Walmart's New AI Saves Managers 60 Minutes Per Shift

Walmart is equipping its store associates with mobile AI tools.

According to Chainstore Age, the discount giant is providing a new suite of AI tools to store employees via its associate app.

Initially available for overnight stocking, this technology is designed to provide associates with clear guidance on where to focus their efforts.

Based on early results, Walmart says its team leads and store managers estimate that the AI solution has reduced the the time team leads spend planning shifts from 90 minutes down to 30 minutes.

The suite is now in pilot for other shifts in select locations.

Chris, are you pro or con Walmart deploying mobile AI to help with restocking?

Oh, a hundred percent.

A hundred percent, and particularly overnight restocking too because you know, having been a store manager, the one thing I can tell you, if you've got a store that's running an overnight logistics process, that is the number one thing you have to get right in that store.

If it gets wrong, you, you can be backed up for days, months, you can even be backed up for years, quite honestly.

And until you get somebody in there that fixes the whole process and overhauls everything so, you know, as a place to test this and really work out the kinks, I think a hundred percent makes sense and I give kudos to Walmart for trying it.

So I think what, what I think is impressive here is when you think about when you have an extra hour for a team lead.

Now we don't know if that's an hour a day, an hour per week, three hours per week, but I think when you think about where that team lead can now be focusing their time one on their associates and just checking in on the health and well being of their associates, how are things going?

How much more can they do?

Can that team lead start helping unload trucks at night or helping doing stocking?

Like can they fill in the gaps if they need to?

I think that's where the value is going to come from.

This that Walmart's going to see is how much more productive and healthy can the strength of those teams be as a result of deploying technology like this.

It's, is it as sexy as the gen AI?

Like, how do I return a product that doesn't have a receipt?

Like, no, but I think that this is going to be the most, one of the most successful applications of AI that Walmart will see.

And it's clearly working if they're rolling it out to this many locations.

Yeah, the only caveat I have is the proof's in the pudding in terms of how you actually do this because at the end of the day, the overnight logistics teams are executors.

They're ones that take the orders and they get it done.

And so you've got to figure out the right rub between directing them on what to do versus asking them to read and interpret too much data as well.

But, you know, if, if they come in and they're like saying, hey, here's where you need to deploy your, your, your workforce today.

And that's saving them time.

From a planning perspective, that's super valuable.

And then the other key point is you've got to measure the actions that are being told against what the actions that are, are that are being taken.

There's a lot of these people in the roles too, have a lot of experience and have been doing these jobs a very spec.

Know some shortcuts to things that the organization doesn't.

And so you got to still be able to allow that to happen or at least track it to understand, you know, whether the recommendations you're making are actually beneficial in the long run.

What, what kind of revenue do you think that they're going to see from just like, number one, just having more product out on the shelves because they're prioritizing this.

I mean, that's got to be pretty significant for Walmart.

I would think once they are stopped, like, they're able to restock and have more product out, which essentially would be the outcome of this, I would think.

Yeah, I don't know, it depends.

I think it's probably more of a workforce efficiency application here versus like a restocking or being able to get more product on the floor.

I'm sure getting more product on the floor.

And there's all kinds of numbers that talk about that in terms of the value of getting product on the floor, which I'm always kind of questioning too.

But, you know, the fact that you're saving time in the planning, that means you can redeploy.

You can redeploy that workforce to something else.

You can get things done more quickly.

So maybe you don't need as many people on overnight logistics.

And again, that's the biggest expense line for a retailer.

So I think it's more about that and it's part and parcel than sales.

Sales will come, provided that everyone's operating better.

But I think it's probably both at the end of the day.