UX Design Thinking · SAP Fiori · In-Store Retail
How a multinational home improvement retailer brought its Pro in-store experience into SAP Fiori across 800+ stores
Multinational home-improvement retailer Delivered 2017
Mindset ran a Design Thinking engagement to redesign the Pro customer experience from the ground up, then built and deployed the application across more than 800 stores so associates could serve professional customers from a single, connected screen.
By the numbers
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800+ stores
Deployed with the Pro customer application
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1 screen
Replaced multiple disconnected tools for associates
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100%
Associate team ownership after CoE handover
Before
A fragmented Pro service experience
- Store associates navigating multiple disconnected systems to serve a single professional customer.
- No way to view ordering, invoice status, and rewards from one place during a customer conversation.
- A premium membership experience that felt anything but premium for the associates delivering it.
After
One Fiori screen, 800+ stores
- A single SAP Fiori application covering ordering, status, invoices, and rewards in one place.
- Associates can hold a real, informed conversation with Pro customers without switching tools.
- Internal team owns the application, with NLP use cases now in active exploration.
Built on
- SAP Fiori
- SAP ECC
- SAP BW
- NLP (prototype exploration)
- Design Thinking
Why this matters
Design Thinking as the first deliverable, not a kickoff formality. Going into stores, watching how associates actually worked, and building from that changed what got built. The NLP kiosk proof-of-concept was never the shipped product, but it became the seed for the retailer's next round of thinking.
The challenge
The retailer had a premium membership program for professional customers who relied on in-store service for ordering, checking order and invoice status, and managing rewards. The problem was the experience. Store associates were jumping between disconnected screens, piecing together information from multiple systems, and trying to hold a useful conversation with a customer at the same time.
The existing setup made that nearly impossible. Associates couldn't get to a full picture of a Pro customer without navigating across multiple tools, which slowed everything down and created gaps in service. The retailer wanted one integrated Fiori application that gave associates everything they needed in a single place.
What we did
Mindset started with Design Thinking before writing a line of code. The team went into stores, watched associates work, gathered pain points firsthand, and brought those findings back into workshops with the client team.
From there, the team built low-resolution and then high-resolution Fiori prototypes, iterating based on real feedback rather than assumptions. The team also explored a Natural Language Processing concept in a kiosk format to show what Fiori paired with NLP could look like, though the final design kept the experience associate-led and face-to-face with the customer.
Once the design was locked, Mindset built the production application on SAP Fiori, wiring it to SAP ECC and SAP BW, and handled the rollout across the full store fleet. After go-live, Mindset provided Center of Excellence support during the Run and Scale phase, working alongside the retailer's internal team until they could own the application fully.
The outcomes
The application went live across more than 800 stores. Store associates could now handle ordering, order status, invoice lookups, and rewards management from a single Fiori screen without switching tools or losing the thread of a customer conversation.
The engagement also opened up thinking about where else the technology could go. The retailer's team started exploring NLP use cases in other parts of the business, a direct result of the kiosk proof-of-concept Mindset had shown during the Design Thinking phase.
Mindset stayed through the run-and-scale period, building up the internal team so the retailer could carry the application forward on its own.
If we built this today
Concept · not delivered scopeOne grounded view for the Pro desk.
This is a forward-looking concept, not the scope we delivered on this engagement. It is the build we would reach for now, grounded in SAP that ships today.
This engagement set out to let a store associate hold one conversation with a Pro member and handle ordering, order and invoice status, and rewards from a single tool instead of wrestling with disconnected screens.
The Joule agent
Pro Service Desk Assistant
Reads a Pro member's open orders, invoice and delivery status, and rewards balance across the order and billing tables, then proposes the next action so the associate can reorder, resolve a status question, or apply a reward without screen-hopping. It hands the associate one drafted move to confirm, not a wall of tabs.
SAP S/4HANA Sales (Order Management), SAP Customer Experience, SAP BW · PROPOSE · Time to resolve a Pro member request at the desk
The Fiori app
Manage Sales Orders with embedded Joule
The standard order-management Fiori app where an associate sees a Pro member's orders and fulfillment status, and Joule sits in the launchpad to surface invoice status and draft the next step in plain language. For the rewards and membership side, that stays a customer-service category app rather than a single named one.
Embedded in the Fiori launchpad
The data product
Customer Intelligence
An Intelligent Application on SAP Business Data Cloud that pulls a member's order history, invoice records, and rewards activity into one governed profile, so the assistant answers from real meaning instead of guessing across systems.
Intelligent Application on SAP Business Data Cloud
We would still mine the real associate workflow in SAP Signavio first, map the application estate in SAP LeanIX, and let MIND accelerators carry the proven Fiori desk experience from the old build into the new one.
What we built
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Design Thinking engagement
In-store observation sessions, pain-point synthesis, and co-creation workshops with the client team to define the right experience before any build work started.
Lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes validated with real store feedback
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SAP Fiori Pro customer application
A single Fiori application giving store associates a complete view of Pro customers: ordering, order status, invoice lookups, and rewards, all in one place.
Replaced a multi-screen, disconnected associate workflow
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NLP kiosk proof of concept
A prototype demonstrating how Fiori and Natural Language Processing could work together in a kiosk format, used to open up strategic thinking about future use cases.
Sparked internal NLP use-case exploration across the business
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Store fleet rollout
Deployment of the production application across the retailer's full US store fleet.
800+ stores
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Center of Excellence support
Hands-on Run and Scale support after go-live, working alongside the internal team to transfer ownership of the application.
Internal team fully ramped to maintain and extend the app
A look at the work
