Walmart has wide big data ecosystem. Everyday this system processes multiple petabytes of historical data and Terabytes of new data. The analysis covers million of customers and products from various sources. The main objective of imposing vig data is to provide a good experience to customer when the are at Walmart store or using Walmart’s website. Walmart develops big data solution is to restyle global websites. It has changed the world’s decision making process leading to higher sales. Walmart has experienced an increase in online sales from 10% to 15% after introducing this system
Walmart also introduced certain applications like savings catcher and map application to ride the Hadoop data . Savings catcher would alert customer whenever a competitor reduced its price of a product that customer had bought before. In order to compensate the price difference a gift would be sent to that customer. The mapping application would help Hadoop to know about the recent map of 1000s of Walmart stores across the globe. These would further tell exact location of each store.
The role of data warehousing is also really important at Walmart this is when wide range of sources are used to collect data into a single database to help management in decision making Walmart does data warehousing in form of data mining. It is used to discover point of sales data. This technique helps to recommend users like which to products should be bought together or a product should be bought before buying a certain product. This has effectively increased conversion rates of customers for example through data mining it noticed sales of strawberry pop tarts increased by 7 times before a hurricane so it places all strawberry pop tarts at checkout before hurricane. The big data team at Walmart notices each and every action of consumers at store or online and what is popular on Twitter and other social media sites. All the events are recorded and analysed carefully by big data algorithm to come up with ideas that provide customers with personalized experience.
Not only this Walmart is one of the technically advanced companies due to access to accurate and upto date information which resulted in growth in the Market. In order to achieve accurate information it is important for management to frequently check information which is done by an integrated management system. Walmart was the first one to use this system in retail. It has a distribution system called retail link which connects over 2000 suppliers to avoid problem of excess inventory or inventory shortage.
In order to manage its purchase of materials it uses electronic data in charge. It is computer based system in which computer of vendor and supplies are connected with Walmart The supplier is can download purchase order with their each stores sales information regarding their products like how many products are sold and received. As this information is received by the suppliers he ships the required products to each outlet for distribution.
To manage inventory levels it has invested in IT and communication systems to accurately know about inventories and merchandise available in all the country outlets. In order to have good communication systems its uses pretty darn quick displays.
It has also built automatic reordering systems connecting computers between Procter and gamble and it’s stores and centres which distribute goods. The system sends signal to P&G stores of a product which is less in stock which sends a ordered to resupply to nearest P&G factory through satellite which delivers the product to the Walmart store. It also has others advanced systems which make its a huge successful business.
Walmart is the largest retail company in the Us but still it has to keep improving and bringing new strategies in order to compete with amazons new strategy amazon go Walmart can introduce installment financing in physical and online stores. No interest installment is popular nowadays as well as is implemented in many countries. It can work like consumer sign a service and than those customers are allowed to pay their grocery bill in four to six installments. Initially installment payments is usually used to buy big thing’s like tv computers but if it is implemented in paying relatively small expenditures like grocery shopping at Walmart those people who could not afford to buy grocery at once and have a very limited budget can avail this opportunity by buying either online or at stores increasing number of customers further increasing the sales in e commerce as well as of physical stores.
Secondly Walmart will be able to gain competitive advantage in the market being able to compete not only the new strategy of amazon but with other competitors increasing its e commerce as well as physical stores shares in the market due to go higher revenue.
However providing groceries on installment would create cash flow problems for the business as this sector does not has trade receivables but after this strategy these will emerge creating difficulties for Walmart to tackle the problem with investing and ordering same level of inventory as before on cash.
Lastly in this business there are no chances of bad debt as customers pay immediately after purchase but after this strategy people might only pay once and may not make other payments increasing chances of fraud further increasing bad dents and costs for Walmart. To Conclude with it depends on how effectively Walmart can implement this strategy and have data about every customer so fraud cannot occur as well as what is the payment method of Walmart to its supplier who provide goods either it is on cash or credit and by how much it could increase its shares especially e commerce as is the increase enough to beat amazons new strategy
