Planning
Strong ESL projects are built on strong planning. It sounds obvious, but this is where many retailers unintentionally introduce risk.At this stage, decisions made (or missed) can have a lasting impact on costs, timelines, and, ultimately, the success of the rollout. In many cases, the challenges that surface later can be traced back to a handful of avoidable missteps early on.
Let’s start with one of the most common problems that come up when you’re building your ESL business case.
1) Involving Too Many People
Cross-functional input is critical in ESL projects, but more isn’t always better.
When too many stakeholders are involved without a clear structure, projects can quickly become overcomplicated. Conflicting priorities, unclear ownership, and differing opinions can dilute decision-making, slowing progress.
The Impact: Project delays, poor or inconsistent decisions, internal friction, and lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities.
How to avoid it:
- Define clear project objectives from the outset
- Select a focused group of stakeholders aligned to those objectives
- Assign clear roles, including who makes decisions, who contributes, and who needs to be informed
- Establish structured communication channels (who, when, how often)
- Include someone with detailed knowledge of store layouts, products, and fixtures
Even with the right people in place, planning can still fall short if the physical realities of the store environment aren’t fully understood.
2) Overlooking Shelf Fixtures
A common mistake is focusing purely on ESL hardware (how many labels are needed and in what sizes) without considering what they’ll actually attach to.
Shelving and fixtures vary more than you may expect, and getting this wrong can quickly derail a rollout.
The Impact: Incorrect or insufficient mounting materials, incompatible fittings, wasted budget and delays while waiting for replacements.
How to avoid it:
- Identify all shelving systems used across your store estate (and any variations)
- Capture shelf dimensions, including length, height, and configuration across bays
- Understand not just sizes, but quantities of each shelf type
- Measure accurately and don’t rely on assumptions
- Where possible, build a detailed database of shelf specifications
- Consider whether a store audit or survey is required and how this will be resourced
3) Not Conducting a Proof of Concept
Jumping straight into full deployment without testing ESL in a live environment is a high-risk move. A proof of concept (PoC) is not just about validating the business case; it’s about uncovering the realities of implementation and any hidden challenges.
The Impact: Costly mistakes driven by assumptions, overlooked operational challenges, and reduced confidence in ROI.
How to avoid it:
- Run a controlled proof of concept in a representative store before scaling
- Use a test to validate ROI assumptions (labour savings, pricing accuracy, efficiency gains)
- Test fixtures, label sizes and in-store compatibility
- Identify integration issues, workflow changes, and training needs early in the project
- Build internal buy-in (seeing ESL in action often shifts scepticism)
- Reduce risk by refining your approach before full investment
Once you’ve validated your approach, there’s one final planning risk that can quietly undermine even the best-prepared projects.
4) Losing Focus on the Objective
ESL opens up a wide range of possibilities, but this can lead to scope creep.
As projects evolve, it’s easy to get distracted by “what could be done” rather than staying focused on what needs to be delivered first.
The Impact: Delays, increased costs and a risk of failing to deliver against original objectives and timelines.
How to avoid it:
- Define a clear, agreed brief from the outset
- Set measurable objectives and deliverables
- Prioritise getting the fundamentals right first
- Align stakeholders on what ESL can realistically deliver at each stage
- Treat the initial rollout as a foundation
- Focus on going live and proving value before iterating and optimising
Getting the planning phase right puts you in a strong position. But considering the project budget and relevant contingencies introduces a new set of challenges. In the next section, we’ll look at where ESL budget issues typically crop up in projects and how to stay on track.
Budget
With a solid plan in place, the next challenge is ensuring your budget supports it. It’s important to consider during planning how your ESL estate may evolve beyond rollout.
This is where many retailers get caught out. ESL isn’t a one-time, fixed investment. It’s a living system that needs to flex with your product range, store changes, and operational realities. Underestimating that dynamic is where budget issues tend to arise.
1) Not Including a Contingency in the Budget
It’s easy to base your ESL requirements on a snapshot in time, such as how many products you currently stock, how many labels and how many fittings you need.
But retail doesn’t stand still, and neither does your business.
Product lines change, ranges expand, and seasonal variation creates constant movement. That means the number of labels you need will never stay static, and your data is unlikely to reach 100% accurate.
The Impact: Running short on key label types, delays in rollout or replenishment, and slower realisation of ROI due to gaps in coverage.
How to avoid it:
- Decide whether to invest in improving data accuracy or to offset uncertainty with contingency
- Build a buffer into your order volumes (e.g. an additional percentage of labels and fixtures)
- Plan for ongoing variation, not just initial deployment
It’s not just day-to-day variation that gets overlooked; larger business changes can also quietly fall outside of budget planning.
2) Forgetting to Include New Store Openings
New store openings are often managed on separate timelines, which means they can be missed in ESL planning altogether. The result? ESL becomes an afterthought rather than part of the store’s standard setup.
The Impact: Not including new store openings in your budget can duplicate installation effort, increase costs, create inconsistent store standards and add disruption to store teams.
How to avoid it:
- Make ESL the default for all new store openings
- Build new stores into your ESL rollout plan from the outset
- Ensure fixtures, fittings and labels are included in opening budgets and timelines
Even when the right budget is allocated and all locations are accounted for, issues can occur if stock isn’t actively managed.
3) Poor Management of ESL Stock
ESL labels and fixtures are physical assets, but they’re not always treated that way. Without clear visibility of what stock exists, where it is, and who is responsible for it, retailers can quickly lose control, which will inevitably impact the budget.
The Impact: Running out of labels or fittings, inconsistencies across stores, delays due to reordering, and missing or incorrect labels on shelves.
How to avoid it:
- Conduct regular stock takes across your estate
- Track inventory across all stores, including labels and fixtures
- Assign clear ownership for ESL stock management
- Maintain a surplus to avoid operational gaps
- Use forward planning to anticipate seasonal demand and store changes
- Align stock planning with your available budget
With the right budget in place, you’re set up for success, but even well-budgeted projects can struggle if the technical and operational execution isn’t aligned. Next, we’ll look at the common challenges that arise around the actual labels.
Labels
Once planning and budget are in place, attention naturally turns to the labels themselves.
At first glance, this can seem like a relatively straightforward part of the project. But in reality, label design and management introduce a different kind of complexity. One that can quietly create delays, inefficiencies and unnecessary costs if not handled carefully.
Let’s start with where these issues can often begin.
1) Underestimating the Number of Label Templates
Label templates are rarely a “do once and don’t revisit” exercise.
As your ESL rollout progresses, templates tend to evolve. Different product categories, promotional requirements, and label sizes all introduce variation. And importantly, each label size requires its own template, even if the design looks identical.
The Impact: Work falling outside of scope, increased design complexity, delays in rollout, and additional time and cost. It can also create confusion if too many stakeholders are involved in template decisions.
How to avoid it:
- Review and define template requirements early in the project
- Bring key stakeholders together to align and agree upfront
- Keep templates simple – complexity increases ongoing management effort
- Challenge the need for additional designs and focus on what adds real value
- Consider the impact on timelines and budget before expanding the scope
Even with the right number of templates, challenges can arise if ownership and control aren’t clearly defined, which is why roles and responsibilities are crucial to success.
2) Lack of Ownership for Template Mapping
Template mapping is a critical, but often misunderstood, part of ESL.
Without clear ownership, it’s easy to assume that mapping happens automatically or sits with a third party. In reality, it should be driven by your data and owned internally.
The Impact: Manual workarounds that undermine automation, increased risk of errors, internal friction, and delays if changes aren’t communicated effectively.
How to avoid it:
- Clearly define ownership of template mapping within your business
- Ensure head office retains control over template decisions
- Confirm your systems support template mapping (e.g. via a dedicated field)
- Include template mapping in your scope and business case
- Establish a clear, documented process for how mapping is managed
- Maintain consistent and proactive communication with your ESL partner
While getting your label templates and mapping right is essential, even the best-planned labels won’t function without the right technical backbone. ESL relies on a robust network and infrastructure to deliver real-time updates, accurate pricing, and smooth operation in-store.
Network and Infrastructure
With labels defined and structured correctly, the next critical layer is the technology that enables ESL to function in-store.
This is where projects often encounter unexpected delays. Not because the solution isn’t viable, but because the underlying infrastructure hasn’t been fully prepared or aligned for the project.
1) Overlooking Infrastructure Readiness
ESL relies heavily on a stable and well-prepared network environment. When this isn’t in place ahead of installation, even straightforward deployments can quickly stall.
Common issues include missing network configurations, incomplete setup, or responsibility assumptions between internal teams and external partners.
The Impact: Failed or incomplete installations, rescheduled engineer visits, increased costs, rollout delays, and growing internal frustration.
How to avoid it:
- Build a clear understanding of your existing network infrastructure
- Confirm availability of required hardware (e.g. switches with PoE ports)
- Assess store size and determine the number of gateways required
- Ensure static IPs and network configurations are completed in advance
- Hold regular check-ins with IT teams to track readiness
- Implement a sign-off checklist before booking engineer visits
- Engage outsourced IT providers early to align on responsibilities
Infrastructure readiness is one part of the technical picture, but the way your systems integrate with ESL can have an even bigger long-term impact.
2) Choosing Easy Integration Over Long-Term Capabilities
One of the most important technical decisions in an ESL project is how your systems will integrate. Choosing between API integration and scheduled file transfers isn’t just a technical detail; it directly impacts what your ESL solution can deliver.
The Impact: Limited pricing flexibility, reduced promotional agility, and restricted automation capabilities. Changing integration later can introduce additional cost, disruption and complexity.
How to avoid it:
- Define what you want ESL to achieve, both now and in the future
- Assess whether API integration is required to support those goals
- Bring together the right technical and business stakeholders to decide
- Compare options based on capability, not just ease or speed of setup
- Allocate appropriate technical resources to support implementation
Deployment
With planning, budget, labels, and infrastructure in place, the focus shifts to deployment. This is where strategy becomes reality, and the scale of an ESL project truly becomes clear.
What can look straightforward on paper is, in practice, a large operational undertaking. And underestimating that complexity is one of the most common causes of delays and disruption.
Let’s start with the biggest challenge we often see at this stage.
1) Underestimating the Resources Needed to Support the Rollout
ESL deployment is far more than simply installing labels. It involves removing existing shelf-edge strips, disposing of old materials, installing new fixtures, attaching labels, pairing devices, and testing everything to ensure it works as expected.
Multiplied across an entire store estate, this quickly becomes a significant operational task.
The Impact: Extended timelines, incomplete rollouts, disruption to store operations and customers, inefficient execution, and increased labour costs.
How to avoid this:
- Define how many people are needed per store
- Estimate hours required per day, per location
- Decide early on the deployment time and approach (daytime, night shift, or store closure)
- Plan installation in manageable sections (e.g. aisle by aisle)
- Determine whether to use internal teams or external installers
- Plan logistics such as storage of new materials and disposal of old ones
- If using store colleagues, reduce workload elsewhere and set realistic expectations
Even with the right resources in place, a rollout can still fall short if the people using the system every day aren’t fully prepared.
2) Forgetting About Team Training
ESL is not just a technology change; it’s a shift in how teams work.
Without proper training and communication, colleagues may struggle to adopt new processes or feel uncertain about what the change means for them.
The Impact: Inconsistent execution across stores, increased errors, higher support demand, reduced confidence, lower morale, and slower adoption of new processes.
How to avoid this:
- Communicate clearly and positively, focusing on benefits and how roles will evolve
- Demonstrate how fixtures, fittings and labels work in practice
- Deliver structured training in central locations where possible
- Build a clear training plan early (who, what, when)
- Use a “train the trainer” approach to scale effectively
- Include hands-on, live demonstrations
- Follow up post-go-live to reinforce learning and gather feedback
From Rollout to Results: Ensuring ESL Success
ESL has the potential to transform store operations, improving accuracy, efficiency, and freeing up valuable time for store teams to focus on customers.
But they also represent a significant, long-term investment. That’s why getting it right matters.
From planning and budgeting through to deployment and training, many of the challenges retailers face with ESL aren’t due to the technology itself, but to avoidable missteps along the way. Being aware of these common pitfalls early puts you in a far stronger position to deliver a smooth rollout and realise value faster.
Ultimately, a successful ESL project comes down to making informed decisions, aligning the right teams, and approaching implementation with clarity and structure. And that’s where experience makes a difference.
With the right support, you can avoid these common mistakes, strengthen your business case, and ensure your ESL rollout delivers the impact your business expects from day one. Planning an ESL rollout? Speak to our experts to avoid these pitfalls and build a stronger, more confident path to deployment.
