For this retailer, helping customers find the right product was central to digital sales. Its existing search experience made that difficult. Irrelevant results and slow performance created friction, while merchandising teams needed greater control over which products appeared. Improving the experience required a platform migration and coordinated delivery across business, digital, and engineering teams.
Case Study
Helping shoppers find the right products. Helping a global retailer grow digital revenue.
A global sportswear retailer needed to improve how customers found products online. Search results were missing relevant items, and aging technology was slowing the shopping experience. The Gunter Group helped coordinate the move to a new search platform, bringing business and technology teams together to deliver better product discovery and new capabilities to test, learn, and improve sales.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Retail
Organization size:
~70,000 employees
Services:
Program and Project Management
Business Analysis
System Implementation
Business Analysis
System Implementation
The Challenge
A better shopping experience depended on changing the systems behind it.
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Relevant products were getting missed
Customers searching the online store did not consistently see products that matched their needs. Merchandising teams also needed tools to prioritize products based on inventory and margin, connecting search results to both customer needs and business goals.
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Legacy technology limited performance
Existing systems contributed to long load times and site availability issues. The retailer needed a scalable foundation that could support reliable search, new features, and ongoing experimentation.
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Delivery depended on many teams moving together
Search, product taxonomy, digital experiences, merchandising, and operations all played a role. Teams worked on different schedules, with dependencies spanning existing systems and the new platform. Progress required a shared roadmap and coordinated releases.
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When a customer places an order for pickup, they expect the product to be there and the store team to be ready. Making that happen takes coordination across inventory, payments, fulfillment, and store operations, and we understand how to get those teams working together so the technology supports the experience you’ve promised.”– Jim Calko, Principal The Gunter Group
Our Approach
Connecting retail priorities to coordinated technology delivery.
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1
Define the roadmap and prioritize capabilities
We partnered with product managers and engineers to map existing capabilities to the future platform and prioritize what to deliver first. The roadmap established the essential search experience and sequenced additional features around business needs and technical dependencies.
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2
Coordinate the platform migration and core search experience
We managed delivery planning for the move to a cloud platform, aligning search and navigation with product categories, descriptions, and attributes. This connected the technology work to how customers actually searched and browsed.
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3
Enable merchandising control and experimentation
We supported delivery of tools that allowed business teams to adjust product rankings, update search criteria, and test different approaches. Working closely with digital product management, we coordinated the metrics and reporting needed to evaluate results and guide subsequent improvements.
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4
Establish a shared delivery rhythm
We introduced an agile delivery structure tailored to the organization, synchronizing releases across approximately a dozen teams. Planning addressed dependencies, prepared requirements for upcoming work, and incorporated business training to support adoption.
Value Delivered
Better product discovery. Greater control over digital performance.
A stronger shopping experience
The new platform improved search performance and resilience, helping customers find relevant products and supporting additional sales.
More control for merchandising teams
Business users gained tools to adjust product visibility and search criteria as inventory and commercial priorities changed. These capabilities supported ongoing experimentation and informed decisions about which changes to expand.
Coordinated execution across teams
A shared roadmap and release rhythm helped teams manage dependencies and deliver agreed scope on time. We brought structure to a complex program while preserving the flexibility to iterate as teams learned.
Retail experience that informed delivery
Our understanding of retail operations and digital commerce helped connect merchandising priorities with technology decisions. Research into other retailers’ search experiences also informed discussions about product organization, navigation, and performance.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
30M
New Medicaid members supported through enterprise readiness efforts.
18M+
Revenue driven by the visual search capability.
12 Team
Coordinated across digital and business operations.
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