Automotive Display Audit & Retail Execution Software for South African Brands

They can, and in practice they have to. A franchised dealership has room for a multi-zone display that an independent spares counter simply cannot give you. A forecourt is judged on how the oil shelf is set. A fitment centre lives or dies on the rack and the board at the door. Each outlet is tagged with its type, and the checklist that opens when the rep checks in is the one written for that type.

The installation is raised as a task with a window, a location and the rack-and-signage brief attached to it. Whoever fits it photographs the job going up, again part-way through the cycle, and once more when it comes down. Image recognition confirms the lines and the branding are where they belong, and an alert fires if the job runs past its date or a competing tyre brand starts creeping onto your rack.

It is trained on your own pack library alongside layout templates taken from South African workshops, fitment bays and spares counters. Tools across the frame, oily light, an angle nobody would have chosen and stock stacked three deep are ordinary inputs rather than edge cases. Where confidence is low the frame goes to a human reviewer, and a newly launched pack is picked up with a short retraining cycle.

The account manager walks in with one page: planogram match, the state of the branded counter, signage, share of shelf, and a combined execution score. Every line traces back to a dated photograph with the location on it. Where a dealer has billed for visibility that never appeared, the matter settles on the screen instead of turning into an argument.

The drive is loaded as a scheduled campaign with its outlet list, its kits, an installation window, a take-down date and reference frames. Progress updates as visits close, and the reports call out outlets where material never went up at all, or came down early. Trade marketing watches the rollout build on a live heatmap.

Each rack exists as a task with a location, a required range and a signage brief behind it. The rep photographs it at installation, part-way through, and again at take-down. If the wrong lines turn up on it or the branding has weathered, an alert goes out. Trade marketing and finance can then set what was delivered beside the rand budget that paid for it.

The rep logs the gap by line and by outlet before leaving the call, and tags why it happened: the dealer under-ordered, supply never arrived, restocking has stalled, or the line was quietly delisted. It reaches the daily dashboard that evening, so the account manager takes it up with the dealer straight away rather than saving it for the next review.

One photograph carries your packs and everybody else's, and the model separates them. Share of shelf then reads as facings per brand over the category total. Those figures trend by dealer, by province, by range (tyres, oils, batteries) and by individual outlet, which is how a brand team notices a rival gaining space weeks before sell-out data admits it.

Trade marketing follows rollout, installation, audit pass rates and how quickly actions close. Account managers hold a scorecard per dealer group to carry into a trading review. Leadership reads the national score, the split by dealer, rival share of shelf and the installation tracker. Each of those views drills from the national number down to one photograph of one outlet.

It does. Coverage still thins out on long rural routes, deep inside a large spares warehouse, and in pockets of the townships where the same reps call every week. Photographs, checklists and stock-gap records all complete on the handset with nothing connected, then upload the moment a bar comes back. Conflict handling makes sure a visit that syncs late is never counted twice.