Walmart is shopping an unexpected product: its technology
Walmart is shopping an unexpected product: its technology
The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, is known for the volume of stuff it sells. The company reported more than $500 billion worth of sales last year alone.
Even as Walmart seeks new ways to grow that number, it’s shopping around a new product — its technology and services.
Walmart is starting a new partnership with the software giant Salesforce. The deal allows retailers and others that run their websites on Salesforce platforms to use Walmart’s fulfillment and delivery technology.
The company has the expertise, said Walmart’s Anshu Bhardwaj, and honed it even more during the pandemic.
“We have fulfilled over 830 million orders across our 4,700 stores in the U.S. and outside,” she said — as well as 3 million deliveries with its GoLocal platform, which brings those products to a customer’s doorstep using independent contractors.
“We’re bringing the same technology that we are offering to our customer base and expand the reach to other customers,” Bhardwaj said.
This is Walmart taking a page from the playbook of its biggest competitor, Amazon, said Dan Ives, managing director of investment firm Wedbush Securities.
“They’re really trying to commercialize their technology and trying to monetize it,” he said.
That includes branching out from goods and deeper into services and tech in the hunt for new sources of revenue.
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