Summary
In 2017, The Home Depot announced a $1.2 billion supply chain investment with the goal of better meeting the changing needs of both do-it-yourself and professional customers. This commitment, which was originally intended to come to full fruition on a five-year timeline, got an unexpected speed boost in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. Home Depot saw an unprecedented increase in the volume of deliveries and a need for expanded deliveries capabilities and flexibility. This growth has not been without pain. Unlocking these capabilities necessitated transitioning away from siloed fulfillment channels to unified technological, operational, and communication experiences. Here, the THD Deliveries UX team saw an opportunity to deliver value at scale: dynamic supply chain configuration. This is the story of how Home Depot scaled their deliveries supply network administration to support an ever more dynamic and transparent deliveries network that serves their business and centers their customers’ and associates’ experiences.
Key Insights
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Home Depot has faced significant challenges in delivery logistics despite being a large company.
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Covid-19 led to an unprecedented 75% growth in delivery volume, complicating logistics further.
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Efforts focused on building trust at the individual contributor level can create a foundations for long-term collaboration.
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Understanding partner motivations is key to driving traction and influencing decision-making.
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Effective communication strategies are essential for working with different communication styles among team members.
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Redefining empathy as solution-based rather than problem-based can align teams towards common goals.
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Creating visual aids, like maps, helped clarify complex information flows and fostered understanding.
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Involving partners in the process led to better alignment and reduced silos within the organization.
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A user-led team structure has increased the clarity and purpose behind engineering decisions.
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Collective problem-solving has improved both delivery efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Notable Quotes
"I set myself up on a campaign to understand what is there to do on this team and how I could win hearts and minds."
"If we give this talk again in a year or two, our ratio of who's had a good delivery should be much different."
"Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand."
"I was banging my head against the wall. I knew I was doing things correctly, but I needed to tweak my approach."
"It's all of us versus the problem, not us versus them."
"I had to redefine empathy from a problem-based to a solution-based approach."
"Our engineers are asking better questions and making informed technological decisions now."
"We don't do secrets because that's mentally taxing. Transparency helps build trust."
"The influx of Slack messages afterwards was excitingly overwhelming as teams wanted to connect."
"This is how we're defining the problem and understanding the human impact on the supply chain."
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