Orders and Pack-Outs.
Data Quality in FieldKo
- Reports show work after reps sync, so a store visited offline today appears once the rep syncs. See Understand Offline Work and Sync.
- Turn on the check-in location check, and review the Check-In Compliance report. See Set Up Check-In Location Checks and Time in Store and Attendance.
- Review shelf photos next to the answers with the Shelf Photo Review report. See Report 3: Shelf Photo Review.
- Keep product sets current, because OSA compares each store with its own product set. See Core Ranging.
- Prevent duplicate stores and keep call cycles in place. See Keep Data Clean.
- Design survey questions so answers can be counted and charted. See Design Surveys and Tasks for Reporting.
See Also
- Define Your Perfect Store
- Coach Your Field Team
- Retail Execution Metrics
- Build a Perfect Store Dashboard
- Trend Reports Over Time
Sources
- POPAI UK and Ireland, “In-Store Insights, Issue 24: Compliance Report,” 2015. Read the report
- NielsenIQ, “Empty Shelves in America: U.S. Retailers Lost Over $82 Billion in 2021,” 2022. Read the analysis
- Bain and Company, “How Advanced Analytics Is Transforming Sales Execution,” accessed 2026. Read the article