Walmart SVP Greg Cathey on Walmart’s Transformation & AI Innovations | Live at NRF 2025

Hello, everyone, this is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are coming to you live once again from the Fusion group, booth number 4938.

Chris.

Where we will be all next.

Well, I was gonna say all week long.

All week long, technically, Anne, but yes, for the next three days.

I think you're right.

We would be.

If we were here all week long, we'd be in an empty core of a shell of the Javit Center.

We'd have to send sos.

You'd be the only ones here.

Yeah, we'd probably be the only ones here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That could be an adventure.

That could be an adventure.

Wherever we go, the party starts.

Ann.

Right?

That's true.

Well, let's introduce our guest who's in between us here we have Greg Cathy.

And Greg is the SVP of transformation and innovation at Walmart.

Greg, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

And you also have a couple of other things under your purview.

We just learned too.

I do, I just sprung on y'all that I also have responsibility for asset protection and then all of our safety apparatus for Walmart us.

Just a couple more things to transform.

So I gotta ask you because Transformation and Innovation, that's a unique title.

What does it actually entail?

What are you in charge of when it comes to transformation?

A little bit of everything.

You know, transformation at Walmart is everything and the kitchen sink.

So as I think most, hopefully most of your listeners know that we are people led, tech powered omnichannel retailer dedicated to saving people money so they can live better.

So I start there with like people led.

We're here to make technology that is going to make life easier for our customers, make it easier for our associates.

One of the things that we say is for my team is we want to make sure that we're eliminating thankless tasks from our associates so that minutia, the work that really doesn't provide joy or excitement as an associate's coming to work and all with the purpose of making sure that our customers save money and have a better life.

So typically we start in the field.

So we are a frontline obsessed team.

We're in the field, we're talking to customers, we're talking to associates.

What's not working?

Where do they find friction?

And then we bring it back to the home office and work on solving it.

And how do those conversations go?

Like, tell us a little bit more about that.

I mean, is it like you're just Walking up to people like, hey, what could we be doing better?

Or is it like more formal than that, where they're submitting feedback via platform?

Like, how does it all work?

Yeah, it's a great question.

So we do have formal feedback mechanisms where they can submit it on their phone.

And it's like, hey, I've got a great idea.

Have you thought about this?

Have you thought about that?

A lot of them are not only ways for us to improve sales, but a lot of times it's.

They're seeing waste in the system and so they're trying to take out waste and cost as they go along.

Now the other way is we do just walk up to people and it's like, hey, how are you doing?

How's everything going?

So like, conversations happen that way.

That's exactly right.

It's like, it's like if you could change one thing about your job, okay, what would you change?

And they'll just start going through a whole list of things that we could improve on, which is great.

We have a very open culture at Walmart and our associates feel very comfortable giving us ideas about how to make the business better.

Yeah, those are always the best conversations, especially at the store level.

You never know what answers you're gonna get.

And you'll get some really candid answers if you ask the questions the right way.

You need to be prepared for honest and direct feedback.

Yes, you do.

Our associates will give us honest and direct feedback.

But that's the way.

That's what I loved about working in the stores.

That's right.

There's no fooling around.

And that's the way that you really can create transformational changes.

I wanna ask you about the innovation side though too.

Cause I wanna make sure I understand your role too.

What type of timeline horizons are you looking at?

So like.

Cause there's innovation for 10 years, 15 years, 3 years, this year.

Like, generally speaking, what type of timelines are you working towards?

Yes.

Yes.

All of it.

All of it.

Is that true?

All of those, yes.

So there are things that we're working on that are going to be fairly fast, let's call it a quarter, maybe two quarters, that we are rapidly prototyping, trying to get it out for our field associates to be able to use work, kick the tires on, give us feedback.

And then there are things that we're working on that's probably going to be 10 years out.

Okay, so.

And there's everything in between.

A lot of times though, it just.

First of all, it depends on where the tech is and you know, where's the software?

And are the people that we're either developing it with or developing it internally, are they ready to scale?

But we were the whole range of timelines.

So one more follow up question too, because I think it's really interesting, especially for our audience of retail executives too, to understand just how you guys work.

So is your connection point mainly with the product teams then particularly inside the organization or who do you mostly connect with to help them with their jobs?

So we operate in a four in a box model.

So my team would represent the business and so we would be building use cases based on feedback and data that we're getting from the field.

And then we're working with tech, our engineers, we're working with product and.

And then the other really important team that we're working with is human centered design.

So really thinking about it from the end user and is what we're developing, is it going to work and is it going to be simple?

And I don't need owner's manual this big to be able to for our associates to figure out what's going on or our managers.

So the human centered design is a great team and we rely on them heavily.

Great.

Okay.

Based on all those things you were just talking about, Greg, the things that you rolled out in a quarter, things that you're looking at, you know, from the last year, we'll say, what are you most proud of that you and your team tested, put into market or accomplished in the last year?

So we have a, we have a platform that we call Vispic.

So Vispic sets, Vispic sets on an app application that we have called me at Walmart.

So all of our associates have access to this via device that we provide, a phone that we provide for our associates.

They can also use it on their personal device through byod.

But most of them opt in for a phone.

And so with Vispic, this platform, it's basically an inventory location program.

So using computer vision, we can go into a back room, we can go onto the sales floor and we can identify oldest problem and in retail, what do we own and where is it?

And so in doing that it gives us a massive amount of data and signals.

So one of the things we did, and this was something, if you want to talk about quarter, two quarters worth of implementation, we took, we know sometimes we have some deleted merchandise on top stock.

Some stores call them Risers.

Risers, yeah.

We also knew we had some clearance up there.

So we created filters within Vizpic.

So if an associate is working all they Would have to do is take their phone out and just hold it up and it would identify.

This is on clearance.

This is on.

This is deleted.

We need to work it down.

Could be on rollback and we want to make sure that we're showing the value on the side counter.

Yeah, so that was, that was a really fun one.

Just, just a little factoid.

Last year we viz picked one point, almost 1.5 billion billion items from the back room to the sales floor.

That would have.

What would have happened?

Those items would have what?

Well, 30 years ago when I started 94, I would have taken a piece of paper and a little.

I.

I know.

Thanks, thanks.

Thanks for telling me.

So I would have taken a piece of cardboard and a marker and I would have went to the sales floor and I would have written down what I need and then I would have walked to the back room and looked for hours to try to find it.

Now we can, we already know what's on the floor and what's in the back room so we can send that information to our associates.

And so think of all the time that our associates are saving instead of walking back and forth that they can get what the customer needs from the back of house to the sales floor so that they can make sure our customers are taken care of.

That's a huge, huge time saving for our associates.

Time saver and margin saver too at.

The end of the day.

Right.

All right.

So I was sleuthing your LinkedIn profile.

Yeah, sleuthing it.

Oh, wow.

And I uncovered this one, this one line in your job description.

Actually, I think you said that you are very keen on understanding the measurements that come that are involved with measuring the success of innovation and transformation.

So how do you successfully measure the impact of your efforts?

Love the question.

What gets measured gets done.

You may have heard that.

So when we're developing a use case, we would work with our field operations team and we would make sure that we have been very deliberate and clear on what those KPIs are going to be for that product that we're developing.

Typically there's going to be a bit of associate nps.

How do they feel about the product we're developing?

Customer nps.

You know, in order to have happy customers, you got to have happy associates.

So when we're developing something, we want to make sure that our associates like it.

So we will be grading ourself on that.

And then we're also looking at other operational metrics that we would put in there.

The process that we go through, we Test all of our innovation in Dallas, Texas.

Okay.

Dallas represents a majority.

We can.

We can carve Dallas up to represent a majority of CBSAs that we operate in, depending on the stores that we pick to test.

So we test everything in Dallas and it has to be operator approved before we scale.

Okay.

So that's Dallas's 50.

Let's call it 50 to 100 stores in that region.

We would go to Dallas, we would go to that region, and then we would pause to make sure that we're getting what we've said we were going to get as a.

As a series of results.

After that, then we would go to one market in every region, which would be about 500 stores.

Okay.

And you have to get to about 500 stores in our business to pick up all the edge cases, so.

Got it.

So that's a very.

That's a really interesting.

So it's a very rote process.

You're basically putting all your testing through one location, and then whether it's successful there determines where it goes next as part of the process.

Correct.

That's really interesting.

One thing you didn't mention was roi.

At what point in the process does ROI come into the conversation?

I know that's always a tricky question.

I think you know us pretty well.

ROI is always as part of the conversation.

Is it?

But it is early, early stages.

Well, I mean, we have to have a business case before we're going to.

Before we're going to invest.

But now ROI by itself is not why we're doing it.

We start with customer experience and associate experience.

If you get those right, you can build a business case that is going to deliver a return for and you.

Can test the business case to see what the ROI could be.

Right.

I imagine you have the latitude to do that as well.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay.

Absolutely.

That's what.

That's what.

As we go through this process, that's what we're wanting to find out.

Right.

Greg, you're going to be on stage here at nrf.

I am.

What are you going to be talking about?

I hope some of the things that you share with our audience.

But what are you going to be talking about specifically during that session and what are you kind of looking for the audience to.

To take away from it?

The big.

Hopefully.

I don't want to give too much away, so I want you to tune in and watch it live.

Whenever we're doing it, it's going to be a great.

We're with the NCR group and so we're excited.

We're Excited.

And Wendy's is going to be with us, that team.

So we're super excited about it.

And the conversation, the big conversation is how are we leaning into generative AI?

AI, large language models.

We've just recently started testing this last year a program using AI and generative AI called Sidekick.

Okay.

So what we want to make sure that we're doing is using all of the data that we have with inside of Walmart and helping our associates with what the next best activity or action is going to be.

So I've been here 30 years, I know my way a little bit around a Walmart store, but what about someone who's been here like three months?

So how do you democratize all of that learning?

Always giving the associate the right to make their own decision, but giving them a little help.

A sidekick, if you will, to be able to help along the way.

And what do you think is going to be most important about rolling out that technology, especially given how connected your team is to the associates and testing?

Is that something that you're going to be kind of following the same approach where you are going in, you're talking to them like, you have this Sidekick.

Have you used it?

Is it working?

Like, is it that kind of mentality?

Or like, what advice do you have for other retailers who might be looking at something like that?

So we'll certainly be working hand in hand with associates as we build the tech and getting their feedback.

What's working, what's not working, what are they like?

But yeah, we'll also be looking in the background to see, like, what it's teaching us.

One of the things that we're not doing, though, is creating any type of reporting.

Okay, so we don't want any reporting because what I don't want to have happen, what the team doesn't want to have happen, is that we start to get false positives and then we're training algos on bad data.

So what we say is like, Sidekick is always a force for good, so it's going to help.

But there's not operational metrics that you have to click this many buttons or this, this and this.

It is truly a tool using AI, generative AI, to allow our associates to understand what that next best action may be.

Okay, interesting.

Awesome.

So anything else that's really cool.

So any, is there any other ideas or transformations that you're working on in 2025 that you want to tease or share with the audience today?

Well, you guys are in the Vuzion Group booth.

We've spent a lot of time with Vuzion Group.

You have.

They're a great, great partner of ours.

Yeah.

Big announcement recently.

A little bit.

Little bit.

It was all stores.

Right.

It blew my LinkedIn completely through the roof.

Yeah.

Please follow.

Shameless.

Yeah.

So we, we announced Smash that subscribe button under.

Yeah.

So we've, we've made some really big announcements with Fusion.

We have leaned in.

We announced at shareholder shareholders meeting in June of last year, they were rolling to half the fleet, 2,600 stores.

So we're super excited about the partnership we have with them.

They, it's, they're an innovative company.

They're being a great partner with us and working through these use cases.

And as you talk about, like a thankless task, changing a price.

Oh, my God, I've done it.

Right.

Me too.

And it's like there are other things that I could be doing as an associate to add value to my customers or my fellow associates other than, like, boop, there's other things we can be doing.

That's what the ROI question's so funny, because if you've done that job and just telling the store employees that they never have to do it again, while it's not measurable, the impact on their happiness is just completely immeasurable.

It's 100% unbelievable.

Happy associates, happy customers.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Right.

All right.

And well, thank you, Greg.

That was wonderful.

Love that conversation.

Loved it.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, no, it's great to have you.

And we'll be back again later today with another interview.

We're going to be at the Fusion Group booth, booth 4938.

All day long.

Stop on by if you want to see us, if you want to see the cool tech on display.

And until next time, be careful out there.