Forecasting demand in retail

2020 was a year of rapid change globally and within Walmart. While in years prior, you might question Walmart being a part of CES as a “technology company,” now it is clear that omnichannel technology is key to the company’s innovation and success – both over the past year and in the future.

One of the most prominent challenges for the company, and the larger retail ecosystem as a whole, is forecasting demand. In Walmart's keynote today, Doug McMillon (President and CEO) discussed how it is better integrating data to build AI models to help solve for this.

Walmart has made some strategic shifts throughout 2020 to start addressing this, and one of the most impactful being shifting in-store distribution centers to handle ecommerce fulfillment and in-store in a hybrid model. They have also built AI to help automate their distribution centers with local inventory levels. This type of technology enables the center itself, but also centers around the customer – allowing ease of ordering online, picking up orders, shopping in-store or ordering for delivery. 

Walmart+ was mentioned but growth numbers were not shared. Priority areas for 2021 are member growth to start building relationships with customers, focusing on scan and go (giving customers the opportunity to easily self-checkout), fuel rewards and starting to build a database to better serve the customers, such as building the algorithms and AI to start delivering better experiences and recommendations.

Another interesting takeaway is Walmart’s investment in preventative healthcare. Often we talk about health solutions like pharmacy or treatment, but there is a lot that can help communities, customers and employees in prevention. Walmart has been expanding Walmart Health, their preventative care clinics and will continue to expand in 2021. Right now, their largest priority is making sure they can handle vaccine distribution and managing local requirements to determine where their employees will fit in the rollout. 

The session ended with the discussion around the company's efforts on diversity and inclusion, education and growth from within the company, and their focus on long term employee development.

Written by Mara Greenwald, Director, Shop+