The retail experience before complete automation: The Walmart Experiment

Automating customer processes is not new. It is a great benefit for any company, as people want a digital experience. Last summer, Walmart and Microsoft have established a strategic partnership to further accelerate digital transformation and innovation in retail. In fact, this is probably the first worldwide experiment on how a huge company such as Walmart can exploit an enormous amount of digital data.

   This five-year agreement will leverage a broad base of cloud services, artificial intelligence, and thousands of internet of things sensors and various solutions for enterprise-wide use. In this spirit, Walmart wants to make shopping faster and easier for millions of customers around the world.

   As far as data volume is concerned, the above systems process one billion daily data messages from stores worldwide. In addition, Walmart has deployed a natural language processing platform capable of processing 40 terabytes of unstructured text and providing near real-time insights and actions in support of business operations.

   "We're layering AI across every facet of our business. We have lots and lots of data that represents value we can leverage. That's where AI, machine learning and Cognitive Services in Microsoft Azure come in to play", said Clay Johnson, executive vice president and enterprise chief information officer at Walmart.

   Innovative solutions from this retail transformation helps Walmart save energy and prevent product loss. The global retailer is also deploying Microsoft AI in several use cases, including internal chatbots that help associates navigate benefits, find mentors and better manage supplier engagements.

   So, Walmart, because of its size, has more data than most of its competitors, and this is a crucial competitive advantage. The company has already taken on a pioneering role, even with the use of blockchain technology to improve its food supply chain.

   However, following the implementation of the "Scan & Go" concept to some stores in 2018, allowing customers to make purchases using a smartphone, the company discontinued it, claiming a lack of consumer interest, as many customer errors mean that this technology needs to improve a lot more.

   Another way -a traditional one- to improve the shopping experience, and perhaps the easiest, is to give the consumer the option of having or not a personal assistance. When you know exactly what you want to buy, then maybe you do not want any sales assistants to come up to you, but if you need assistance then you could just get the right basket (see image below) to have the attention on you. This innovative experience is very popular nowadays, but very soon automation will generate new ways of retailing. Well, what if a robot is a store assistant? Would you like its help?

   Finally, the expansion of automation to Walmart's operations has not reduced its workforce, yet. But the company faces the challenge of getting employees to embrace technology.