About

Lowe’s was undergoing a massive digital transformation; from a 20-year-old system to an AI-powered platform.

The goal was to transform a limited seasonal tool into a comprehensive enterprise-wide replenishment engine

handling 100% of the products in over 1,700 stores.

Problems

Experts trapped in manual work.

50% to 60% of their entire day manually moving data around in Excel spreadsheets.

Exporting data, reformatting it in Excel, and manually annotating it just to prioritize work.

Users essentially acting as "data bridges" for a system that wasn't talking to itself.

Solutions

• A Single Source of Truth: Integrating all data through a new data hub using real-time feeds to ensure everyone sees the same numbers.

• AI-Powered To-Do Lists: Replace manual hunting with a landing page prioritizing the highest-value tasks and suggested "root cause."

• Natural Language Logic: Moving away from 20-year-old codes and replacing them with simple, time-phased controls.

My Role

Spearheading the Discovery Research phase for 3 months, documenting a "day in the life" of inventory planners at Lowe’s.

This research served as the critical foundation for technical workshops led by Accenture.

Our goal was to ensure the new system fixed actual human problems rather than just technical ones.

The Process: Mapping the "Messy Reality"

• Moderated User Interviews: remote sessions with six core users across departments like Lumber, Appliances, and Kitchen & Bath.

• Day-in-the-Life Mapping: I documented their entire workweek to see where time was being spent and where they were getting "stuck."

• Tool Ecosystem Auditing: I identified users were jumping between a confusing "alphabet soup" of tools just to find basic answers.