If you are in retail, you know how much hard work goes on behind the scenes to design and construct product displays, as well as ensuring everything is set up in time for new promotions.
Our client, a major tech retailer, this was understandably a huge operation, involving more than 2,000 stores across the UK and Ireland selling tens of thousands of products from a diverse range of goods. It’s imperative that, every time a new launch happens, there is minimal disruption to business as usual, a tough call given how quickly tech products change.
In 2018, our client relied on a spreadsheet-based system to manage the development and delivery of its product display stands. The process was overly manual, complicated and time-consuming, so they turned to Cielo Costa as a long-standing partner who has successfully collaborated with them on several innovative digitalisation projects.
The idea was to bring all aspects of the design and delivery process together into a central hub which could be accessed by all relevant staff, improving transparency and visibility across their network as well as speeding up the process of getting new stands into stores.
Automation and digitalisation:
We delivered a ‘Retail Design Group’ Hub, which was a sleek, easy-to-navigate interface which provides a gateway to all things design related material. At the click of a button from the landing page, users can initiate new projects, manage project progress, propose changes, as well as browse relevant reports.
Each new project must go through three review forums – an initial meeting to engage all relevant departments and validate the project before development; a Health and Safety compliance review; and a final review to sign off approval. The system built by Cielo Costa using Microsoft’s Power Platform, in combination with SharePoint, ensures much of the administrative work is semi-automated and streamlined. Administrators are automatically notified by email when a new project is uploaded, and forums are scheduled automatically. They can upload all types of related documentation, from meeting minutes, to images, videos and zip files. Delays are minimised using built-in validation that specific questions are answered before a project can be put forward to a forum.
The RDG hub is available on desktop and tablet, so staff can access it wherever they are. As well, it is highly cost-effective because the user licence is included in the clients existing Microsoft licensing agreement.
The end result: a simpler, more easily managed process which gets displays into stores faster, with less headaches and more visibility of progress for all involved from the designer to the store manager.
We pride ourselves on creating bespoke technology solutions to solve our clients specific challenges.
If you are a retailer who wants to speed up your manual operations, we would love to help.
Exceptional Support
It’s important that by working with Cielo Costa on a support contract, that we become an extension of your team.
We hand-hold and resolve the support issues whilst at the same time taking a longer-term view on updates, tech enhancements and developments to make the tools more efficient more responsive and more agile for your business.
Our mission
At Cielo Costa, we are becoming the world’s most desired technology consultancy. When our clients seek a partner to help them overcome their business challenges by building a software solution, we are the first they think of.
