Walgreens Boots Alliance trims in-store audit times by 75 percent with Microsoft Power Platform

Putting key information in employees’ hands

Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) affects millions of lives every day through its retail locations, where customers pick up health and beauty products and prescription medications. The company operates stores under several names in 25 countries, including its flagship brands Walgreens in the United States and Boots in the United Kingdom.

To ensure that the products customers want are on the shelves, WBA runs a comprehensive asset protection program to help prevent theft and loss at stores. Explains Katie Foster, an Asset Protection Manager at Walgreens, “We work with the entire operational team, from store managers and district managers all the way up the leadership chain, helping them understand loss measures and how to use them appropriately. We do store visits and work with store managers to streamline loss reduction processes and mitigate both internal and external theft.”

In the past, the process for store visits varied from employee to employee within the asset protection program, but in general, it involved inefficiencies and redundancy. “It felt like we were doing a lot of double and triple work—writing things down in the store, then later transferring them to a Word document and then an email,” says Foster. “It was not a streamlined process at all, and we weren’t always efficiently communicating findings to the store managers.”

WBA decided to overhaul the process so that stores—and, ultimately, their customers—would have what they needed sooner. The company built a custom Asset Protection mobile app using Microsoft Power Apps, a low-code development platform designed to help companies quickly create solutions to business challenges.

“With the Asset Protection app on my phone, I’ve got all of my store visit data, analytical tools, and results in one place,” says Foster. “When I do reporting, I no longer need to pull information from five different locations—it’s all there in my hand. During store walk-throughs, I enter my notes, and when I’m finished, I can share the results immediately with the store manager. I definitely see faster follow-through now and having real-time data fosters more fluid conversations with my business partners and peers.”

The Asset Protection app became even more useful when WBA combined it with Microsoft Teams. “With Teams, we have an amazing platform to use to stay connected with our business partners and work more efficiently,” says Foster’s colleague Leslie Dolan, also a Walgreens Asset Protection Manager. “Using Teams and the Asset Protection app together, we have one place to do everything—we pull analytics, look up store visit data, share documents and reports, and communicate with each other.”

Improving efficiency, reducing loss, and increasing transparency

The Asset Protection app uses both Microsoft Power Automate and Power BI to deliver comprehensive functionality. When an Asset Protection Manager finishes a store audit and selects “Submit,” Power Automate automatically creates two emails containing the audit’s results, routing one to the store manager and one to the district manager. The app also automatically sends the results to a Power BI dashboard. Updated twice a day, the dashboard provides employees in multiple roles with an easy way to view results for an individual store or group of stores. Microsoft Teams augments the app by giving employees a comprehensive messaging and information solution that keeps them in better contact with each other and with important technology resources.

Shifting away from its manual audit methods and using Power Apps to develop its mobile solution has brought great returns for the employees using it. “A store visit might have taken three or four hours in the past, and with Power Apps, I can now accelerate that to 60 to 90 minutes,” says Foster. “And the real-time communication that comes with the app and Teams really benefits all the parties involved. We’re better at problem solving and at working together to improve our processes, because we’re all doing things the same way now.”

Foster continues, “We also have a much easier way to look at our results at the district level and the regional level and analyze the data we’ve collected. By understanding the bigger picture, we can address issues that affect not just one store but many stores or a whole district or region.” 

As a result of the improved efficiency, WBA has experienced across-the-board improvements in its loss measurements. “During an audit, we have more than 30 questions related to loss, and in just a few months, we’ve seen an improving trend for every single question,” says Jeff Toler, Senior Manager, Asset Protection Implementation and Support Solutions at WBA.  

WBA also has an improved holistic view of loss measurements across the company, so individual store managers can assess the performance of their stores and respond accordingly. “They can see how they’re trending based on the region, area, district, and store level,” says Toler. “They can compare their results to the whole organization or compare one district to another to assess results. This has brought us a high level of transparency and it gives the people who do the work the power to see how their efforts are paying off.” 

The increase in transparency, reliability, and completeness of data brings a wide variety of benefits to WBA—related not just to business results, but also to regulatory compliance. “Improving the audit process ensures we are aligned to applicable laws and regulations, prevents unnecessary fines, and improves safety for both employees and customers,” says Toler. “It allows us to drive execution for programs that reduce comprehensive loss and increase revenue for the organization by improving shelf availability and product protection.”

Developing apps outside traditional IT channels

Toler drove the development of the Asset Protection app. He came up with the idea while accompanying an Asset Protection Manager on a store visit. “I noticed that the manager printed out the audit form and walked around the store writing everything down manually,” he says. “It was definitely not an optimal process, and I began to envision a better solution.”

Toler had heard of Power Apps, and the more he learned about it, the more it seemed like an excellent option for improving the store visit experience. “I don’t come from an IT background, but I realized that with Power Apps, I could do a lot of the development work on my own,” he says. “Microsoft has done a really good job of making Power Apps easy to use, and there are lots of how-to resources available online.”

When he began experimenting with Power Apps, Toler found that a basic background in Excel helped him quickly figure out the logic and functions of Power Apps. From there, he built the basic shell of the Asset Protection app and then worked with some of his peers to build it out into a full-fledged mobile app.

“I really liked the ability to work with colleagues who have firsthand knowledge of the business and develop something ourselves that we knew would work in the field,” he says. “It was a lot easier than trying to explain our needs to an internal IT group and have them create something for us. We still need the IT group for highly sophisticated applications, but with Power Apps, we’re empowered to build meaningful tools by ourselves.”

Toler has found tremendous synergy between Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Teams. “We’ve built Teams channels that collect all the resources that our Asset Protection team members need,” he says. “They now have everything that’s relevant to a particular topic in one place, and Microsoft has done a great job of connecting all the different Microsoft 365, Teams, and Microsoft Power Platform applications.”

Toler believes that Microsoft Power Platform has been a boon to WBA, and he’s excited about the opportunities for the company now that employees can quickly turn an idea into a working app. “As a business owner, I can develop tools and resources myself that make sense for my team and drive value without having to pull in another group for assistance,” he says. “By using Microsoft Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate, we’ve cut the time it takes to get an app from development to production by anywhere from 50 to 80 percent, which means delivering it in weeks instead of months or even years.”

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