Case Study Information Management and Governance Meijer Inc. Micro Focus ZENworks supports significant annual savings and 6-fold increase in POS deployment frequency. Who is Meijer Inc.? their needs and exceeding their expectations. Meijer Inc. is an American supercenter chain Across the stores, thousands of point-of-sale with more than 250 grocery stores and super- (POS) registers and smart scales aim to make centers throughout the Midwest. Founded in the Meijer shopping experience seamless 1934 as a supermarket chain, Meijer is cred- and user-friendly. The highly customized POS ited with pioneering the modern supercenter application has served the organization well concept in 1962. for more than 40 years, meeting unique geo- graphic and demographic market demands. At a Glance POS Upgrade Deployment Ryan Cichewicz, Senior Systems Engineer for ■ Restrictions Meijer, explains the challenges associated with Industry Fred Meijer’s motto was: “Customers don’t a long-standing and business-critical applica- Retail tion: “We could only deploy quarterly updates need us, we need them.” At Meijer, the focus is ■ squarely on customers and thriving by meeting to the POS system. This would involve a visit Location to each store to re-image a POS device. It was Michigan, USA a time-consuming manual effort contracted ■ through a third party, working in collaboration Challenge “Supported by Micro Focus, we with onsite technical resources, requiring a sig- Accelerate development and deployment of POS updates to respond faster and with greater changed our schedule from costly nificant financial investment for each update. Of accuracy to changing market demands and manual quarterly updates to course, the retail market changes much more ■ fully automated bi-weekly ones, quickly than just quarterly, and as a team we Products and Services resulting in significant annual could not adjust to respond faster. Replacing Micro Focus ZENworks Configuration savings each year versus the manual the POS application was not an option due to Management the level of customization over the years. Micro Focus ZENworks Patch Management effort. Our accelerated development ■ Critical Success Factors effort and frequent updates allow We were between a rock and a hard place; need- + 6-fold increase in POS deployment frequency us to align far better with locally ing to support the business with increasingly + Significant annual savings by automating targeted promotions, meeting sophisticated and customized promotional deployment particular market and store needs.” campaigns, but unable to deploy new updates + Respond faster to locally targeted promotions faster than we were. In addition to this, Meijer + Improved security with regular automated patch RYAN CICHEWICZ is a company that focuses on steady growth management + Ready to support opening of new stores Senior Systems Engineer and several new stores are added each year. Meijer Inc. We need to support these new stores too.” “ZENworks has given us a way to engage much more effectively with our business stakeholders and respond rapidly to new promotions with a 6-fold increase in update frequency. This improves our customer experience, which is always our ultimate goal.” Contact us at: www.microfocus.com RYAN CICHEWICZ Senior Systems Engineer Like what you read? Share it. Meijer Inc. ZENworks Accelerates Development Improved Customer Experience and Deployment and Reduced Costs To react to consumer and market demands “Leveraging ZENworks not only saves us a more frequently and with greater accuracy, considerable amount of resources, it also im- the team looked for automation deployment proves our security position and reduces our support. Rigorous market research of the avail- risk. We use ZENworks Patch Management to able options led to Micro Focus ZENworks. A automatically patch our systems, ensuring our competitive proof-of-concept with two ven- POS systems always comply with the latest se- dors showed ZENworks to be feature-rich with curity settings,” says Cichewicz. “Supported by ‘zero effort’ capabilities. Leveraging ZENworks Micro Focus, we changed our schedule from allows Meijer’s centralized IT administration costly and manual quarterly updates to fully au- office to remotely reimage POS terminals with tomated bi-weekly ones, resulting in significant zero-touch deployment which was just what saving each year versus the manual effort. Our the team was looking for. ZENworks Config - accelerated development effort and frequent ur ation Management and ZENworks Patch updates allow us to align far better with locally Management were integrated into Meijer’s targeted promotions, meeting particular mar- software delivery pipeline. ZENworks takes the ket and store needs.” output of Meijer’s continuous integration pro- cess and enables continuous delivery directly He concludes: “We are set up well for the fu- to the quality assurance systems for testing ture, and in a good position to support the and validation. Publishing the QA-tested build introduction of new stores with an automated to production is completed by a simple ap- process for rapidly introducing new POS de- proval in ZENworks resulting in an automated vices. ZENworks has given us a way to engage deployment to the production POS devices. much more effectively with our business stake- holders and respond rapidly to new promotions ZENworks Configuration Management pro- with a 6-fold increase in update frequency. This vides the automated package creation with improves our customer experience, which is al- deployment scheduled within constrained ways our ultimate goal.” maintenance windows. By separating develop- ment from production, Meijer created network bandwidth efficiency and a more streamlined application lifecycle management process. 168-000727-001 | M | 09/20 | © 2020 Micro Focus or one of its affiliates. Micro Focus, the Micro Focus logo, and ZENworks, among others, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Micro Focus or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies in the United Kingdom, United States and other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners..