The Home Depot enhances customer/employee experiences with full network refresh
The Home Depot is investing in its network infrastructure in a move that will also allow it to greatly streamline its IT management and operations.
The home improvement giant is making a large-scale investment in edge technology and network as a service (NaaS) to drive enhanced customer and employee experiences across all of North American stores.
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, said that the Home Depot has selected Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), delivered via HPE GreenLake for Aruba networking, to power advanced customer and associate experiences across its U.S. stores. The retailer has expanded its partnership with Aruba to architect a solid network foundation that provides speed, scale and flexibility. The HPE GreenLake for Aruba network as a service (NaaS) offering provides a compelling solution with agility and flexibility for The Home Depot, the tech company said.
Delivering a seamless, frictionless experience to its customers and 500,000 employees is paramount to the Home Depot. The retailer continues to enhance the interconnected experience that blends the digital and physical worlds; one that allows customers to peruse, research, and purchase with ease, and delivers a familiar experience, regardless of whether they’re in-store, online, or using the mobile app. Home Depot stores continue to be the center of the customer experience – in the first quarter of 2022, more than 50% of online orders were fulfilled through a store.
“Our goal is to enable technology to remove the friction from our customers’ and associates’ experiences each and every day,” said Daniel Grider, VP of technology at The Home Depot. “Our customers trust us to have the right tools and materials to complete their home improvement projects; having an in-store network that further supports interconnected capabilities like in-store navigation or image search allows them to get back to their projects more quickly.”
The Home Depot’s technology investments and initiatives are intended to make it easier for customers to design, visualize, and buy materials for their projects. For example, maintaining strong connectivity in stores will help provide Home Depot associates the ability to deliver a great customer experience. The Home Depot is rolling out Zebra Technologies’ TC52ax hand-held devices, allowing employees to check pricing and inventory availability in hand or from more than 40 feet away, which is helpful when serving customers and locating products in overhead storage.
The Home Depot’s refreshed network will streamline IT management and operations. Solutions such as Aruba Central cloud with AIOp capabilities allow the company to proactively monitor network health and address issues before they negatively impact performance. The Home Depot’s wireless solution includes Aruba location services via WLAN APs, which provide zero-touch determination of AP location, continuously validate and update location, and provide a set of universal coordinates that may be transposed on any building floor map or web mapping platform.
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