Suggestions—NIL.
Read Part 1.
I began wondering HOW? Ravi’s response to ‘Any suggestions for Channelplay?’ being ‘NIL’, left me wondering how an employee can have zero suggestions for improvement for the employer?
Skeptically, I wondered whether it is fear. Ravi did not seem afraid though. Was it a sense of futility--any suggestion I give is bound to be ignored--that led to this zero.
So I put on my detective’s hat and talked to other visual merchandisers at Channelplay. A common narrative emerged. Life is very well defined. Their day begins with system generated plan. The goals for the day clearly defined. Unlike their counterparts in sales, there is little uncertainty to deal with. Following the plan is success. And whether they followed a plan does not depend on the (sometimes fickle) judgment of a human boss but instead on a system which is trusted.
This is the magic of the 1Channel app in the visual merchandising space.
The app provides real-time visibility, offering a comprehensive overview of the stores entrusted to each visual merchandiser. It keeps a record of the number of visits, in-time, out-time for each store, and most importantly, the PJPs.
The PJP (Permanent Journey Plans) is refined with each entry. Productivity--stores covered by the visual merchandiser per day--keeps going up. Each VM can trace their performance, gauge their accomplishments, and ascertain the remaining tasks with absolute clarity.
“We discuss the plan for each day with our AOM (Area Operations Manager), who is very active. My entire team is very supportive actually. The entire system is so systematic, that there is no room for any mismatch. We are clear, what to do and how to do it most of the times,” mentioned Satvik, another visual merchandiser working for Xiaomi.