Retail Digital Innovation
Client And Situation
As one of the nation’s largest health and beauty providers, this organization has over 7,000 retail outlets in North America. Replacing Point Of Sale (POS) hardware and software is a challenge due to all the moving pieces and disparate locations. They needed a different approach from “traditional” project management practices.

On Time Execution
Successfully Onboarded Service Providers
Adoption/ buy in rate
CLIENT CHALLENGES
Each of the 7,000 salons needed to have new wireless network and cash wrap hardware installed, “just in time” prior to swapping the POS software. All of this required multiple vendors and in store coordination on a highly dynamic schedule.
Traditional project management approaches couldn’t keep up with the sometimes hourly refactoring of activities, resources, and readiness. Refactoring across 7,000 locations based on every individual breakdown was not an option.
Digineer was part of an innovative new project management practice, Commitment Based Management, where the critical measurement and planning element were outcomes.
The additional and rigor and flexibility was even more urgent and necessary in the cases where requirements were generated from many and diverse project stakeholders and constituents in the field, rather than a central PMO.
DIGINEER SOLUTION
Digineer led a team that established repeatable processes at a level that could be deployed quickly to non technical resources in the salons. Coupled with outcome based reporting and coordination of technical partners in the various locations this new approach delivered:
- Playbooks that were easily handed off to over 300 service providers who were part of the execution.
- Ability to assess and adapt to last minute changes in salon readiness, geographic conditions, and evolving software changes.
- Buy-in from all team members who adopted a “what ever it takes” attitude in making sure that all of the scheduled installs were completed on a daily basis.
CLIENT OUTCOMES
The Commitment Based Management approach delivered completion of the 7,000 store upgrade in under six months on time and on budget ($40M) that:
- Set a new standard for project execution methodology on future large scale, dynamic projects within the company.
- Created a new, highly interactive process for working with distributed technology partners across North America.