Project Description
End-to-end project management, retail business process expertise, and testing oversight for the design, pilot and implementation of new in-store order fulfillment capabilities
The Client
A $650 million home décor retailer operating 425 stores and e-commerce, offering furniture, lamps, wall décor, seasonal items, and accessories.
The Challenge
The client had the ability to support traditional in-store sales, as well as shipping goods from distribution centers to customer locations and to specific stores for in-store fulfillment. The client desired the capability to allow customers to order items online, have the order picked from a local store’s assortment, and be ready for pickup on the same day (within 3 hours of order placement).
Given the process complexity and integration requirements, the project touched almost every aspect of the business and most systems. The challenge was to build the technical functionality across all related systems (e.g., website, OMS, POS, ERP) and make sure that the stores had accurate and sufficient inventory to support the new ‘buy online pick up in store’ (BOPIS) business process.
The Parker Avery Solution
The Parker Avery Group was engaged to provide project management, business process expertise, and quality assurance (QA) testing leadership. The Parker Avery team led all stages of the initiative from helping gather the business requirements until go-live.
Specific Parker Avery responsibilities included:
- Performed project management activities, including planning, resource management, executive communications, status updates, and project financials
- Led business requirements gathering and development of overall design documentation
- Drove development delivery timelines
- Planned QA testing strategy, organized QA testing team, and oversaw implementation of overall test execution
- Planned and supported pilot and rollout of groups of stores
- Tracked issue identification and resolution during testing cycles leading up through go-live
The Result
The team delivered the project on-time, on-budget, and with an extremely high level of quality with very few issues after go-live. Customers are actively using the new process and have given exceedingly positive reviews. The marked customer interest in BOPIS has prompted the retailer to add more eligible SKUs to their BOPIS assortment.
