Retail is detail, and stores are managing more than ever.
From helping guests and fulfilling digital orders to unloading trucks, stocking shelves and keeping teams focused on the right work, the shopping experience depends on the outcome of hundreds of small but consequential decisions that a store team makes every day.
What needs attention first? Where should a team member go next? How can leaders keep work moving while giving guests an easy, inspiring and friendly experience?
Navigating that work can also require juggling a mix of data sources, apps and devices. In response, we are accelerating technology in a very Target way: listening to our team, understanding their core challenges and building new, smarter tools that make our stores simpler to run.
New data and technology in myDay, Target’s store operations app used by more than 350,000 team members, brings together information and work from across the store, turning it into a clearer view of what needs attention and where to start.
- Store leaders can see more of what’s happening across the store — from fulfillment orders and truck unloads to team members’ schedules — all in one place.
- Leaders can customize their view so the information they need most is easy to find.
- Team members get a clear, prioritized to-do list, helping them know what to work on next.
The impact is already clear. These latest enhancements are helping team members work more efficiently and helping leaders make faster, more confident decisions — spending less time at a computer pulling together information and more time on the sales floor supporting their teams and serving guests. Across Target stores, these efforts add up to more than 2 million team member hours saved annually.
Created by our team, powered by intelligence
Development of this technology started with the store teams who know the work best. Product management, user experience research and design, engineering and data sciences teams worked side by side with them to build tech solutions that deliver faster service to our guests.
Store Director Alyssa L. explains the magic of co-creation.
I've never felt so heard to be a part of something so great and to be able to say, ‘Hey, here's all the different things that you could roll into this tool that would make our lives easier.’ And they say, ‘Yes, we can make that happen!’
After gathering input from more than 50 stores leaders and team members, the team identified some of the biggest opportunities to make their jobs easier. Now, myDay brings tasks from across the store into one place, prioritizing the actions that have the greatest and most immediate impact on the guest experience.
The system uses real-time signals like inventory, incoming trailers, team availability, item location and forecasted sales to prioritize work based on urgency and value. It also helps the team work more efficiently by grouping similar tasks and giving them the fastest route to complete their to-do list.
The best solutions come from designing with our store team members, not just for them. With advances in design tools and AI, we’re able to collaborate on ideas together in the field in real time, learn immediately and build experiences that better support the way our teams work every day.
In the process, we addressed some of our store team’s biggest needs.
Request: Help me more efficiently manage my day.
Supply chain disruptions, product transitions and seasonal staffing — each day presents a new mix of challenges for Target store directors and leaders.
During the co-creation process, our tech teams focused on providing store directors with more easily accessible information they can act on immediately to see tangible results in their store. This includes knowing the status of their team and how to most effectively assign them to tasks; real-time fulfillment data, including the number of orders and guests on their way; the location of trailers and the work required to unload them; and a snapshot of available shelf space and where teams should focus their attention.
Using this input as a guide, we created the myDay Leader View, a personalized home screen that puts important store updates and resources in one place. Leaders can tailor what they see based on their role and their store’s needs.
This one-stop shop also ensures all leaders in a store are looking at the same information from the same source — minimizing confusion and keeping everyone aligned.
Leaders can also pin the updates they care about most to their home screen. If one store’s goal is to keep its shelves better stocked, its leader can pin those metrics, while another store leader can pin fulfillment data about the status of Drive Up and Order pickups. There’s even a “Needs attention” pin for areas where a store is underperforming.
Ali O., principal product manager, shares the inspiration behind the tech solutions her team has delivered for stores.
By understanding those challenges and the pain points that our leaders are having to face each day, we’re able to build technology solutions together. We’re able to simplify that workload and give time back to leaders to focus on where they want to spend it most: serving guests and developing our teams.
What’s exciting is how we’re taking tons of information and activity across a store and turning it into something simpler and more useful for our leaders. When technology brings forward actionable information, leaders can move through their day with greater clarity and confidence, which means focusing more of their energy on supporting their teams and serving guests.
Request: Make inventory stocking easier.
Getting products to the sales floor at the right time matters to guests. If shelves have space and our guests need the item, our teams need to know. So, we created Scan to Divert in myDay, which has helped create $25 million in value that can be reinvested in the guest experience and store operations. When team members scan products coming in from our supply chain, the tool helps them decide whether those should go to the floor or stay in the backroom based on space and demand.
By keeping specific data in mind — inventory movement, sales floor and backroom inventory, product in transit, demand forecasts and sales-floor capacity — the system helps teams focus first on the products guests need most often. This also means teams can keep shelves full without having to walk needlessly into the backroom. It’s another way myDay combines store teams’ experience with technology enablement to make daily decisions faster and more consistent.
And we're just getting started. Upcoming features in myDay will include the ability to assign and prioritize tasks within the app, share handoff notes, give recognition, and access new AI-enabled insights that can help leaders make faster, more confident decisions. The goal: less time spent on manual coordination and busy work, more consistent execution and more time leading teams and serving guests. It’s part of Target’s work to accelerate technology that strengthens teams and helps deliver an easy, inspiring and friendly guest experience.
