Unieuro scales its SAP S/4HANA transformation nationwide

Unieuro is one of Italy’s leading omnichannel retailers, serving millions of customers across channels that include retail, online, wholesale, business-to-business, and travel. The organization had a goal to unify operations across the business, and SAP S/4HANA became central to that effort, now reaching every area of operations from the HQ through the warehouse floor to the store counter.

The team aimed to complete the nationwide S/4HANA launch ahead of its busiest season, so associates could give customers their full attention. Rather than using traditional approaches to change management and training, the organization turned to WalkMe to guide employees directly in their flow of work, without disrupting day-to-day operations.

Unieuro began with a go-live at two stores, and with WalkMe guiding associates through each task, the rollout reached fifty stores within two months. The first fifty-store launch drew zero support tickets, and the same guidance has since carried the transformation to all 270 stores. Looking ahead, the team plans to extend its digital adoption strategy to other critical systems across the organization.

Unieuro set out to bring 270 stores nationwide onto S/4HANA, giving every location one shared platform to run day-to-day operations. The organization saw its busiest season at the end of the year, so the team aimed to have the platform live in each store well ahead of the holiday rush. They wanted associates working confidently in the new environment before that rush began, so stores could focus on shoppers and customer experience, rather than on learning a new application.

Traditional, formal classroom sessions would not be able to support every employee within the available time, so they needed a way to guide everyone in the flow of work without adding additional months of training or retraining.

Reaching that goal meant rethinking how store associates would learn the new way of working. The team wanted employees equipped not just to get through the launch, but to complete everyday tasks – like processing a customer return or logging a goods receipt – accurately and confidently, long after the rollout itself had passed. They considered a conversational assistant that could answer questions about the new application, but found that frontline, customer-facing associates called for more direct guidance that could walk them through a task in the moment of need, rather than simply describe what to do next.

Unieuro prioritized the workflows that were most critical to its business operations and closest to the customers. For these workflows, the team needed guidance that appeared inside the application at the exact moment each task began, freeing associates to spend more of their time with the shoppers they serve.

To give associates support within the flow of work at the moment of need, Unieuro’s core systems team implemented a digital adoption strategy centered on the employee experience, bringing guidance directly into S/4HANA. Working alongside with their WalkMe implementation partner, Arsenalia, the team prioritized ten of the most critical workflows: the transactions most specific to Unieuro’s business and most used in its stores, so that frontline teams can focus on higher-value work and dedicate more time to customer service.

The first place associates encounter that guidance is the launchpad, the S/4HANA home screen that opens at login and holds tiles for many different business tasks. With the help of WalkMe, associates are greeted with a short list of common tasks, described in plain language, so there is no need to scan through the tiles to find the right one. “Terms like outbound delivery are new to colleagues who come from a platform that processes stock movements,” says Riccardo Torchio, Core Systems Director. “WalkMe lets us speak to our users in their own language, in terms they already know.” With familiar wording and a short list of common tasks, associates know where to begin from their first login and find what they need quickly every day after.

Whether a purchase began online or at the point of sale, returns come through one process, which made return order creation one of the first workflows the team built. Using WalkMe, associates are guided through each step, beginning with the order number or point of sale receipt number, from which S/4HANA creates the return order. From there, guidance walks them through recording the reason for the return, confirming warranty status, and checking that the accessories that came with the product are accounted for. Validation checks within these steps keep each record complete, and WalkMe adds them without customizing the standard application. Because every store follows the same steps, returns are documented consistently, giving Unieuro a traceable record of each one and shoppers a dependable experience, whichever store they visit.

Goods receipt was another workflow the team prioritized, since speed and accuracy in stock records are a key for retailers selling in both stores and online. Guided by WalkMe, store teams record each delivery the moment it arrives, rather than hours later. That timing means the website shows shoppers what is available and demand forecasts plan around what the business truly has on hand, so new products can be offered online as soon as they reach a store. Together, these workflows show Unieuro’s digital adoption strategy at work, supporting associates from the first login through the final step of each task.

When fifty stores went live in a single night, Unieuro received zero support tickets and zero calls, so quiet that the team phoned several stores just to confirm everything was running. The stores confirmed it was, and for Riccardo, the silence said everything. “The best feedback I have received in my career is no feedback, because no feedback means everything works,” he says. With WalkMe, associates are supported in the moment of need, so questions are answered before they ever become tickets. Now live across 270 stores nationwide, Unieuro has seen the pattern hold, with about one support ticket for every three stores and no impact on store operations.

Equally notable is how Unieuro scaled without requiring additional headcount. Following pilots that ran from January through March, Unieuro scaled from two stores to fifty within 2 months of going live with the same team, a milestone Riccardo counts among the proudest of the project. “Scaling from ten stores to thirty and then fifty and so on, without adding anyone to the rollout or the training, was a real wow moment,” he says. Because the same guidance is in place from the first day, each new store benefits from workflows already proven in earlier go-lives.

When associates migrated to S/4HANA, they handled core, customer-facing tasks with confidence from day one, and stores kept operating without interruption throughout go-live. That continuity matters because the holiday season is when stores are busiest, and associates can focus on the shoppers in front of them. Unieuro’s team built side by side Arsenalia, learning each workflow as it was created. Today, the team can update existing guidance and create new guidance on its own as the business evolves.

Beyond the store floor, Unieuro’s digital adoption strategy helps the organization get the full value from S/4HANA. By guiding associates through each workflow accurately, WalkMe helps keep the data that logistics, demand planning, finance and omnichannel rely on consistent, so all teams work from a shared view of the business. Headquarters and stores now see the same stock numbers, keeping inventory aligned between them, and invoices reconcile smoothly. When something needs attention, teams check one place instead of several.

Next, Unieuro plans to extend the same step-by-step guidance to other applications, such as warehouse management and the CRM, so a task that crosses applications is guided from start to finish. The team also plans to focus on analytics, to see how workflows perform, and on AI use cases that build on the WalkMe guidance already in place.