Co-op

The Co-op team identified three key priorities for a successful tech investment to deliver their new business initiatives: quality people management, investment aligned to business needs, and complete transparency regarding the project portfolio.

They needed to deliver a consolidated, simplified tech platform on which stores could transform from 'just selling' to service providers. The challenge was to deliver a simplified and converged store architecture that would reduce business and store risk, increase the potential pace of business change, and realise a 'fail fast' culture that enables continual innovation to become business as usual.

We developed a comprehensive strategy to replace store security, install 7,500 devices, and deploy switching appliances to over 2,680 stores across the UK within a 12-month window.

We decided to focus on leveraging Cisco Meraki to build an agile, scalable platform perfectly suited to multi-site retail modernisation, whilst automating the deployment process through platform APIs to reduce project time to value and cut costs.

We deployed Cisco Meraki across all Co-op stores, integrating seamlessly with their existing wireless tech to create a unified platform. By leveraging the APIs available through Cisco Meraki tech, we automated the deployment process as part of the value creation programme, dramatically reducing time and cost.

We pulled existing wireless tech into a single dashboard along with new security and switching devices, so that every Cisco Meraki product across all 2,680 stores could be seen and managed from anywhere, on any device with the right security credentials. 

We incorporated Meraki Insights into the deployment to provide end-to-end visibility into how users are experiencing the store platform, delivering valuable business intelligence. Finally, we delivered 'Network as Code' enabling software automation across the entire network, providing a software-centric, programmatic approach to building, consuming, and operating network infrastructure.

We delivered the store platform 3 months ahead of schedule, allowing the whole business to bring about change at speed and scale, whilst reducing investment costs. The store platform gives the Co-op a faster time to market with new business models, increased access to customer data and ability to action insights, and easier improvements to store productivity and efficiency.

By delivering a converged infrastructure of architectural integrity, effectiveness and design simplicity, we have drastically reduced the operating model required to support the store ‘platform’. And benefits to the business are already measurable: partnerships with major retail brands have increased the average basket size, and current projects include utilising customer preferences to leverage store formats and in-store customer experiences.