4 Lessons From a Major Store in a Box Deployment

When a retail company acquires a competitor or expands its geographic footprint, leaders typically want to move as fast as possible.

They are eager to increase their market share, introduce their stores and products to new customers, and start bringing in new revenue. However, IT systems can sometimes be a limiting factor. Internal IT staffers usually don’t have the capacity needed to stand up dozens of new stores, and when they try, they often end up burning themselves out or even skipping key steps.

CDW’s Store in a Box engagement fills this gap. Our experts help retailers select and source IT equipment, then customize, configure and rack the infrastructure, which is delivered to branch locations plug-and-play ready. Here are four important lessons seen by companies that have used Store in a Box to fuel their growth:

One Store in a Box customer, a convenience store chain with more than 2,000 locations, worked with us to help it stand up 100 new branches in a matter of three months. Previously, this pace would have been impossible for the chain, which needed a team of technicians working 18-hour days for four days straight to bring a new store online. We worked closely with IT leaders to identify all of the tech infrastructure that new stores needed (including point-of-sale terminals, servers and wireless access points), then coordinated procurement across nearly a dozen vendors and preconfigured all equipment before shipping it to branch locations. By ensuring that each deployment was controlled, repeatable and fast, Store in a Box helped the chain meet its growth timeline.

Store in a Box means that companies are working with one partner rather than many vendors. This consolidates their purchasing power, which can lead to lower project costs. The engagement also streamlines procurement, logistics and communication, ensuring that every location receives the right equipment, on time. Rather than tracking a dozen shipments or juggling inconsistent lead times, retailers have a single point of accountability to help them keep projects on track.

In working with retailers on Store in a Box deployments, we have found that the details of store setup often live mostly in the heads of a few experienced team members. This can work if a company is only standing up a handful of new locations each year, but unfortunately, this sort of tribal knowledge simply doesn’t scale. Store in a Box engagements formalize deployment processes, creating documentation and runbooks that ensure each implementation follows the same set of proven steps. This makes onboarding easier, prevents errors and helps teams stay consistent, even when requirements shift or personnel change.

At many retail companies, leaders have come to the realization that internal IT staffers should be working on projects that only they can do. These might include, for example, apps that leverage a deep understanding of the organization and its business operations to improve operational workflows, enhance the customer experience or open up new sources of revenue. If internal teams cannot complete a task more efficiently than an external provider could, the thinking goes, then that task should be offloaded to a trusted partner with more experience with that particular service. By working with CDW for Store in a Box services, retailers can reduce the burden of cumbersome IT deployments and free up their internal teams for strategic projects that improve the company’s core business.