Website Update – October 5, 2017

As of October 1, the Acuity Brands web team has moved into Phase 2 of our website continuous improvement project. As many of you already know, we significantly changed our web development process in early July, as we pivoted away from a third-party vendor providing primary support of web enhancement projects. Over the past 90 days we have built an internal Acuity Brands team comprised of many new full-time and contract positions, totaling 22+ skilled professionals.

We used that time to implement new management processes, which include weekly visual management on Monday mornings, weekly sprint planning and a new two-week sprint cycle. We have now transitioned from one stream of work across four teams to four streams of work across one team. This means that we can complete work at four-times the rate and that we have a more centralized prioritization process. As such, we have developed the following plan:

The primary goals for the second phase of our web plan are to (in order of priority):
1. Greatly improve the user experience for our core audience (Agents and Specifiers) via search enhancements
2. Reinforce our brands, streamline support and further enhance user experience by eliminating PIM sites via brand migrations
3. Execute on key business projects to meet the needs of our internal business partners
4. Enable the technology infrastructure required to move Acuity off of unreliable and obsolete infrastructure

Our secondary goals include:
1. Install discipline around Agile methodology to greatly improve our delivery
2. Improve our ability to operate as one team to maximize productivity and improve quality
3. Establish a website steering committee to improve the prioritization process
4. Place a heightened focus on proactive/preventative processes to minimize unplanned outages

All deliverables outlined herein, with the exception of technology upgrades, are driven by either VoC or business requirements. We believe that by executing on this plan we will be satisfying all known/outstanding VoC or business-driven projects. With regard to technology upgrades, we believe we have identified and prioritized the relevant projects to maximize return on effort and to best position ourselves for the next phase of the web plan.

At this time, with the given resources and planned contractor additions, we have scoped a funnel of work that consumes 80% of available resources. We recommend not adding any work to this scope without either shifting existing deliverables or adding resources. We believe the 20% will be required to support hereto unknown/unplanned efforts.

This work breaks into four parallel work streams: Brand Migrations, Business Projects, Search Enhancements and Technology Upgrades.

Improvement Work Streams
Migration Stream: Core focus is to overhaul the Holophane website and to make significant progress on the Lithonia Lighting site overhaul. Holophane is scheduled for completion in early December, while Lithonia is scheduled for late January. In all, significant work will be completed on a total of eight brand sites, with much of the work completed by December 2017 but some of the work stretching to March 2018. Success in this effort will be primarily measured by business partner satisfaction and the web team’s ability to deliver on time.
Search Stream: This is our top priority. The core focus is to significantly improve the ability to find and specify our product across all of our brands. This stream encompasses VoC-driven enhancements collected from 15 agents, as well as all known internal requests. All work will be completed by December 2017. Success in this effort will be measured by end-user customer satisfaction and a significant reduction in complaints from the field on the usability of our site to find and specify products.
Business Project Stream: The core focus of this effort is to support business objectives. Key projects include Renovation overhaul, Geometri shutdown, “Agent Tab” rebuild, and more. These projects are the ones that are most likely to shift based on business needs, and they will be reprioritized as needed on a weekly basis with cross-functional input. All known business projects are documented here, with final completion ending in January. We anticipate additional projects on a biweekly basis. Success in this effort will be measured by on-time delivery and business-partner satisfaction.
Technology Upgrade Stream: The core focus of this effort is to shore up our existing infrastructure and processes to establish a stronger jumping-off point for future technology upgrades planned for the next phase. Most of this work will be completed in this phase of the project. Success in this effort will be measured by the elimination of unplanned outages and the successful completion of key technology (Sitecore and Coveo) upgrades.

Brand Migrations:
This stream of work is aimed at enhancing the user experience, reinforcing our brands and eliminating PIM sites to streamline support. The migrations that will be started in Phase 2 include:

• Holophane (PIM)
• Lithonia (PIM)
• RELOC
• AEL (PIM)
• ASL (SC 6.6)
• Besal (SC 6.6)
• McClung (SC 6.6)
• Distech (support only)
• Healthcare

Business Projects:
This stream of work is aimed at completing all known outstanding business projects as requested by business partners across the organization. Many, but not all, of these projects are also connected to specific VoC.

• Home Page overhaul
• Navigation overhaul
• “Juno Plan A”
• Typicals tool
• Renovations + DLC/Energy Star/Utility Rebate tool
• Mobile Apps page
• eldoLED page
• “How to Buy” page
• Agent Tab rebuild
• Public Product Configurator (Build Catalog #)
• Holophane and Lithonia CTAs
• Track section
• Shutting down Geometri
• Removing AB controls from website

Search:
As our top priority, this stream is aimed at resolving all remaining VoC-driven search enhancements. We believe this work will deliver the highest return on effort as measured by user-perceived usability of the site to find and specify our product.

• Product Selector
• Open filters by default
• Product result boosting
• Type ahead (menu selection – click to load)
• Brand-specific boosting
• “Back” button
• Category pages
• Search “Did you mean?” function
• IES filter lookup function
• Enhanced search logic to remove space from text search

This plan includes all known search enhancements within current platform capabilities, with the exception of product “compare” functionality. All projects are VoC-driven, and we believe these enhancements will deliver a significantly improved user experience.

Technology Upgrades:
This stream of work is aimed at upgrading environment and eliminating “technical debt” to restore confidence in our technology architecture as a prerequisite for leveraging the platform to its fullest.

• Data service provider
• Sitemap automation
• Coveo upgrade
• Systems integrations
• SiteCore 8.2+ upgrade
• Service support plan (uptime responsibility)
• HTTPS changeover
• Support ticket cross-training
• Code error handling
• Data roadmap and webpage creation (internal alignment on standards, etc.)

We continue to put a heavy focus on VoC-driven improvements. We rely heavily on our Sales and Agent partners to identify and prioritize improvement opportunities, and we are committed to delivering a world-class web experience as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you would like to contribute to the planning and prioritization process, or if you have any feedback about our website or this plan, we would be glad to schedule some time to discuss with you and/or your team.

Please direct any questions, comments or concerns to Daniel Englebretson via Daniel.Englebretson@acuitybrands.com.

Thank you,
The Acuity Brands Web Team