---
sourceDocument: Australia Strategic Portfolio Management
sourceDocumentLink: https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/r/it-business-management

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    - australia

ft:locale :

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ft:publication_title :

    - Australia Strategic Portfolio Management

ft:clusterId :

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workflow :

    - Technology


---

# Explore retail projects

# Explore retail projects {#ariaid-title1}

Release version: Australia  
Updated May 16, 2026  
![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 5 minutes to read
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## Summary of Explore retail projects

The Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite is a specialized extension of ServiceNow's Strategic Portfolio Management workspace designed to help retail organizations efficiently plan, execute, and monitor store life cycle projects.
These projects include new store openings, closures, refurbishments, relocations, and technology refreshes.
The suite consolidates project templates, retail-specific fields, and stage-gate playbooks into a unified interface, eliminating the need for disconnected tools or spreadsheets.
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This solution standardizes project execution by providing predefined templates and guided workflows, ensuring consistent governance across all store projects regardless of location or project manager. It streamlines coordination across multiple teams and provides portfolio-level visibility to executives for better decision-making.

## Key Features

* **Standardized Project Structure:** Users select a project type (e.g., New Store Opening or Store Closure) which applies predefined templates with the appropriate tasks, milestones, and dependencies tailored to that scenario. This standardization ensures consistency in planning and reporting.
* **Retail-Specific Project Fields:** Each project type includes custom fields that track critical dates and milestones (e.g., Construction start date, Store go-live date, Last trading day). These fields enable clear progress tracking and provide leadership with consistent, comparable data across projects.
* **Playbook-Guided Life Cycle:** Stage-gate playbooks guide project managers through required stages, inputs, approvals, and validations from initiation to handover, ensuring adherence to governance and quality standards.
* **Portfolio-Level Visibility:** By sharing common fields, templates, and milestones across projects, the suite automatically aggregates status updates. This supports executives in comparing progress, identifying risks, and generating portfolio-wide reports without manual data consolidation.
* **Multiple Life Cycle Scenarios:** The suite supports five store life cycle scenarios---New Store Opening, Store Refurbishment, Store Closure, Store Relocation, and Technology Refresh---each with dedicated templates and milestone tracking, all managed within the same workspace and reporting framework.

## Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

* **Improved Consistency:** Standardized templates and fields ensure every store project follows the same structure, simplifying project management and reporting.
* **Efficient Cross-Team Coordination:** Automated workflows and connected processes reduce manual effort and communication gaps between departments such as real estate, construction, IT, procurement, and marketing.
* **Executive Insights:** Real-time, consolidated portfolio views enable leadership to monitor project timelines, budgets, and risks across all store projects, facilitating better strategic decisions.
* **Scalability:** Suitable for retail organizations managing hundreds of store projects annually, allowing them to handle diverse project types within a single platform.

## Next Steps

ServiceNow customers interested in leveraging the Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite can explore further resources on configuring and using the suite, including playbook customization and portfolio management techniques, to maximize operational efficiency in retail store life cycle management.  
Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite enables retail organizations to plan, execute, and track store life cycle projects such as new store openings, closures, refurbishments, relocations, and technology refreshes.

## Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite overview {#explore-retail-projects-spm-r__section_ed2_225_gjc}

Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite is a purpose-built extension of the Strategic Portfolio Management workspace that gives retail organizations a structured, repeatable way to manage store life cycle projects. It brings together
project templates, retail-specific project fields, and stage-gate playbooks into a single interface. By consolidating project planning, milestone tracking, and portfolio visibility, the suite means you don't have to coordinate
across disconnected tools or spreadsheets. You can select a project type, apply a predefined template, capture key dates, and guide your team through each stage from initiation to completion. Playbooks verify that every store
project follows a consistent governance process regardless of the project manager or store location.

Retail projects in Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite are structured, template-driven work items that guide teams through store life cycle scenarios.

The Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite works as an extension to the existing SPM capabilities such as project templates, project fields, playbooks, and workflows to tailor them specifically for retail store operations. This gives all the personas a connected experience on one platform.  
Retail companies run hundreds of store projects every year. A large grocery chain might be opening 40 new stores, refurbishing 120 others, closing 15, and refreshing technology in 200, all in the same fiscal year. These projects typically have three core problems.

* No standardization across projects: Every project manager builds their own project plan, task lists, and approval checkpoints. Store #412 might open with a 47-task plan and store #413 with a 62-task plan, created by different project managers. There is no consistency when reporting progress and updates to leadership because every project is structured differently.
* Manual coordination across teams: a single new store opening touches verticals such as real estate, construction, IT deployment, procurement, compliance, store operations, marketing, HR, and finance. Project managers handle this manually through emails and significant human effort, with no automation or connected workflow.For example: If the IT team doesn't get notified that construction is complete, POS installation sits idle for
  weeks.

* No visibility at the portfolio level: executives need to know how all store projects are progressing against timeline, budget, and completion targets. Without a common data model (shared fields, shared milestones, shared project types), rolling up status, comparing progress, or spotting risks across the portfolio is difficult.
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## Common project structure for every store scenario {#explore-retail-projects-spm-r__section_fl4_nj4_2jc}

When starting a new project, users select a project type such as New Store Opening or Store Closure. That selection filters the project to a set of predefined project templates
containing the right tasks, milestones, dependencies, and durations for that specific scenario. Every new store opening starts from the same foundation. Every closure follows the same sequence.

For example, a New Store Opening template comes preloaded with tasks organized across phases like initiation, design and permitting, procurement, site readiness, construction, IT setup, fixtures, and go-live.

## Retail-specific project fields that enable structured tracking {#explore-retail-projects-spm-r__section_m5t_1p4_2jc}

Each project type consists of custom fields to the project record that capture the key dates and milestones specific to that scenario. These project fields capture meaningful data points.  
* For a New Store Opening, you get fields such as Site approval date, Construction start date, IT installation date, and Store go-live date.
* For a Store Closure, you get fields such as Closure decision date, Last trading day, Asset recovery completion date, and Closure confirmation date.
* For a Technology Refresh, you get fields such as Refresh approval date, Installation scheduled date, Installation completion date, and Store handover date.
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These fields serve two purposes: they give project managers a clear dashboard of where the project stands at key inflection points. They also give leadership a set of consistent, comparable data points across every project of the same type. When every store closure captures a Last trading day in the same field, you can report on that across the entire portfolio.

## Portfolio-level visibility across all store projects {#explore-retail-projects-spm-r__section_ax3_5p4_2jc}

Every project of a given type shares the same fields, templates, and milestones, enabling a consistent reporting layer. With the Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite offering, status updates are available automatically without manually gathering and organizing data from differently structured project plans.

## Life-cycle scenarios offered with the retail suite {#explore-retail-projects-spm-r__section_eb3_3q4_2jc}

Each scenario has its own template, its own set of project fields, and its own guided playbook. These aren't five separate products; they're five configurations of the same underlying framework, all managed within the Workspace. It shares the same reporting infrastructure and is visible in a single portfolio view.  
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| Scenario | Offerings | Key milestones offered |
|-|-|-|
| New Store Opening | End-to-end from business case through grand opening and handover | Site approval date, Construction start date, IT installation date, Store go-live date |
| Store Refurbishment | Temporary shutdown, renovation, technology re-enablement, and reopening of an existing store | Refurbishment approval date, Decommissioning start date, Fit-out completion date, Re-opening date |
| Store Closure | Controlled wind-down from closure decision through asset recovery, decommissioning, and financial reconciliation | Closure decision date, Last trading day, Asset recovery completion date, Closure confirmation date |
| Store Relocation | Decommissioning the current store, preparing the new site, transferring operations | Relocation approval date, Current store closure date, New site readiness date, Relocation completion date |
| Technology Refresh | Replacing aging IT hardware (POS, routers, network) in an operational store | Refresh approval date, Installation scheduled date, Installation completion date, Store handover date |
[Table 1. Store life-cycle scenarios]

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## Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite benefits {#explore-retail-projects-spm-r__cf-exploring-parent-benefits}

Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite provides benefits for retail project managers and their organizations.

* Standardized project structure for every store scenario: Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite provides predefined project templates for each store life cycle scenario.
* Milestone tracking for store scenarios: Each project type includes custom fields that capture the key dates and milestones specific to that scenario. These dates include site approval date, construction start date, IT installation date, and store go-live date. These fields give leadership a consistent, comparable set of data points across every project of the same type.
* Playbook-guided store life cycle: Stage-gate playbooks define the sequence of stages and activities that each store project must complete before advancing. Project managers are guided through required inputs, approvals, and validations at every stage, from initiation through handover.
* Portfolio-level visibility across all store projects: Because every project of a given type shares the same fields, templates, and milestones, status updates are available automatically. Executives can compare progress, identify risks, and report on the portfolio without manually gathering data from differently structured project plans.
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## What to explore next {#explore-retail-projects-spm-r__cf-exploring-parent-links}

To learn more about configuring and using Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite, see:

* [Explore Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/Z7iWvUuBREBNWEEtgzatew "The Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite (SPM Retail) is a purpose-built extension of the Project Workspace offering from ServiceNow that gives retail organizations a structured, repeatable way to manage store lifecycle projects. Playbooks for these projects give retail project managers a ready-made, step-by-step roadmap for every store scenario. As a result, they execute consistently and never have to invent the sequence or approvals.")
* [Explore playbooks for retail projects](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/Hb8kbkvPrR4y3KeGJQnaFA "Playbooks in Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite provide a guided, structured approach to managing store life cycle projects from initiation to completion. This helps project teams follow a consistent process across every store scenario.")
* [Configure Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/JTzVv4jjBoIlgwb2FRE6Wg "Configure Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite (SPM Retail) to manage store life cycle projects such as new store openings, closures, refurbishments, relocations, and technology refreshes. Follow the configuration overview or use guided setup to get started.")
* [Using Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/HSNMlR~bygTfM2~tQI82kQ "ServiceNow Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite (SPM Retail) is a retail-focused extension to the Strategic Portfolio Management's workspace facilitating customers to manage the retail stores.")
* [Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite References](https://servicenow-prod.fluidtopics.net/N8yhUNZnBDPsdwl9nVEK5g "Reference material for Retail Strategic Portfolio Management Suite, including field descriptions, configuration values, and lookup data to consult when setting up or managing the application.")
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