Retail
Carving out 4,000 people and 2,000 shops, ready for Day One
A retail carve-out covering 4,000 employees and 2,000 shops. Day One was fixed, so the only way through was heavy planning and automation of everything that would otherwise have needed people doing it by hand, store by store.
- Client
- Large retailer (anonymised)
- Service
- Carve-out and post-merger integration
- Stage
- Signing to Day One
01
The challenge
- —4,000 employees and 2,000 trading sites had to move without a day of lost trade
- —Shared systems, identities, tills and networks all ran through the seller
- —Manual cutover at store level was not viable at that number of sites
- —A fixed Day One date, with transitional services running behind it
02
Our approach
01
Map what was actually shared
Traced every shared system, licence, data flow and network path between the seller and the carved-out business, down to site level, so nothing was discovered on the night.
02
Estimate the separation properly
Costed the separation and the standalone target state, with each item carrying a number, an owner and a date rather than a risk rating.
03
Automate the repeatable work
Built automation for identity, device, till and store network cutover so 2,000 sites followed one tested path instead of 2,000 manual ones.
04
Rehearse Day One
Ran the cutover against pilot sites first, fixed what broke, then repeated the same sequence at scale with a clear go and no-go call.
03
Outcomes
- ✓Day One met on the fixed date, with stores trading
- ✓Store cutover reduced to a repeatable automated sequence rather than manual work per site
- ✓Separation costs known and owned before Day One, not discovered after
- ✓Transitional services exited to a plan instead of drifting
Takeaway
"At 2,000 sites, planning and automation are the deal. Anything you leave manual becomes the thing that stops Day One."
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