+ CASE STUDY
Goodwill Industries of Arkansas
Goodwill of Arkansas Rolls Out Solutions DGR State-Wide in Just Two Months
Overview
Goodwills often come to us needing a faster-than-normal implementation. Circumstances may be that their current solution is coming to its end-of-life and they need something in place before that happens. Other times they need something up and running for a store grand opening.
In the case of Goodwill of Arkansas, they needed a solution to address PCI compliance issues they were facing as well as an end-of-life scenario for their current POS system.
Project
The ability to roll out a Solutions DGR implementation in a short time span relied heavily on both the Solutions ITW team and the Goodwill of Arkansas team. Goodwill of Arkansas fortunately had a very strong IT staff that was able to roll out several locations each week.
At the same time, Solutions ITW provided support across all 36 locations to ensure that networking, configuration, and support were available whenever the implementation teams were on site.
Implementation
Solutions ITW hit the ground running.
The implementation team from Goodwill needed to reach out to ensure that configuration settings were correct and that connectivity was accurate. From the Solutions ITW standpoint, several things need to happen whenever we support an implementation team. We are responsible for registering each of the workstations to ensure that only whitelisted devices are able to access the Solutions DGR environment. This means that all registers, production machines, and donation tablets are registered with the Solutions DGR ecosystem.
During the implementation, Solutions ITW is responsible for providing Implementation Day support, which many times includes ensuring that devices are configured correctly. This also involves ensuring that receipt printers are properly configured and that credit card terminals are properly programmed. Solutions ITW also provides support to ensure that merchant accounts are properly created and registered with processors, which can be a significant hurdle during any implementation process.
Solutions ITW was available after hours and quickly addressed concerns from the networking side. After the first couple weeks of rolling out, we started feeling pretty confident in what we were doing. Roll-out time went from six hours at the pilot store to an hour and a half in the last couple of stores.
+ Chad Albaugh, Goodwill of Arkansas VP of Donated Goods
Solution
When we partnered with Goodwill of Arkansas, we understood that there would be extenuating circumstances. We were happy to work around any and all of their needs.
We sat down with Chad Albaugh, the Goodwill of Arkansas VP of Donated Goods, to discuss his view on how the implementation went and why they chose Solutions DGR as their trusted partner.
“One of the requirements in selecting a DGR provider was an expedited rollout. The reason we needed to move fast is because we needed to be in PCI compliance by the end of the year, and we started our pilot near the end of October 2020.”
Albaugh continued, “We piloted Solutions DGR for about a week with two locations. Then we went full force with our rollout plan of about six stores a week, which was really aggressive. We weren’t sure if we would sustain it, but we were going to try it. It went fairly smoothly, and we ended up finishing ahead of schedule on December 15.”
Solutions ITW and Goodwill of Arkansas were deliberate in starting the planning process from the very beginning. Even during the negotiation stage, it was understood that this project would be delivered on a severe time crunch. Albaugh admitted, “The biggest challenge in the planning process was that our organization covers the entire state of Arkansas. So we have a lot of locations that are very rural, and we have some networking issues in some of our locations.”
The first step toward solving this problem was to put a team together in each of Arkansas’s three regions. Each team was made of directors and store managers that were directly involved with each store’s roll-out. After successful roll-outs in the first two stores, we began doing three a week in each region.
Solutions ITW was available after hours and quickly addressed concerns from the networking side. After the first couple weeks of rolling out, we started feeling pretty confident in what we were doing. Roll-out time went from six hours at the pilot store to an hour and a half in the last couple of stores.
+ Chad Albaugh, Goodwill of Arkansas VP of Donated Goods
I’m confident that we’ve got a long-term partnership here.
+ Chad Albaugh, Goodwill of Arkansas VP of Donated Goods
Results
With organized planning and a strong IT understanding in place, we were able to roll out production for Goodwill of Arkansas for anywhere from six to nine stores per week.
Albaugh commented, “Solutions ITW was available after hours and quickly addressed concerns from the networking side. After the first couple weeks of rolling out, we started feeling pretty confident in what we were doing. Roll-out time went from six hours at the pilot store to an hour and a half in the last couple of stores.”
With good communication up-front and a solid understanding of Goodwill operations, Albaugh is assured that he made the right decision when choosing to partner with Solutions ITW. “I’m confident that we’ve got a long-term partnership here. Solutions ITW was always available, and I think that was one of the biggest reasons we didn’t keep our previous POS provider. The biggest thing—and this is going through my second POS rollout—was having that level of Goodwill understanding. It was easy to communicate and speak the same language.”