RetailNext

About RetailNext

RetailNext is the global leader in retail analytics for physical stores, serving 560+ brands across 100+ countries, including Macy’s, Sephora, Ulta Beauty, and Calvin Klein. Their platform processes trillions of data points a year from nearly 100,000 deployed sensors.

The Challenge: Continuous Feedback Without Burning Out Managers

RetailNext’s people team, led by Chief People Officer Andrew Golden and Senior HRBP Sarah Carranza Walker, wanted to move away from annual performance reviews to continuous feedback. The problem with that ambition is well-known: it only works if managers engage, and most won’t, because they don’t have the time.

Their previous tool didn’t help. Reports landed as long, dense documents that required as much work to read as they did to act on. Windmill solved that problem for already highly stretched managers by bringing all the necessary context to them, making continuous feedback actually possible.

"I really love Windmill's pre-read reports. They're super condensed, which I really appreciate. We were just using a different tool before and I'd get these like six-page summaries…which isn't a summary."

Andrew Golden

Chief People Officer

A First Cycle Managers Asked to Repeat

When RetailNext ran their first performance review cycle on Windmill, Sarah, who admin’d the rollout, saw something rare for HR.

"Everything was so smooth, from the ease of use, to the way the managers were able to hop in. We've been getting people asking us if we're going to do it again. As an HR team, you don't often get feedback around — like, that was good, we should do it again. You're like, whoa, that's unheard of."

Sarah Carranza Walker

Senior HRBP

That demand and feedback from their team drove the next move.

From Annual to Monthly — Without Adding Manager Workload

Instead of waiting another year, RetailNext started rolling out monthly continuous-feedback reflections.

The reason it worked is that monthly check-ins on Windmill don’t feel like extra work. Windy, Windmill’s Slack-native AI assistant, assembles each team member’s recent contributions into a structured brief, so managers walk in with extensive context already gathered. That engine cut review prep time dramatically for people like Karim Atef Mansour, who manages six engineers and prides himself on thorough reviews.

"My experience with Windmill has been very positive. It took me from three hours per person to about half an hour. It also gave recommendations I didn't think of. It felt like there was someone brainstorming with me on improvement points."

Karim Atef Mansour

Director of Engineering

Why It Stuck

Engineering, who historically is the toughest crowd for HR tools, became RetailNext’s most consistent participants. They folded Windmill into their existing Slack workflow, and they kept showing up because the tool gave them something back: a clearer picture of where their teams stood, without the manual preparation.

What started as a single review cycle became RetailNext’s continuous-feedback infrastructure…not because HR mandated it, but because managers asked for more.