Home Depot goes to the edge to drive seamless customer, associate experience

The Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, has undergone a network refresh at its North American stores with longtime technology partner Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

It's tapping the Aruba Edge Service Platform via HPE's GreenLake, a network-as-a-service, to foster an advanced customer and associate experience driven by the platform's cloud-native approach. In addition, the retailer is rolling out Zebra Technologies' TC52ax handheld devices which lets associates quickly check pricing and inventory availability.

The goal? A seamless, frictionless shopping experience for customers, both in a store and on the retailer's app, and giving needed tools to store associates, which number 50,000 globally, to make that happen.

The need for network strength

Why? Consider this stat: In the first quarter of 2022 more than 50% of online Home Depot orders were fulfilled through a store. At the end of the first quarter, the company operated a total of 2,316 retail stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, 10 Canadian provinces and Mexico.

"HPE has been a strategic partner of The Home Depot since 2016. We've worked together to build a state-of-the-art in-store network to improve the customer and associate experience," Daniel Grider, VP of technology, told Retail Customer Experience in an email interview.

The refresh and move to a network-as-a-service were driven by more than one factor.

"Customer expectations continue to evolve, and speed is a key factor," said Grider. "We've been working hard to develop the infrastructure that allows us to upgrade our in-store network, as well as more than 125,000 new mobile devices for our store associates. Going to network as a service allows us to lean on HPE's expertise, and it frees up our engineers to further focus on our customers."

What the refresh is delivering

The retailer kicked off the effort in 2021 and completed the project early this summer. The technology is also helping to streamline IT management and operations, proactively monitor network health and address issues before the network is negatively impacted.

And, as with any technology deployment, there were some hurdles and unexpected issues.

"As with any deployment, there are always minor challenges. The size and scale of the collective networks were probably the biggest consideration, but our collaboration with HPE allowed us to efficiently work through them," said Grider.

The solid network foundation is key to the customer experience given the increased consumer use of smartphones for product browsing and buying, as the critical devices associates need to provide consumers with product and inventory insight.

"Part of delivering a great customer experience is understanding expectations, and our customers and associates expect a fast, reliable and secure network," said Grider. "Because of the in-store network, our associates can communicate easier with other associates across the store to help find solutions for customers, use long-distance barcode scanning to identify products more quickly in the overhead, take advantage of more efficient app speeds on the faster Wi-Fi 6, and utilize strong mesh network coverage to roam the store and up to a football field outside with no dropped coverage."

Providing such capability even plays into consumer home projects, he added.

"Because of these benefits, customers will have better support to help finish projects faster. For our customers, a robust in-store network allows shoppers to fully tap into the capabilities in our mobile app, including Store Mode, search by image, wayfinding and product locators."

As with any technology effort there are challenges and unexpected hurdles, but the key is knowing the end goal, said Grider.

"It all starts with knowing your customer. We take a customer-back approach which includes listening to our associates and their needs. Building and implementing technology today requires a need for future change. Companies that use technologies that allow for and expect change with great speed and at scale will find success as the technology and customer expectations evolve."