Walmart Debuts Artificial Intelligence-Driven Aide for Store Vendors
Walmart has taken a significant step forward in its digital transformation journey with the introduction of Wally, an AI-powered assistant designed to enhance the productivity of its merchants.
The generative AI-based assistant, developed in-house by Walmart, aims to eliminate the manual effort traditionally required for core merchandising functions. By automating time-consuming tasks and providing real-time insights, Walmart hopes to free its merchants for strategic initiatives and creative decision-making.
Wally is equipped with a semantic layer that navigates Walmart's proprietary data structure, allowing it to understand the intricacies of the data involved. This layer enables Wally to deliver answers in seconds through natural language queries, eliminating the need for running multiple reports and manually extracting insights.
The utility of Wally is illustrated in a scenario involving a bread merchant tracking trends in protein-based food demand. Wally simplifies data analysis, operational support, and reporting processes for Walmart's sourcing teams, automating key merchandising tasks such as data entry, analysis, root cause identification, advanced calculations, and how-to support.
Merchants have reportedly responded positively to Wally's rollout. The intuitive interface of Wally does not require technical training, making it accessible to all Walmart employees.
Traditional AI models, trained on publicly available information, were not suited to meet Walmart's specific needs. As a result, developing Wally was a complex process due to the specialized nature of the data involved.
Walmart plans to continue evolving Wally, with future updates expected to include autonomous functionality within configurable guardrails. This autonomous functionality will enable Wally to carry out tactical actions based on merchant strategies, further streamlining merchandising processes and improving efficiency.
By automating these processes, Walmart aims to ultimately improve customer satisfaction by delivering the right products at the right time with greater efficiency. The company believes that this innovation will play a crucial role in its mission to become a digital-first, customer-centric enterprise.
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