Ten Years of Omni-Fulfillment

This year, we will celebrate ten years of enabling buy online and pick up in store capabilities for our customers. We know shopping behavior continues to rapidly evolve while the boundaries between online and in-store shopping continue to blur. With 90% of the US population living within 10 miles of a Walmart, we recognized our opportunity to provide customers with an experience that delivers the ease of online shopping with the convenience of same day pickup.

Today, we process millions of pickup orders each week. Developing these technologies required our product, design and engineering teams working closely with both customers and our associates to ensure that both the fulfillment and pickup experience is as seamless as possible.

Here are some of the technologies we’ve built that make the pickup experience great for both our customers and associates:

In-Store Fulfillment

As pickup orders continue to grow, our customers trust us to pick their orders quickly and accurately. Our picking technologies leverage Machine Learning help our associates pick more efficiently including enabling smart substitutions to help our associates select the next best item for our customers. Since implementing this technology, customer acceptance for substitutions has increased to over 95%.

Customer Arrival and Check-In

Our customers are busy and we want to make sure they get their pickup order right as they arrive. We’ve developed technology that helps us understand when the customer is on the way to the store while periodically updating our associates on customer ETA. This allows us to minimize wait time and serve our customers quickly. Our average customer wait times are consistently under four minutes across Walmart stores.

Dispense

Dispense is a technology that complements our in-store picking and customer arrival technologies. It prioritizes the orders based on customer arrival, enables store associates make any final adjustments to the order, and helps store associates verify customer identity to ensure the right order is delivered to the right customer. Ultimately, dispense is all about empowering our associates to serve our customers quickly while minimizing the pickup wait time for the customer. 

Together these technologies have resulted in high digital adoption and has a 95% repeat rate with a customer rating of 4.7/5. We’re excited about these proven technologies, but at Global Tech will continue to ask, “What’s next?” as we strive to always better serve our customers and lead the next retail disruption.