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on 09-09-2024 08:32 AM
Retail Quick Start Guide
New to ServiceNow Retail products? You’re in the right spot! In this guide, we’ll go over how to get started with the retail data model, the backbone of our retail industry products.
Retail Data Model Overview
The retail data model helps manage a retailer's location hierarchy, making it possible to report and track issues for a specific site, or assign work to the location. The data model holds information such as location, team membership, install base, and ownership model, making it possible to capture at-a-glance details as well as helpful context when supporting and assigning tasks to a particular site.
Why use the retail data model?
ServiceNow provides many different options for modeling information, but the retail data model reduces time to value for customers by offering an out-of-the-box option that provides built-in visibility controls and enables additional use cases. Here are some specific reasons to start with the retail data model:
- Hierarchical structure allows for individual sites to roll up into regions and districts
- Out-of-the-box roles and responsibilities enable shared visibility to team members at various levels
- Retail task management capabilities allow work to be assigned to retail organizations in the data model in addition to specific users
- Install base and available services track unique information about each site and enable automation
This guide is aimed at new customers who are not tracking their retail site details within ServiceNow yet. For existing customers who already have this information stored elsewhere, you can still go through the steps below to come up with a migration strategy to the retail data model.
Step 0: Activate the Retail Operations Core plugin
Step 1: Create retail organizations to represent your locations and other groupings, like regions and districts
This information may come from another system of record and can be used as a starting point. Individual sites like stores and restaurants are modeled as business locations, while logical groupings like a region, area, or district are modeled as a business group.
Step 2: Align install base and available services information with each location
Each retail location will have its own characteristics, such as what equipment is installed, or whether it offers a particular kind of service to customers. Having this information in the data model means that issues can be reported quickly on specific equipment in the store, and tasks can be assigned specifically to a site that meets specific criteria.
Step 3: Identify retail users and their responsibilities
You can add members of the team to specific locations with different responsibilities, depending on the day-to-day tasks they need to carry out. The retail data model allows a single user to be assigned to multiple locations, with different responsibilities at each if necessary.
Step 4: Configure retail associate experiences
Most of your retail teams will access capabilities provided by the retail data model through the Business Location Support Portal (BLSP), which is a highly configurable interface. The BLSP comes out of the box with widgets that display information about a retail site and allows users to open cases to report issues in store, or on behalf of customers. You can tailor this portal to reflect your organization’s branding and add more catalog items and widgets to streamline common requests. The BLSP also displays knowledge bases, so you may want to include commonly asked questions in knowledge articles to increase self-service. Omnichannel options for requesting help can also improve retail associate experiences.
If you’ve completed these steps, you’re off to a strong start. Now you can continue to monitor the solution to find even more areas for transformation!
