Five articles, five levels and, finally, the principle of End-to-End Ownership (E2EO). That should bring my little series on the Multi-Level Approach (MLA) to a close (see Retail Engineering: Structure before Investment).
Should.
But one question remains: Where did this approach come from in the first place? And why do I believe it can help retailers and solution providers plan, implement and optimise their self-service systems?
The answer is hardly spectacular: Years of hands-on experience. Successful projects, international rollouts and sound decisions. But also misjudgements, setbacks, outright flops and those unforgettable showstoppers that leave you wondering afterwards: “How on earth did we let THAT happen?”
Not every lesson is learnt in a meeting room. Some come at a considerable cost.
The Multi-Level Approach is not a magic formula
And neither, for that matter, is End-to-End Ownership.
Neither is a theoretical exercise or the ultimate answer to every challenge in self-service. Instead, they bring together lessons learnt in practice – including the realisation that even technically excellent solutions can fail when the different elements do not work together.
After all, introducing self-service systems involves far more than purchasing hardware and software.
Commercial viability, store layouts, IT infrastructure, customer needs, usability and loss prevention all need careful consideration. Add numerous stakeholders with competing interests, long-established organisational structures and often substantial investment, and the complexity soon becomes apparent.
In short, a rather large elephant has suddenly appeared in the room.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Imagine a retailer planning to equip 300 stores with self-checkout systems within a relatively short period.
Quite an undertaking. Countless decisions, numerous dependencies and probably just as many opinions about how the project should be delivered.
As the saying goes, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Personally, I have never eaten one, nor do I intend to. Still, the logic behind the expression strikes me as rather sensible.
This is precisely where the MLA comes in. It breaks a complex self-service project down into five manageable levels. From the business case and checkout-zone layout to system connectivity, user experience and loss prevention.
Not every stakeholder needs to discuss every detail at every stage. What matters is involving the right expertise at the right time while keeping the relationships and dependencies between the individual levels firmly in view.
Sounds perfectly reasonable. There is, however, a catch.
If you mentally divide an elephant into five parts, you must ultimately make sure it becomes a healthy, living animal again.
Rather than five perfectly optimised partial solutions capable of all sorts of impressive things – except working together.
That is where End-to-End Ownership comes in: overarching responsibility throughout the entire process, coordinating interfaces, identifying conflicting objectives and ensuring that all five levels operate as one functioning system (see Retail Engineering: Somebody has to hold it all together).
Because five brilliantly organised individual solutions do not necessarily add up to a successful self-service project.
Structure alone changes nothing
So far, so sensible.
But anyone genuinely determined to improve things occasionally needs the courage to question established practices.
Even those that have apparently worked for years. Or at least those nobody has bothered to ask about for years.
This is particularly true of long-established organisational structures, responsibilities and those notorious interfaces where accountability has a curious habit of wandering off.
Sometimes it is not technical limitations that hold a project back, but internal procedures, conflicting objectives or simply the familiar conviction: “That's how we've always done it.”
Of course, not every change represents an improvement. And not every new technology solves an old problem. What really matters is bringing people along on the journey. The importance of addressing the human and organisational aspects of change, alongside its technical implementation, is also emphasised by Prosci's change management approach.
But those determined to preserve the status quo should hardly be surprised when supposedly innovative solutions turn out to be old problems in shinier packaging.
The Multi-Level Approach is not a one-size-fits-all solution
The MLA is not a rigid, step-by-step manual prescribing the same approach for every business.
A retailer exploring self-service for the first time needs different support from a retail chain already halfway through an international self-checkout rollout.
Others have long since gained their first practical experience but remain dissatisfied with the results. For them, the priority may be less about starting again and more about identifying weaknesses, improving existing solutions and learning from earlier decisions.
Much the same applies to manufacturers and solution providers.
Companies looking to evolve from component suppliers into full-solution providers need to think beyond their own products. Hardware and software are only part of the picture. Sound consultancy, planning, integration, project management and responsibility for the complete working system are equally important.
In all these situations, the MLA can help structure the task, establish priorities and make important interdependencies visible.
A one-size-fits-all solution? Rarely helpful.
Good consultancy begins with listening, not with having all the answers.
And there is something else I have learnt over the years:
You cannot make customers happy against their will.
That applies just as much to shoppers using self-checkouts as it does to retailers deciding where to invest next.
Even a technically brilliant solution has little value if it fails to address people's actual needs. And however convincing a concept may look on paper, it is unlikely to succeed if those expected to implement or use it are not properly involved.
That is why, for me, good consultancy begins not with a ready-made answer, but with listening, understanding and occasionally asking uncomfortable questions.
Where is the business today? What experience has it already gained? What does it actually want to achieve? And which changes are genuinely sensible and realistic from an organisational, commercial and human perspective?
It is about meeting customers where they are. Taking their experience, expertise and needs seriously, and supporting them on their journey with specialist knowledge, respect and solutions that genuinely fit their circumstances.
The MLA provides a structured framework for doing just that.
No more. But no less.
Sometimes progress means changing lanes
Perhaps this is the most important lesson I have learnt from many years in retail engineering:
Experience is valuable. But only if we are prepared to learn from it – from successes just as much as from mistakes.
Structure helps us manage complexity. But it must never become an end in itself. And responsibility does not conveniently stop at the next organisational boundary.
For me, the Multi-Level Approach and End-to-End Ownership are therefore less a ready-made recipe and more a reflection of a particular mindset: seeing the bigger picture, working openly with others, taking responsibility and having the courage to challenge established solutions.
Because if you want to achieve something new, you must also be prepared to leave familiar paths behind.