Kumar said he's also excited about doubling down on blockchain, which Walmart primarily uses for food transparency, particularly with leafy greens. "I think over a period of time, the most natural way in which you are going to interact with a system that's out there, including for shopping, is going to be through voice," Kumar said. Already, the company has made voice tech available to its workers: The app offers a voice-activated personal assistant, called Ask Sam, that was previously available as a standalone app to some associates.
Kumar said voice technology is a "very natural extension" of reducing customer friction. Exploring disruptive technology of the futureĪs Walmart uses technology to be a leader in retail disruption, Kumar pointed to several areas the company is exploring that it sees as the most disruptive technology in the coming years. Mobile scan and go, which is available at Sam's Club and for Walmart+ members, has so far solved a big customer pain point around waiting in long lines, he said.ģ. While some retailers, like Amazon, are diving into cashierless stores, Walmart is relying on offering a range of checkout options.Ĭashierless tech has played a major role as Walmart looks to reduce friction and make checkout as easy as possible, Kumar said. Walmart is also turning technology into a revenue stream, Kumar noted. Its Adobe partnership, for example, enables Walmart to offer its cloud-based pickup, delivery and fulfillment services to retailers. This summer, Walmart also started selling its white-label delivery platform to other businesses.
"It's not just about building our technology, and it's not just about taking the technology, modularizing it, servicing it and making it available for others, but it's also about creating the overall ecosystem so everything kind of builds on itself and everybody ends up benefiting from that," he said.
"Given our scale, we want to build and we want to focus our tech on areas that are core to our business, where ownership actually gives us the ability to be able to adapt the software to our business needs," Kumar said, based on a Refinitiv transcript.īut when in-house software is too expensive to roll out in some areas or markets, Kumar said Walmart will turn to commercial software that can scale to its needs. Walmart has several high-profile technology partnerships, including Adobe and Ford. It has also gone through several breakups with partners, nixing pickup towers made by Estonia-based Cleveron and distributed by Bell & Howell, and ending the use of Bossa Nova Robotics' shelf-scanning robots for inventory management.