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June 30, 2021

Nebraska Furniture Mart embraces Microsoft 365 to work smarter and improve customer connections

Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM), North America’s largest furnishings retailer, is known for its extensive showrooms and varied inventory. “We have basically everything for the home, and then some,” says Robyn Messerly, Director of IT at Nebraska Furniture Mart. The retailer prides itself on creating a family-oriented culture among employees and customers. “We take care of each other and put people first,” says Messerly. Technology plays an important role in supporting that culture—helping employees work more effectively and continue to offer the level of service that NFM takes pride in.

Nebraska Furniture Mart

“I knew nothing about Power Apps, but I quickly came up with a working prototype, and now hundreds of people use the app every day.”

Scott Ott, Living Room Furniture Sales Professional, Nebraska Furniture Mart

When NFM decided on Microsoft 365, bringing tools like Microsoft Teams to employees across the business, it was part of an overall drive to reduce disparate solutions and streamline work. “At Nebraska Furniture Mart, we’re constantly disrupting ourselves,” says Messerly. “We always look for technology that will help us gain a competitive edge.” For NFM, consolidating on a single solution drives efficiency and collaboration, ultimately improving customer service—all while saving costs. In short, the company used the new tools to usher in a digital transformation. “Our staff use Microsoft 365 to engage with the applications they need to do their work, from anywhere,” says Messerly. “It’s been very powerful.”

Creating efficiencies and improving customer service with Power Apps and Teams

At the 560,000-square-foot NFM store in The Colony, Texas, more than 50 sales professionals are available in some departments to help customers choose the perfect item for their homes. What’s great for customer service, however, presents a logistical headache for floor managers who are trying to keep track of their sales professionals at any given time. “When a sales professional left the floor to go to lunch, we used to have to call a manager or sign out in a three-ring binder,” says Scott Ott, a Living Room Furniture Sales professional at Nebraska Furniture Mart. “It was a time-consuming and inefficient process, and I thought there should be a better solution.” The solution came in the form of an app that Ott developed with Power Apps and embedded in Teams. Called CheKowt, the app was the start of a new direction for Ott and the Texas location of NFM where he works. After stepping into the role of citizen developer, he’s created seven new apps with more in the works.

“Managers fielded dozens of phone calls every day just from sales professionals signing on and off the floor for lunch,” remembers Ott. Today, sales professionals simply use their mobile devices to sign out via the CheKowt app from Teams. “The app allows managers to focus on their core job, which is making sure that sales professionals are supported to provide customers the best service possible.” The managers’ version of the app also gives them a quick, holistic view of their team members’ locations at any given time, helping managers ensure that adequate numbers of employees are available on the floor. And if a customer requests a specific sales professional, it’s easy to check if that employee is in the building or not—the app even provides a color-coded alert for employees who are returning to work soon.

Creating the app took Ott, a self-described Power Apps novice, a couple of months. “I knew nothing about Power Apps, but I quickly came up with a working prototype, and now hundreds of people use the app every day,” he says. “It’s become a natural part of the workflow.”

After the success of the CheKowt app, Ott turned his attention to other nagging inefficiencies in his workday. This time, he tackled a cumbersome sign-up process that required sales professionals to register to clean and reset specific areas of the store as part of the closing procedure. “I designed the Recovery app to replace a manual system where sales professionals had to sign their name on a laminated map of the store to claim a cleanup area at the end of the day,” he explains. “I took the map and recreated it in Power Apps to save people the hassle of trekking across our 560,000-square-foot showroom just to sign up.”

The Recovery app, which sales professionals access through Teams, also streamlines work for managers, who in the past had to photograph the map and send it to an entire contact list of department employees via email. “Now, a manager just taps a button in the app, and it automatically sends an email just to the people who are signed up,” says Ott.

Ott was already well on his Power Apps journey when COVID-19 presented another opportunity for a digital solution. Dubbed the In Stock app, Ott’s next Power Apps project aimed to solve the problem of separating in-stock merchandise from stock that might be held up in a supply chain disruption caused by the pandemic. Today, customers who come to the furniture department of NFM’s Texas location can view a list of available items on a Surface device and immediately find what they need.

“The In Stock app was created to help sales professionals narrow down inventory for customers who want to purchase something they can leave with right away,” says Ott. The app had an immediate positive effect on customer service. “Imagine having to tell customers over and over again that the pandemic has disrupted the supply chain and we don’t know when we can deliver their furniture,” he says. “The In Stock app saves customers and sales professionals time and helps them navigate a difficult situation where there’s incredibly constrained inventory coupled with high demand. The In Stock app turns what can be 45 minutes of wandering the showroom floor into a 10-minute encounter where customers can quickly see their options.”

Reaching more customers with digital solutions built in Microsoft 365

For Matt Pinkosky, Infrastructure Supervisor at Nebraska Furniture Mart, digital transformation is all about reaching customers where they’re most comfortable. “Retailers must make it easy for customers to shop in any form or fashion they like,” he says. “Especially in light of COVID-19.”

After NFM stores initially shut down in response to the pandemic, Pinkosky and his colleagues used a combination of Teams, Microsoft Bookings, and Surface devices to create a virtual shopping solution for customers to use from the safety of their homes. “Rather than spend more money on a separate product, we used the Microsoft 365 tools we already had to create a virtual shopping solution to assist customers even when our physical stores were closed,” he says. The solution came together quickly, and it allowed sales professionals to interact with prospective customers, albeit in digital form, through Teams meetings on Surface devices. “Our customers really loved the option of connecting with a sales professional and shopping from home,” says Messerly. “It’s definitely something that’s here to stay.”

Connecting with frontline workers to improve delivery service, anywhere

The presence of Microsoft 365 tools on the sales or shop floor demonstrates NFM’s commitment to collaboration in all areas of its business. “In the past, frontline workers didn’t have devices or tools that empowered them to communicate with the wider organization,” says Pinkosky. “Today, they have the tools to collaborate easily.”

For employees who deliver appliances and furniture to customers’ homes, OneDrive and the Teams mobile app have become indispensable resources for connecting with colleagues from the field. “If an installer unpacks a damaged appliance, they can upload photos right away to Teams or OneDrive,” says Messerly. “It’s so important that employees in the field have relevant information at their fingertips so they can take care of customers.” In the case of damaged merchandise, an installer can use the Teams mobile app to initiate a discussion with a colleague to check if a replacement is in stock.

Working more flexibly with a single collaboration tool saves costs

Decision makers at NFM originally chose Microsoft 365 to advance a cloud-first strategy and standardize on a single solution. “In the past, we had many disparate tools, some of which didn’t work well, and it was hard to manage so many one-off solutions,” says Messerly. “We used everything from Webex, Jabber, and Vidyo to collaborate. By consolidating on Teams, we saved money and simplified how we work.”

The ability to work more securely from anywhere already played an important part in NFM’s technology vision, but COVID-19 pushed that goal to the forefront. Office-based employees turned to Microsoft 365 tools to create more options for how and where to work. “We implemented Teams in the nick of time,” remembers Messerly. “The tool was critical for our executive team to keep working together through the early days of COVID-19.” NFM executives used Teams for video meetings seven days a week at the outset of the pandemic. “Even when we weren’t in a meeting, we constantly updated the chat with relevant news or information from the Centers for Disease Control, which allowed us to keep the conversation going continuously.”

According to Messerly, the success of Teams in helping employees navigate remote work has made the tool the preferred way to meet. “Even long term, I don’t think we’ll ever return to everyone working from the office,” she says. Employees who can perform their jobs from home consider a hybrid work strategy a welcome scenario. “The level of collaboration we’ve seen through Teams speaks volumes about how easily we communicate using the tool,” adds Jason Buss, Software Development Manager at Nebraska Furniture Mart. “One of my managers says that he feels his team collaborates more effectively from home than when they sat next to each other.”

To help facilitate a safer return to work and put a hybrid work strategy into practice, NFM implemented Teams Rooms systems at its Omaha headquarters, and the company will soon roll out the solution across all of its stores. “Teams Rooms is super easy to use,” says Messerly. “Participants can join a meeting with the touch of a button. Whether you want to join from the office or sit on your deck at home, it really doesn’t matter where you are with Teams,” says Buss. “Employees who are working remotely or in different regions use the solution to bring the organization closer together.” NFM also uses Bookings to facilitate a hybrid workplace. “We plan to set up hoteling space with docking stations, and employees will use Bookings to sign up,” says Messerly.

The company is also planning to roll out Teams Phone capabilities in the future. “Knowing that with E5 we were getting a Microsoft phone system, we were compelled to consider migrating our users from our existing platform over to Teams,” says Pinkosky. “We’re currently working on standing up Direct Routing with our existing phone system to enable direct calling to all of our employees—it’s all part of our cloud-first strategy.”

Offering more flexible ways of working has a positive effect on employee wellness. “We’ve seen firsthand the tangible benefits of remote work for work-life balance and productivity,” says Pinkosky. Employees like Buss also use Teams to create the digital equivalents of the spontaneous communications that happen in an office setting. “I set up weekly four-minute meetings where everyone gets a chance to speak about their wins, issues, and anything else they want to bring up,” he says.

Keeping security at the forefront of a digital transformation

When considering a digital transformation, NFM paid close attention to security in its overall technology vision. “Malicious hackers grow more sophisticated every day, and retailers must position themselves to protect sensitive data such as employee credentials and Payment Card Industry data,” says Messerly. By opting for the Microsoft 365 E5 security stack, NFM put security front and center, and it saved costs in the process. “Microsoft 365 E5 was a great opportunity to retire one-off boutique applications and move to a whole suite of security tools from a single vendor that we trust,” says Messerly. “We saved more than $334,000 in one year by consolidating security on Microsoft 365.”

NFM now uses Intune, part of Microsoft Endpoint Manager, to manage mobile devices in coordination with Azure Active Directory to enable multifactor authentication and set new conditional access policies. It also uses Cloud App Security and other Microsoft 365 E5 features to strengthen the company’s security posture and help gain visibility into its use of shadow IT. “One of the biggest improvements we’ve made came from using Azure Active Directory Premium and multifactor authentication for user account security,” says Pinkosky. “Having a single, holistic view of security simplifies IT management,” Messerly notes. “Moving to the E5 license reflects our desire to have the very best security tools in place to protect our business.”

Expanding a people-first business with the help of innovative tools

NFM uses collaboration tools from Microsoft 365 to adapt to a changing industry and foster innovation in every area of its business. Most recently, the HR department turned to Teams live events to host digital hiring fairs and interview applicants in Teams breakout rooms. “The combination of Teams and a hybrid work policy has expanded our recruiting areas,” says Messerly. “You no longer have to live within driving distance of a store to work in our IT department. Talent is tough to find, but we’ll remain attractive as employers by offering leading-edge tools and a people-first culture of innovation.” And for a company with a mission to improve people’s lifestyles, new tools and a modern workplace are all part of providing the great customer service that supports that vision, no matter how people shop.

Find out more about Nebraska Furniture Mart on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

“Rather than spend more money on a separate product, we used the Microsoft 365 tools we already had to create a virtual shopping solution to assist customers even when our physical stores were closed.”

Matt Pinkosky, Infrastructure Supervisor, Nebraska Furniture Mart

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