Walgreens' Five Tips for Smoother IT Rollouts

When you operate more than 7,800 stores in all 50 states, there's lots of motivation to make your IT rollouts as smooth and hassle-free as possible. Walgreens' IT executives recently shared five guidelines that they've used to streamline recent major store technology deployments.

1. Create a rollout 'Command Center': Walgreens created a NASA-like Rollout Command Center in combination with its equipment and technology partners, centralizing procurement, ordering and logistics "so that we knew where the equipment was and when it would be 'landing' in a store – because you don't want customers tripping over equipment and pallets while they're shopping," says Carla Moradi, Walgreens' divisional CIO, Enterprise Shared Services. The command center also included finance, accounting and contract management, and facilitated communication and collaboration with software application teams as well as keeping the retailer's business stakeholders "at the table daily in terms of what we're doing, where we're going and into what stores," says Moradi.

2. Provide rollout-specific support: Walgreens had a team of its field service specialists capable of troubleshooting every aspect of its installations, and also created a "punch list" laying out what needed to be done at every step of the installation process. "It provided guidance as to when you 'phone home,' meaning when do you stop trying to accomplish this on your own and call the field service experts," explains Moradi. "There are tight time windows in which to do these implementations, so it's important to know when to call for help."

3. Define and redefine your metrics: Use the best indicators available to determine the progress of the installations, but be open to changing/refining these measuring sticks as you discover more about the technology and the installations.

4. Remember to take out the trash: Handling post-installation disposal of older technology and hardware involves more than simply leaving it at the curb or in a dumpster. "We had to determine how to effectively destroy all the data that might be on a device, and dispose of it in an environmentally friendly way," notes Moradi.

5. Conduct pre-deployment site surveys: Moradi and John Andrews, Walgreens' senior director of technology customer services, agree that pre-installation site surveys are a crucial element in any rollout's success and well worth the investment. "If the cable is in the wrong place, if the register isn't where you expected it to be, or the workstation is a different configuration – without the site survey, you're going in blind and hoping," says Moradi. Andrews adds that it's also crucial to have the discipline to carefully document all the technology and hardware that is being installed and the processes being used – information that will make future IT deployments that much easier to accomplish.