Big data enable companies to understand and to analyze their customers and help make better business decisions in the most industries. In this paper we focus on Walmart. They use big data to get a real-time view of the workflow in its distribution centers, pharmacy, physical stores and online stores.
Big data are essential for corporate strategies, and Walmart is analyzing and utilizing big data amazingly. There are five keys areas where Walmart uses big data to improve, modify and optimize our shopping experience. First, to make Walmart pharmacy more efficient, they use simulation to figure out how many customers are scheduled and to determine what time is the busiest in a day. Second, to make store checkout more efficient, Walmart is trying to use big data to
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By developing predictive analytics, each store can previse demand at specific time periods and decide how many cashiers are necessary to optimize the checkout speed at the counters. In Walmart, there are two types o checkout, self-checkout and regular checkout. By analyzing the data, Walmart can determine which type of checkout is the best for each store Third, to manage the supply chain processes, Walmart simulate the number of steps from the freight vessel to each store. This allows the company to optimize routes to the shipping dock and track the number of times a product gets touched along the way to the customer. The company uses data to analyze driving routes and transportation lanes for Walmart trucks as well. Such data certainly helps Walmart keep transportation costs low and assign drivers optimized time. Fourth, to optimize product assortment. By analyzing customer preferences and their shopping patterns, Walmart can make decsions quickly on how much stock each store has and how to display items. Big data also provides insight on new items, discontinued products and which private brands to carry. At last, to personalize the shopping experience. Big data
Upon entering the Wal-Mart store, anywhere in America, one can use predictability because all Wal-mart stores have the same look and offer a “one stop shopping” experience. Shoppers expect the same shopping experience found in one Wal-mart to be available at the same price and quality as the next Wal-mart. All Wal-marts run their business the same way. Calculability simply means quantity over quality. Wal-mart doesn’t say they offer the best brands-they offer everyday low prices and return/refund options when the purchased object doesn’t work, falls apart, or doesn’t meet expectations. Efficiency is what Wal-mart prides itself upon. Convienent parking and wheelchairs for handicapped individuals, 20 items or less checkout, large display signs noting where items are located, and departments are just a few examples of how Wal-mart taps into efficiency. Lastly, Wal-mart uses control in all aspects of a customer’s shopping. The “McDonaldization” of control at Wal-mart has become the norm, and a customer may not even be aware of the control. Walking in, one grabs a shopping cart. One pushes from one area to another, up and down the aisles. One selects purchases and then goes through the checkout line, similar to cattle being feed. The Wal-mart worker is controlled by his blue vest and the constant “swiping” of each SKU
The Walmart is able to keep track of its inventory with the help of a little gadget called, Telson. It scans the bar code which is not just a simple thing but it is almost like an encyclopedia as it tells all the information. The power of information is hidden in a bar code. It is very important as it keeps track of all the sales for example what is being sold, when is it being sold, history, sale prices and trend prices.
With the ability to control its stock and see at a glance how any store is performing, Wal-Mart is able to keep its finger on the pulse of its business and make critical adjustments as necessary. The low transportation costs it achieves with its own transportation system makes it possible to deliver goods to different stores within or under 48 hours, and transportation costs are only 3% of the total costs, as compared with 5% for their competitors ("Wal-Mart 's Supply Chain Management Practices: The Benefits Reaped"). Its advanced methods of transport, This combination of technology and down-home attention to customers as people makes Wal-Mart hard to beat on any soil, and it uses the winning formula to maximum advantage.
In 1945, Sam Walton opened his first variety store and in 1962, he opened his first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas. Now, Wal-Mart is expected to exceed “$200 billion a year in sales by 2002 (with current figures of) more than 100 million shoppers a week…(and as of 1999) it became the first (private-sector) company in the world to have more than one million employees.” Why? One reason is that Wal-Mart has continued “to lead the way in adopting cutting-edge technology to track how people shop, and to buy and deliver goods more efficiently and cheaply than any other rival.” Many examples exist throughout Wal-Mart’s history including its use of networks, satellite communication, UPC/barcode adoption and more. Much of the technology that was utilized helped Sam Walton more efficiently track what he originally noted on yellow legal pads. From the very beginning, he wanted to know what the customers purchased, what inventory was selling and what stock was not selling. Wal-Mart now “tracks on an almost instantaneous basis the ordering, shipment, and delivery of literally every item it sells, and that it requires its suppliers to hook into the system, enabling it to track most goods every step of the way from the time they’re made and packaged in the factories to when they’re carried out store doors by shoppers.” “Wal-Mart operates the world’s most powerful corporate computing system, with a capacity (as of late 1999) of more than 100 terabytes of data (A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, or roughly the equivalent of 250 million pages of text.).
According to Lisa Arthur, big data is as powerful as a tsunami, but it’s a deluge that can be controlled. In a positive way it provides business insights and value. Big data is data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional database systems. It is a collection of data from traditional and digital sources inside and outside a company that represents a source of ongoing discovery and analysis. The data is too big, moves to fast, or doesn’t fit the structures of the database architecture. Daily, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. In the last couple years we have created 90% of data we have in the world. This data comes from many places like climate information, social media sites, pictures or videos, purchase transaction records, cell phone GPS signals, and many more places. From the beginning of recorded time through 2003 users created 5 billion gigabytes of data. 2011, the same amount was created every couple days. 2013, we created that same amount every ten minutes. Some users prefer to constrain big data into digital inputs like web behavior and social network interactions. The data doesn’t exclude traditional data that is from product transaction information, financial records and interaction channels.
Walmart uses coordinated planning and scheduling. Trucks are loaded and delivered during the day, so that the merchandise is ready to be stocked in the store during the overnight hours. This allows stocking to occur during off-peak customer times. The next day when 245 million customers are ready to shop, products are in-stock for purchase.
Big Data is a term used to refer to extremely large and complex data sets that have grown beyond the ability to manage and analyse them with traditional data processing tools. However, Big Data contains a lot of valuable information which if extracted successfully, it will help a lot for business, scientific research, to predict the upcoming epidemic and even determining traffic conditions in real time. Therefore, these data must be collected, organized, storage, search, sharing in a different way than usual. In this article, invite you and learn about Big Data, methods people use to exploit it and how it helps our life.
Walmart is a retail giant that just about everyone in America has purchased something from them. It is a one stop shop for anything that a person could ever need. Walmart stores can be found anywhere in fact most people are less than an hour drive away from a Walmart store. Walmart’s success has put many companies out of business. The chains success is primarily from low prices and using an information technology system to meet customer demands giving them a competitive advantage. Walmart’s first major use of information technology came in 1975 when the company leased an IBM computer system to track inventory in warehouses and distribution centers. Computers have come a very long way since this time and are used almost everywhere. But in 1975 this was cutting edge technology and gave Walmart the competitive advantage over other retailers. Another thing that Walmart used to be revolutionary in their supply chain was the use of scanning barcodes in 1983. Before barcodes objects had to be read by a skilled cashier. With barcodes all that was needed was a quick scan and the computer would do all the work. This greatly sped up checkout time and made tracking inventory and data collection much faster and easier for both customers and the employees. Since this time it has become an industry standard for products.
The key strategy implementation efforts at Amazon all surround the use of “big data”. Big data is the growth and availability of large volumes of structured/unstructured data. The use of big data has allowed decision making based upon data and analysis instead of past experience and intuition. Big data has directed organizational change in allowing Amazon to expand from an online book store to an internet giant. Revolutionary application of big data has allowed Amazon to create superior service quality while motivating employees by providing real time information to solve customer issues. Big data has strengthened Amazon’s competitive capabilities by pioneering the application of big data and charging a monthly fee to smaller businesses
From the manufacturers’ warehouse to the shelves, the business must orchestrate a symphony of the right products to the right places at the right times. Walmart serves customers and members more than 200 million times per week in retail outlets, online and on mobile devices. The company is able to offer a vast range of products at the lowest costs in the shortest possible time (Chandran, 2001). The main reason for this incredible growth of Walmart is because its distribution centers are highly automated.
You may ask what big data analytics is. Well according to SAS, the leading company in business analytics software and services describes big data analytics as “the process of examining big data to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations and other useful information that can be used to make better decisions.” As the goal of many companies which is to seek insights into the massive amount of structured, unstructured, and binary data at their disposal to improve business decisions and outcomes, it is evident why big data analytics is a big deal. “Big data differs from traditional data gathering due to that it captures, manages, and processes the data with low-latency. It also one or more of the listed characteristics: high volume, high velocity, or high variety. Big data comes from sensors, devices, video/audio, networks, log files, web, and social media which much of it is generated in real time and in a very large scale.”(IBM) In other words, companies moving towards big data analytics are able to see faster results but it continues to reach exceptional levels moving faster than the average person can maintain.
The benefits or competitive advantage Wal-Mart derived over the years from its supply chain management practices is also covered. The reason Wal-Mart is ahead of their competition is because they invest in technology in the 1980s. This investment paid off in the long run. Wal-Mart invested heavily in IT and communication systems to effectively track sales and merchandise inventories in stores across the country. They have set up own satellite communication in 1983. Employees at the stores have the ‘Magic Wand’ at hand. These barcode scanners allow you to check the prices of items at that particular store by scanned the barcode on the product. This is especially helpful when there is clearance that isn 't always marked and sometimes clearance items are cheaper than they
Effectively, big data provides the companies with the opportunity to know and understand their customers. With Big Data, a company holds a lot of information about their customers, such as their habits, what is the product they prefer, the time they make purchases, how many products they buy and what kind of promotion their prefer. Then they can make a relation with who the person is, age, gender. Thus they can adapt their offer to the customer. If you are a good client, you can have private discount, or more discount. The objective is to know personally your customer to make them feeling unique.
reaches its capacity management every winter when the volume of demand for products increases dramatically. During this time, sales are faster than the system who automatically calculates sales average every five weeks and orders inventory. Then, the manager of the store has to input manually order to keep up with fast rate of sales during winter time. Walmart 32nd St. relies on its information technology systems to take bests decisions reduce risk, increase efficiency of existing resources and forecast accurately on current sales in order to balance capacity management. Data is the key for capacity management efficiency. Technology plays an important role for system perspective at Walmart 32nd St. where the manager focuses on how the structure behavior of the system determine certain events. Walmart 32nd St. use smart devices that help the manager or supervisors to overview data, and get store records in seconds from certain products or activities. Before managers used to waste time and spend hours and days getting data, doing calculations, and then reaching to conclusions. Now days, the data is very accurate and available on