The Challenge
PetSmart needed a single, reliable channel to reach all 50,000+ associates across hundreds of stores — a place for company news, leadership updates, and department communications. The problem: standing up a platform that could handle enterprise-scale user management without routing every change through an already-stretched IT department.
An Intranet That Ran Itself
The Dish launched in 2015 as PetSmart’s primary internal communications hub. Built on a heavily customized WordPress installation, it was designed from day one to operate without IT involvement. Associates could log in immediately — no setup requests, no helpdesk tickets, no training required.
The key was a custom-built account management system that ran nightly without human intervention. Each day, an encrypted FTP feed arrived from PetSmart’s legacy ERP system. Custom scripts parsed that feed and automatically provisioned new accounts, updated existing ones, and deactivated accounts for departed employees — all before the morning shift.
Bypassing the IT Bottleneck
For a company operating at PetSmart’s scale, the traditional path — submitting IT requests, waiting for provisioning, onboarding employees manually — was a non-starter. The automated pipeline made the platform self-sustaining. HR and communications teams owned the channel entirely. IT never needed to be in the loop.
When PetSmart later rolled out a company-wide SSO system, we integrated it directly into The Dish. The platform evolved without disruption, and associates experienced a seamless transition.
A Platform Departments Fought Over
Word spread. Department teams across the company recognized The Dish as the most reliable way to get information in front of associates, and began approaching communications teams to have their own content featured. What started as a top-down news channel became a company-wide publishing platform — a destination that people actually checked.
The Result
The Dish ran from 2015 through 2024 — nine years of near-perfect uptime, zero IT dependency, and continuous evolution alongside the business. It’s a clear example of how the right technical architecture can give large organizations capabilities that would otherwise require months of internal project work and significant ongoing resources to maintain.