— Case / Retail
Process audit and Discoveryfor an omnichannel retail network
- Ukraine
- Retail trade
- Offline stores + online orders site
A three-week process audit across all key departments of the network and a full Discovery package for the new site.
— Overview
Audit and Discovery for an omnichannel network
A comprehensive project for an omnichannel retail network — offline points of sale plus a site for online orders, which had grown to several dozen physical locations on top of a site originally built as an MVP, and a fragmented landscape of systems — an accounting system, POS for offline locations, a CRM for online sales — between which data moved mostly by hand.
The team ran a structured three-week process audit across all key departments and, in parallel, prepared a full Discovery package for the new site: from a Vision board and a context diagram to a detailed specification of functional and non-functional requirements.
— Challenge
What had to be formalized before choosing a new system
01
No real-time inventory visibility. The POS at each location synced with the accounting system only once a day, manually, after the shift closed — stock levels were available only in the morning or the evening, and managing availability during the day was impossible.
02
The POS solution was not a fit for retail. The system at the locations is built for HoReCa by nature, not for retail: it scales poorly past 100+ locations, is awkward for a manager, has no proper reporting — plan-vs-actual, ABC analysis, cost of goods — no report filtering and no access by hierarchy.
03
Manual, linear data transfer between systems. A product record moved step by step and by hand: from the accounting system into POS, from there to the site and into the online sales CRM, which caused catalogue and price drift and demanded constant manual oversight.
04
Fragmented, inconsistent analytics. Reports from different systems did not match each other, different managers received different exports because of differences in access rights, and there was no unified, centralized analytics on sales, turnover, payment methods and channel comparison.
05
Risk of losing the client base to the human factor. Support was partly run through managers’ personal messenger channels, and they were reluctant to move that correspondence into the CRM — if an employee left, the company risked losing that pool of clients along with the history.
— Solution
Two parallel but synchronized tracks
Process audit — three weeks
- Week 1: aligning the audit scope with the PM, BA and tech lead, separate question sets for offline locations, warehouse, sales, online, finance, analytics, logistics and the board
- Structured interviews across six areas — operations, online sales, warehouse, finance and accounting, marketing, HR — plus separate interviews with location staff
- Recording which processes happen in each system — accounting, POS, CRM, site, Excel and Google Sheets — where data is created, where it goes and in what formats
- Week 1.5: an As-Is process map for offline and online sales, warehouse and stock, procurement, transfers, stocktaking, logistics, finance and reporting
- A map of pain points and constraints by department, with the main blockers called out and an assessment of what scales poorly as the chain grows to ~100 locations
- Week 2: a single document with processes, roles, data and systems plus process requirements — which data is synchronized, where the single source of truth is, which events act as triggers
- A risk map: technological, organizational and scaling risks
- Week 3: a top-level change plan — the stages of moving to the target model, automation priorities and dependencies between processes and systems
Discovery and BA for the new site
- Product Vision Board: Vision, Target Group, Needs, Product and Business Goals — growing online sales, higher conversion, lower staff workload, building brand trust
- An overview of the competitive landscape, agreed with the business at the outset
- As-Is context diagram: the site as the central node exchanging data with the online sales CRM, offline POS, the accounting system, the delivery service and location staff
- The system’s external boundaries: customers, regulatory requirements — age and content limits, policies, terms of service — and marketing and analytics services
- Functional requirements: a detailed SRS across 8 functional blocks of the future site
- Non-functional requirements across 11 domains with measurable targets: performance, availability, reliability, capacity and scalability, compatibility and maintainability
- Security and auditability: personal data protection, no payment data stored on the site side, logging of administrator actions, server jurisdiction as a separate risk-assessment item
- Usability and legal compliance: a minimum of steps to purchase, mobile-first, mandatory policies, an age gate, disclaimers and certificates
— Results
What was handed off to development
- 3
- weeks of structured process audit
- 9
- agreed audit artifacts
- 8
- functional blocks in the SRS
- 11
- non-functional requirement domains
- 6
- business areas interviewed
- 45 → 100
- locations: network growth
- Nine agreed audit artifacts: an As-Is process map, a roles and responsibilities map (RACI), a pain-point register by department, a list of processes for the new system to cover, a To-Be process model, process requirements for the system, an integration-landscape map, a risk map and a top-level implementation plan.
- A full SRS across 8 functional blocks of the new site and non-functional requirements across 11 domains with specific, measurable targets.
- Measurable targets: SLA ≥99% per month, response time ≤2–3 seconds for 95% of requests, correct handling of up to 150 concurrent order checkouts.
- Backups retained for 14–30 days and logs retained for at least one year.
- An end-to-end map of product and data flow “warehouse → sale → delivery channel”, with manual and problematic integration points named.
- Structured interviews with the heads of six business areas.
— Highlights
What was unusual
Two tracks at once
The process audit and the Discovery for the new site ran in parallel and stayed in sync, so the requirements rested on the real operational picture rather than on assumptions.
Whole-business audit
Interviews across six areas — warehouse, offline sales, online sales, accounting and finance, marketing, HR — capturing the As-Is and a separate pain-point register per department.
Hardware limits
Android tablets with limited memory, thermal printers and a Wi-Fi + LTE combination, including offline caching — with no equipment replaced and within a fixed budget per location launch.
Zero downtime
The move to the new system without stopping sales in any channel — with phased testing and the option to launch new locations straight on the new software.
Growth as a criterion
The chain grew from ~45 to ~100 locations in a few months, so the ability to scale became a cross-cutting criterion for every decision, not a separate NFR line.
— Conclusion
The team ran a comprehensive process audit of the omnichannel retail network — from the warehouse and offline locations to accounting, marketing and HR — and in parallel prepared a full Discovery package for the new site.
The outcome is not abstract recommendations but a structured package ready to hand to the BA and the development team: a detailed business process map, a pain-point register by department, a risk map and a top-level plan for the transition to the target model, giving the business the ability to knowingly choose and implement a new system without stopping sales — against the chain’s active growth from 45 to ~100 locations.