How to Conduct Retail Technology Deployment Design Workshops When preparing for your retail technology deployments, a great way to facilitate and organize the development of the Deployment Design is to conduct a Design Workshop with the core Project Team. Either, an experienced Deployment Designer can be brought in to facilitate the discussion and fully document… Read more »
Top 9 Tips for a Successful Retail Technology Deployment
I absolutely love retail technology deployments! Why? Because they are so challenging. I’ve been in IT for almost 30 years. And have done just about every type of deployment you can imagine – business application rollouts, infrastructure replacement, upgrade, bug patches, and new installations, desktop refreshes, software upgrades, and on and on. All of them are challenging… Read more »
Items Often Overlooked Before and During Technology Deployments
These Create Unhappy Users, Technicians, and Cost Money! We have all been there. Regardless of your capacity during the Technology Deployment, we have all experienced the pain of things not being designed, planned, or thought through before going live with the deployment. Some of these things should be addressed during the design stage, yet a lot… Read more »
The Components of a Retail Deployment Design
A Retail Deployment Design is a document that outlines exactly how all tasks included in the Retail Deployment Plan will be executed. It is a written document that covers every aspect of the Who, What, When, Where, and How of the deployment. The collection of all these details are usually collected as part of the… Read more »
Things That Can Derail Even a Mature Technology Deployment
This group has been waiting for a long time to get these new machines. Their old machines are very long in the tooth. Planning has been going on for months, meetings, testing, back and forth. The deployment was scheduled for the 4th quarter of last year, but supply problems from the vendor caused delays in… Read more »
Scheduling Retail Technology Deployments Stressing You Out?
. Imagine you work for a national retailer and your boss calls you into their office to give you a new project. They need to quickly update all the wireless infrastructure in the entire portfolio of 2,000 stores and you have six months to complete! You have to complete a site survey, implementation review, configure… Read more »
The Financial Benefits of Designing Retail Technology Deployments
When I initially start talking to people about designing their retail technology points, they very quickly get to the question of how does it benefit my bottom line? The biggest impact of designing retail deployments is that it eliminates the unknowns. And provides a mechanism to conduct dress rehearsals for the deployment and all related… Read more »
One Company’s Fall from the Top
The Fresh Market’s Fall. How this once great company became a shell of itself, from the inside. I worked for The Fresh Market (TFM) for more than 14 years. Even though I have been away for over 6 years, I kept up with what was going on with the company. I also had many co-workers still working there. The… Read more »
Are Call Aheads Really Effective for Successful Retail Technology Deployments?
Have you ever heard the saying “Never let your boss be surprised”? Well, it is a saying that has served me well throughout my career. To me it simply means that great communication is the key to success. Everyone knows that communication is important when executing projects, but this is especially true for retail technology… Read more »
How to Properly Set Up and Run a Successful Retail Technology Deployment Help Desk
As the project leader you’ve designed and planned your complex retail technology deployment down to the last detail. You have perfected your equipment configurations and installation script. You’ve performed your call aheads and trained your Deployment Technicians. You have worked and reworked your deployment schedule and received sign-off from Store Operations. You’ve even developed a… Read more »