Retail & Modern Trade Training LMS & Field Certification for South African Teams

A short module maps the account before anyone books anything: who the buyer is, who the category manager is, how contact gets made, what the listing and shelf-space terms look like, and where the range review falls in the year. The key account manager clears an assessment first, so the meeting at a chain head office in Johannesburg or Cape Town does not start from a blank page.

Yes, and they are deliberately kept apart. The modern-trade track covers chain negotiation, planogram discipline and range-review preparation. The township-trade track covers spaza shops, tuck shops, taverns and forecourts, how to work independent wholesalers and cash-and-carry, and what trading looks like around a hub such as Warwick Junction in Durban or the Bree taxi rank. A rep only ever sees the channel they cover.

One module takes the key account manager through listing terms, shelf and gondola-end costs, trade-spend bands in rand and the internal approval matrix, then through an invoicing flow built to line up with SARS requirements. The assessment sits between the module and the budget, so no range-review spend is ever committed by someone who has not been through it.

Photo-based standards for planogram compliance, share of shelf, POSM placement, price-ticket accuracy, and batch and expiry checks at the shelf, with extra steps where a line falls under SAHPRA. The merchandiser passes an image assessment before being cleared to audit anything at all, which is what makes a chain aisle in Pretoria and a busy spaza shop in Khayelitsha comparable.

The promoter records the pitch in the app in whichever language the shoppers at that store actually use, whether that is English, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans, Sesotho or Setswana. A trainer scores tone, product accuracy and how the promoter handles someone who is not interested. A weak attempt pushes refresher content back down. Only a certified promoter is put on a shop floor or an activation shift.

There is. Step-by-step videos walk through stand set-up, sampling rules, taking payment in cash, by card, by instant EFT or through PayShap, and how a return gets handled at the stand. The demo specialist passes the flow assessment before working a weekend activation, whether that sits inside a national chain or at a township event.

Inside a day or two. Briefs for the festive season, Black Friday, Easter and back-to-school publish as short modules a fortnight ahead of trade, covering the SKU mix, bundle and gift packs, price points, and the script a promoter uses in each channel. The pass confirms the field is ready before the campaign hits the shelf, rather than after someone notices it did not land.

Yes, and that is precisely why it is built the way it is. Coverage still runs thin on long rural routes and inside pockets of the denser townships, and mobile data is not cheap enough for anyone to stream the same video twice. Merchandisers pull modules down over Wi-Fi at the branch and work through them between calls. Attempts sit on the handset and upload themselves once a signal comes back, so nobody has to remember to sync.

Certification status is read by the SFA app. An uncertified promoter cannot be rostered onto a chain store or a product launch, and an uncertified key account manager cannot book a listing meeting. When a certificate lapses the refresher is pushed out automatically. Brand teams watch readiness live by account, by channel and by province, from Gauteng down to the Western Cape.

Yes. The learner app and the trainer app both publish under your own name on Google Play and the App Store, on the same cloud backend. Agency promoters and permanent merchandisers can share one app or run two, which suits brands that put a field agency on the national chains and keep an in-house team on township trade. Learner records, selfies and assessment history are personal information, so the platform is built to support your POPIA obligations.