Startup Idea: Automatic Sales Productivity Tracking Software

Startup idea to develop a software that can automatically track the productivity of cashiers and salespeople in selling service and replacement insurance plans. The software should also take into account the effect of timing like on weekends, holidays, etc. and separate it from the selling skills of the person. The software should generate automated reports for management showcasing sales productivity, focused on fairness, and would eventually set 'expected sales' figures based on previous performances.

I work part-time in the electronics retail industry. One of the things that our management team is required to track is how productive cashiers and floor salespeople are with selling service and replacement insurance plans on the products that we sell.

There is significant variation in the ability of different cashiers/floor salespeople to be able to successfully sell these plans, and I think it would be a good idea to figure out how to separate the effects of timing (weekends are busier than weekdays, evenings busier than mornings, people tend to spend more around the holidays, etc.) and actual ability. There are constant complaints from staff that people with more advantageous shifts (read: busier) end up selling more plans, regardless of their skill level, and that this is unfair because your ability to be promoted / earn pay raises is directly linked to your ability to sell these plans.

Currently, the system used to track sales of these plans is extremely primitive: each cashier literally tallies by hand the dollar amount of the plan sold, and management collects this at the end of the shift and combines everyone's results onto a whiteboard with each person's name and how many plans they've sold next to it.

Software could help by automatically capturing this data at the point of sale (we use standard NCS machines), and also by giving more granularity to the data itself (by capturing what time the transaction occurred, what day of the week, etc.) and then automatically processing it to generate automated reports for management and employees alike on sales productivity. Over time, as the system collected more data, perhaps it would be able to set "expected sales" figures based on previous performance, taking into account things like holidays, weather, time of day, etc. This would allow us to dis-aggregate personal ability from the luck of the draw in terms of when your shift is, and reward the folks actually deserving of reward.