forward thinking services

Forward Thinking was created to provide even better service to our retail clients and to provide a full POS service currently unavailable through our competitors. Widely recognised in the POS industry as an invaluable resource, Forward Thinking offers a comprehensive range of value-added services you won’t find elsewhere in the marketplace.

These include market research, store surveys and auditing, customer communication consultancy, new store openings, and major events management - all designed to ensure our clients get maximum return from their print and POS materials. Our Forward Thinking team provides a truly nationwide service, maintaining daily contact with clients and monitoring industry trends and technology to help them stay ahead of the game.

market research

Successful retailing means keeping a close eye on competitors and quickly spotting trends in the marketplace and in customer behaviour. With this in mind, Forward Thinking offers a range of market research services that provide insights into industry developments, competitor activity, key market trends, customer expectations and much more.

We can produce regular and tailored market trend reports based on customer research, competitor analysis, retail trends reporting, as well as monitoring market, industry and print technology. Armed with this knowledge, we have all the right information at our fingertips to help clients make sound business decisions, optimise their print spend and deliver maximum impact with their POS material.

site surveys & auditing

To ensure the right materials are designed and distributed to the right place on time, every time, accurate information on the specific characteristics of client sites is essential. We have unrivalled experience in collating such data, photographing client sites and producing detailed site layouts. We can also build on-line databases to provide instant access to this information for reference by everyone involved in a project.

Moreover, since awareness of site compliance is essential to the delivery of successful marketing campaigns, we regularly conduct site audits for clients to measure their conformity, and to identify issues and opportunities for improvement.

customer communication consultancy

Equally important in any drive to improve customer impact and reduce costs is the need for a third party perspective on the effectiveness of a client’s customer communication campaigns and the operational processes involved. To this end, we provide a range of tailored reviews to identify new insights and develop new thinking. These are focused either on the end-to-end operational processes relating to customer marketing print or on its impact on customers.

Reviews can incorporate any combination of design style, content, materials, print quality, placement, ease of maintenance and installation. Each involves the Forward Thinking team in making several visits to the site to observe and talk to customers and staff.

new store openings & major events management

Thanks to its collective experience in project management and new site openings, our Retail Thinking team is well trained in easing the pressure on clients during the stressful build-up to site openings. We visit each site well in advance to identify the POS requirements, discuss and create detailed specifications, brief the production team and arrange on-site installation. Following an event, we visit the store to ensure their print requirements have been met and that POS has been installed in accordance with head office plans.