Key Achievements

The Problem

Best Buy was spending a lot of money on redundant apps, websites and other digital tools. Both customers and employees found the numerous and frequently overlapping digital tools jarring and confusing.

Digital Tools addressed this issue by organizing all the different digital tools into a single enterprise-wide view. Critical domains of employee and customer interaction where mapped and make-or-break interactions identified. Once the organization was aligned to this view, we were able to invest smarter and in the right places. This saved the company money, improved the customer shopping experience, employee satisfaction, and improved key business metrics.

Changing Status Quo

The work started when I discovered yet another "product finder". Product finders were popular in the late 2000's. At this point Best Buy probably a dozen different product finders. But this particular product finder was terrible. It crashed frequently and recommend out-of-stock and discontinued SKUs. Even worse, the we overpaid for it.

As I reflected on the situation, it was clear that no single person or team was to blame. Instead, the company had arrived here organically after years of moving fast and responding to a changing competitive landscape.

Challenged by status quo I set to changing it. The work began as a simple spreadsheet where I mapped all of Best Buy's digital tools. What started as a single page quickly grew to many. I was lucky to have a leadership team who supported the work enthusiastically. Even though creating this level of transparency might feel uncomfortable, everyone in the company has a part to play in shipping a profitable and amazing brand experience.

Delivering a large multi-year project in Fortune 50 requires both diplomacy and persistence. The delicate part is helping teams transition from caution, or opposition, to support. Much of the effort here was helping teams write themselves into the new vision. At the same time, tenacity was needed too. Especially with groups that have unaligned priorities or are already stretched thin.