A board-ready retail platform business case for Australasia's largest baby goods retailer
Our client's growth strategy puts customer insight at the centre of its next decade of growth, and delivering it at scale called for a new retail technology platform. Having led the client's ERP selection, we were invited back to define and select the in-store technology that would bring the strategy to life. Working with teams across the business, we mapped the full customer journey, translated it into more than 1,200 requirements and ran a competitive selection of three in-store solutions. The client now holds an implementation-ready roadmap and a defensible business case setting out the total cost of ownership, anticipated financial and non-financial benefits and risks.
CLIENT BACKGROUND
The client is a leading specialty retailer of baby goods, with stores across Australia and New Zealand and a growing online channel. It supports families from pregnancy through the early years of childhood, so every visit is part of a long relationship.
A unified platform is the key to unlocking the next-generation store
The client developed a new growth strategy to put customer insight at the centre of its next decade of growth: personalised service, stock customers can count on and a seamless experience between online and in-store. To deliver that strategy at scale, the business needed a retail technology platform to replace its long-serving ERP and POS systems, which were no longer fit for purpose.
The finance and merchandising platform had already been chosen. The remaining question was the store. The client needed to know which in-store solution would carry the strategy and how to sequence the transformation across a live store network.
We built every requirement from the customer journey outwards
We started with users rather than systems. Through cross-functional workshops with six business groups, we mapped the future customer experience across the full journey, from Awareness to Loyalty&Advocacy, and tested it against key scenarios such as a first-time customer and a return. The workshops distilled ten priority themes, led by unified customer identity and loyalty, endless aisle and omnichannel fulfilment, seamless returns and real-time inventory visibility. We then overlaid detailed mapping of store team and support centre processes to support the experience customers expect, and translated these insights into more than 1,200 functional and technical requirements for the in-store solution. Together, these defined the target state for the work ahead.
The next step was to find out which solution could meet these requirements. The in-store solution also had to fit the wider architecture: we had previously led the selection of the client's ERP platform across finance, merchandising and supply chain, so the two needed to work together. A market scan produced a shortlist of three solutions, each assessed further through an RFP stage: a written response, a scenario-based demonstration and customer reference calls. Using our proven RFP methodology, we scored every solution and partner for functional and non-functional fit, integration and security fit, scalability, extensibility and total cost of ownership. We considered not only the solution itself, but also how well it aligned with the current architecture and principles, and what it would take to implement.
The client can now invest with confidence and a clear path to deployment
The retailer now holds an implementation-ready roadmap to deploy the selected ERP and in-store solutions, and a detailed, defensible business case for its board. The business case sets out the total cost of ownership, anticipated financial and non-financial benefits, and risks. Benefits are quantified and linked back to specific cost levers, covering financial impacts such as revenue growth and cost efficiencies, and non-financial benefits such as enhanced customer experience, endless-aisle capabilities and improved inventory accuracy. The CEO and core team were involved from day one, so priorities, risk and value were agreed at every stage and there were no surprises at the end.
With the platform decision made and the sequence agreed, the client is ready to begin phase one and bring its next-generation store experience to its network.
