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While Walmart sought to implement cutting-edge technology to compete with Amazon, it changed the way it thought about the role of its technical leaders. The company has ceased to consider its e-commerce and technology teams as entirely separate divisions to give its senior technical managers increased responsibility for many parts of society.
Walmart began creating a separate technology division in 2011, when it acquired a social media badytics company called Kosmix. Walmart used the remaining Kosmix employees to create a new division, Walmart Labs, which it called Walmart's technology branch. Since then, Walmart has continued to hire Walmart Labs – most recently, last year, a rookie was launched for the division to fuel its grocery collection efforts. Walmart did not say the exact number of people employed by Walmart Labs by the time press, but at that time, but last year it employed about 6,000 full-time and part-time people within Walmart Labs and planned to hire another 2,000. from here the end of the year.
However, Walmart Lab employees are not alone in their efforts to develop Walmart's most important technology initiatives. Marc Lore, founder of Jet.com, acquired by Walmart in 2016, now oversees the company's e-commerce activities in the United States. In April, Walmart announced the acquisition of Polymorph Labs, an advertising start-up, to leverage the technological talent needed to help Walmart build an advertising operation.
Earlier this week, Walmart named a new CTO: Suresh Kumar, formerly vice president of retail systems at Amazon and most recently vice president and GM of display, video, advertising for Google applications and badysis. Mr. Kumar will not replace former CTO Jeremy King, who left Walmart to join Pinterest in March, but will instead badume the newly created dual role as Chief Technology Officer and Director of Development. Kumar will report directly to General Manager Doug McMillon. Heads of technology at US, Sam's Club and international divisions of Walmart will all report directly to Kumar, as well as the information manager of Walmart's internal IT division, known as its global business services division.
This will give Kumar the opportunity to see what kind of technology and services are gaining ground in different divisions – Sam's Club, for example, opened last year a new test store in Dallas to experiment with new technologies such as check-and-go checkout, orientation technology and electronic tags. At the same time, Walmart's director of information technology is overseeing the launch of a joint engineering office with Microsoft, where both companies are developing internal applications. By creating a more unified reporting channel for technology leaders, Walmart will have the ability to scale new technology services and applications faster, which will be critical to competing with Amazon, which has already deployed capabilities. like overnight delivery much faster than Walmart.
"We have begun a significant digital transformation of our business, but we still have a long way to go. We want to accelerate the pace and increase the scale of change, "said McMillon in an email to employees explaining why Walmart had decided to create a new role for Kumar.
This reflects the important role that technology plays in growing Walmart's business, which wants to roll out a range of new services, such as grocery store pickups, that require the creation of in-store and online technology capabilities.
"It's a clear indication that Walmart not just a retail organization, but a technology company, "said Robert Hetu, a retail badyst at Gartner.
Kumar inherited the technology base created by King, who oversaw both the technical teams at Walmart websites and stores – an initiative designed to help Walmart create a more unified online and in-store customer experience. When at Walmart, King pointed out to potential recruits that, given his in-store reach, Walmart was a place to work on unique machine learning problems consisting of large sets of data.
"Jeremy has reinvented Walmart's technology. Previously, it was a very colorful brick-and-mortar retailer, "said Jon Reily, vice president of global business strategy at Publicis Sapient. "They did not play a lot in e-commerce."
In terms of e-commerce, Jet.com co-founder Marc Lore has led acquisitions and next-generation retail initiatives to attract new talent. Lore is now President and Chief Executive Officer of Walmart's eCommerce Division in the United States. In particular, she oversaw the company's efforts to launch the next day's delivery and the launch of the Store No. 8 internal incubator in 2017. This initiative was reinforced by a number of former from Jet.com, such as Katee Finnegan, who recently left the company. It also attracted top-tier retail talent, such as former Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss, who oversaw the launch of the Jetblack custom shopping service.
Now, with the addition of Kumar, Walmart gets another prestigious name, in connection with several high-tech companies, to attract new recruits.
"His difficult for a company like Walmart to take people from Pinterest to Google, "said Reily." The fact that they do it and do it successfully means that they're paying enough money to people and are invested enough to bring them here. "
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