Walmart to offer logistics services via Salesforce.com cloud

Continuing its 18-month-old drive to expand its business into technology services, Walmart Corp. today announced a partnership with Salesforce Inc. that will make Walmart’s Store Assist fulfillment-as-a-service and GoLocal deliver-as-a-service offerings available to Salesforce users.

Both applications will be made available through the Salesforce AppExchange for fast deployment of services that enable “personalized and easy commerce experiences with real-time order visibility and reliable local pickup and delivery,” the companies said.

Store Assist is aimed at helping retailers optimize in-store fulfillment by increasing picking accuracy, speed and efficiency with a direct hand-off to customers or third-party delivery drivers. GoLocal gives retailers access to a white-label service for local delivery. It was used to fulfill more than 3 million orders last year, said GoLocal General Manager Harsit Patel.

Both services are functionally the same as the technology Walmart has used to fulfill more than 830 million orders in its own 4,700 retail outlets, the companies said.

The services are intended to address the larger need for buy-online-pickup-in-store purchases that made up about 20% of e-commerce transactions the week before Christmas, said Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail at Salesforce.com.

“The retail customer will buy something digitally with the intention of picking it up or being delivered by the local store,” he said. “That process will be picked up by Walmart Store Assist to pick and pack and then by Walmart GoLocal to have that delivered and fulfilled (pictured}.”

More than one-third of orders placed the Friday before Christmas were picked up in a store, Garf said. “Retailers who offer Bopis drive seven times as much revenue growth compared to those who don’t,” he said.

The services will be united under the Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Order Management applications, enabling retailers to manage their omnichannel shopping experience from a single platform. They were built by Walmart Commerce Technologies, a business unit launched in mid-2021 to sell the technology the retail giant uses internally to other retailers.

Garf said the partnership is aimed at broadening the use of Walmart fulfillment technology, which previously required working with Walmart directly. “It’s a streamlined process for consumers, but more importantly, streamlined at the store to drive loyalty in a very efficient and scalable way,” he said.

Pricing hasn’t yet been determined. The services will be available beginning in April to all users of Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Order Management. “We will offer retailers all the help they need to get up and running,” said Anshu Bhardwaj, senior vice president of technology strategy and commercialization at Walmart Global Tech.

Image: Walmart