Appaloosa’s MAM solution deployment at Leroy Merlin – Case study

Whether it is to exchange confidential information with its employees, submit content or new work methods: in the digital age, the smartphone is now the main communication tool between the company and its employees. At Leroy Merlin, in order to organise the mobile fleet, the IT team decided to adopt the device management solution conducted by Appaloosa. In less than 3 months, 7000 employees have already been won over! Who can do better?

Whether you are an SME, a mid-cap company or a large group, the problem is essentially the same (even if the scale changes). You need powerful tools to organize communication with your employees.

At Leroy Merlin, the management has been coming to the conclusion for some time now that in order to create and maintain an exceptional working environment for employees, they need to have access to as much information as possible directly from their smartphone.

Centralize information

However, to do this, it is necessary to implement a proper mobile device management (MDM) or application management (MAM) initiatives. Ideally, these solutions should be managed by a single entity, in order to centralize and not disperse the IT team.

Not so long ago, the employees had to access the PC made available to them by the company at their workplace, in order to read certain sensitive and/or strategic services and data.

But at a time when digital has “eaten the world”, to quote Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape in the 1990s – and now a key investor in Silicon Valley – this is no longer possible: the employee must have access to his work tools ATAWAD (anytime, anywhere, with any device).

At Leroy-Merlin, implementing this cultural and technological shift was not easy, as Regis Mertz, IT manager of the French retailer, explains: “A few years ago, we realised a lot of mobile initiatives were launched among our teams. Yet adoption was limited because employees couldn’t access mobile apps or were not aware of such initiatives.”

We can see here the importance of centralizing information, and clear and frictionless communication with the teams.

Identify problems and solve them

Fortunately, Leroy Merlin was able to understand the difficulties of his employees. Regis Mertz explains that in order to build a mobile strategy for the company as a whole, it was necessary to have the opportunity to implement solutions that work on both pro and personal devices:

“A few years ago, we realised a lot of mobile initiatives were launched among our teams. Yet adoption was limited because employees couldn’t access mobile apps or were not aware of such initiatives. Though these projects were extremely instructive to help us build our mobile strategy for the company”.

An incredibly simple UX

Thanks to this corporate app store, Leroy Merlin has given its employees access to more than 40 professional applications, reserved for employees and totally inaccessible to anyone outside the company.

This has allowed many employees to reduce a recurring frustration: that of not having access to essential tools for the smooth running of their daily missions. And if the adoption of this app store was so fast and important, it was also because of the simplicity of its installation.

No need to call on your company’s IT department, the app store provided by Appaloosa is as easy to use as the commercial app stores to which any smartphone has access, whether on IOS or Android.
Needless to say, the simplicity of this operation obviously allowed employees to be immediately autonomous, and to save a lot of time – time they were able to devote to their daily tasks, which they were able to approach with greater serenity.

Efficient deployment

As no technical skills are required to use the Appaloosa solution, deployment is generally fast and smooth – at Leroy Merlin, it didn’t take more than 3 months! Administrators were able to intuitively manage the app store, uploading new applications according to the company’s needs.

Also, the exchange between employees using the app store and the technical teams was lively and intense: Appaloosa helped Leroy Merlin gather feedback from users in order to continuously improve their applications.
In this way, any employee could leave a comment about the apps, the app store, and possible operating errors. In case of concern, the employees were able to inform the IT department in real time.

An unprecedented success

The deployment of this app-store was an unprecedented success for Leroy Merlin. As Regis Mertz noted: “Since we deployed the Leroy Merlin Store with Appaloosa, 7,000 employees have installed in-house mobile apps on their devices, by themselves, showing the interest and need for such a solution did in fact exist. Thanks to the simple UX of our enterprise app store, our employees are able to be autonomous, engaged, and give feedback about the tools we’ve provided.”

A scalable model

A figure to conclude: 7,000 Leroy Merlin employees were won over in the space of 3 months. It is important to understand that the installed solution works for as many employees as you want. The simplicity and efficiency of its installation, the possibility of direct feedback from users and the ability to correct any errors make it one of the most renowned solutions on the market, as evidenced by its extremely successful deployment.