As Europe’s largest retailer, Schwarz Gruppe operates a uniquely complex and diverse organization, spanning logistics hubs, corporate offices, and thousands of retail stores across multiple countries. This scale comes with a significant challenge: enabling seamless, secure communication across vastly different roles and working environments.

At headquarters, employees use dedicated devices and engage in continuous communication across departments and with external partners. In contrast, store associates and warehouse staff often work without personal devices or company email accounts, relying instead on shared terminals and focusing on task-driven, on-site responsibilities. For many of these frontline roles, digital communication is infrequent but critical and must be intuitive, secure, and accessible in moments that matter.

Initially, Microsoft Teams was considered and even partially rolled out. But the approach quickly ran into fundamental limitations:

• Frontline disconnect: The MS Teams communication structure was incompatible with retail environments, where employees lacked dedicated devices or Microsoft identities. This made it impossible to onboard store teams without significant workarounds.
• Economic infeasibility: Licensing costs for a tool designed primarily for office workers proved far too high to justify rollout to the thousands of in-store employees, especially in a cost-sensitive retail business.
• Tool fragmentation: As a result, communication became fragmented. Corporate teams used one system, while frontline employees remained disconnected or had to rely on separate, less secure channels. This gap created operational inefficiencies and a growing risk of information silos.
• Availability concerns: A major Microsoft Teams outage that lasted several hours further raised internal concerns about the platform’s resilience and suitability as a mission-critical communication tool for a business of Schwarz Gruppe’s scale.

To bridge this divide and support true organizational cohesion, Schwarz Gruppe needed a solution built for inclusivity at scale — one that could unite desk and non-desk roles on a single, secure platform, without driving up administrative or IT overhead.

Before selecting Wire, Schwarz Gruppe conducted a rigorous competitive evaluation of the secure communication market. Their internal analysis team reviewed all leading solutions including Element and other open-source platforms against strict security, scalability, and operational criteria. Most tools fell short, either due to security trade-offs, complexity, or limitations in addressing the needs of a diverse, distributed workforce.

Wire stood out in several key areas:

• Security and Sovereignty: Built entirely in Europe, Wire offers end-to-end encryption based on the modern Messaging Layer Security (MLS) standard, with no key escrow, no hidden components, and full alignment with European data protection expectations.
• Open Source Transparency: Unlike many alternatives, Wire’s fully open-source codebase provided Schwarz Gruppe’s internal teams with the visibility and confidence they needed to assess and trust the platform.
• Flexibility and Federation: Wire’s federated architecture allowed Schwarz Gruppe to connect business units and external partners securely, while onboarding temporary or part-time employees without additional licensing costs. Guest access and segmented permissions ensured secure communication boundaries across departments and roles.
• Device-Agnostic Simplicity: Wire could be used in stores without the need for individual email accounts or permanent devices. Shared tablets or rotating terminals were sufficient, minimizing onboarding complexity while ensuring even frontline staff could participate in secure communications.

Crucially, Wire’s architecture supports organization-wide communication across multiple teams and systems, without sacrificing security or control. Through federation, Schwarz Gruppe could create a unified communication experience that spanned headquarters, logistics, and stores, enabling flat communication structures where every employee could reach relevant stakeholders, regardless of location or role.

Wire has become a foundational component of Schwarz Gruppe’s communication infrastructure, not only connecting departments, but empowering frontline teams that were previously disconnected from digital workflows.

Key outcomes include:

• Inclusive, secure access: Whether in a logistics hub or a Lidl store, employees can securely access Wire using rotating shared devices or temporary accounts — without compromising on data protection or creating IT overhead.
• Flat communication at scale: All internal users from HQ to warehouses operate within a unified team environment. At the same time, federation with Wire Cloud enables secure, low-cost collaboration with external suppliers and partners, while maintaining strict access controls and visibility.
• Data protection by design: Wire Cells enforce containment of sensitive information. Files shared within a secure group remain within that environment, dramatically reducing the risk of data leakage — a critical capability in compliance-driven settings.
• Frictionless adoption: With an intuitive user interface and minimal onboarding, employees across roles can begin communicating instantly — no lengthy manuals or training sessions required.