Walmart Combines Tech Teams To Meet Customer Demands

For decades, there weren’t many who could compete with Walmart when it came to in-store pricing, discounts and sales. As the retail landscape has shifted to emphasize the digital over the physical, though, Walmart has been confronted with the need to adapt to a new retail reality — and fast.

Reuters reported that Walmart executives have issued an internal memo calling for the integration of two separate technology development teams into a single unit. The two groups — one (the information systems division) based near Walmart’s Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters and the other (the @WalmartLabs unit) situated in Silicon Valley — both work to develop computer systems and integrated technology for the retailer’s in-store associates. The new, combined Walmart Technology group will now include about 8,000 employees.

Neil Ashe, director of eCommerce for Walmart, explained in the memo that customers have developed the expectation of uniform experiences regardless of the medium, and two separate divisions working on similar projects no longer made sense for Walmart’s vision of the future.

“Our customers don’t think of these as different experiences,” Ashe said in the memo. “To them, it’s just Walmart or Sam’s Club.”

The consolidation of Walmart’s tech-centric divisions should be no more apparent than in its attempts to improve its in-store grocery pickup program. Fortune explained that the retailer has spent billions over the last several years to jumpstart sluggish online-to-offline capabilities, but concentrating its digital resources could help it streamline click-and-collect transactions for millions of customers across the country.

While this includes improving the not-so-easily-fixed processes of allowing customers to pick up purchases at any Walmart location and alerting store associates when they’re en route to pick up their items, it’s not as if Walmart can afford to do much else. As Amazon sets the pace for O2O commerce, Walmart has no choice but to emulate their rivals in the hope that closing the gap will produce an opportunity to overtake them in time.