Walmart- Tech Stack

Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and incorporated on October 31, 1969.

Everyone’s favourite big box store, Walmart is the world’s largest retail corporation that sells everything from groceries to musical instruments. More than 270 million customers visit Walmart for their purchases every week while many make online purchases through its websites.

Walmart started as a single small discounted store in 1962 in Arkansas. For 50 years, it has now grown into the largest retailer with over 11,200 stores in 27 countries and websites (e-commerce) in 10 countries. The current CEO of Walmart is Doug McMillon.

Company: Walmart
CEO: Doug McMillon
Year founded: 1962
Headquarter: Bentonville, USA
Number of Employees (2018): 2.3M
Public or Private: Public
Ticker Symbol: WMT
Market Cap (April 2019): $295.78 Billion
Annual Revenue (Jan 2019): $514.40 Billion
Profit |Net income (Jan 2019): $6.67 Billion

Fun Fact:

Did you know that Walmart makes a profit of $1.8M every hour?

Technology

Open-source software

Many Walmart technology projects are coded in the open and available through the Walmart Labs GitHub repository as open-source software under the OSI approved Apache V2.0 license. As of November 2016, 141 public Github projects are listed.

During a migration of the walmart.com retail platform to Facebook React and Node.js, the Electrode project was created to power the e-commerce platform which serves 80 million visitors per month and 15 million items.

The electrode provides various developer enhancements and tools for the developer including Node.js configuration and feature management.

Alex Grigoryan of Walmart Labs released a statement on Medium.com on October 3, 2016, explaining the details of the applications and the scale that they operate at Walmart.

Big Data Analytics

As the largest retailer in the U.S., Walmart collects and analyzes a large amount of consumer data. The big data sets are mined for use in predictive analytics, which allow the company to optimize operations by predicting customer’s habits. Walmart’s datacenter is unofficially referred to as Area 71.

In April 2011, Walmart acquired Kosmix to develop software for analyzing real-time data streams. In August 2012, Walmart announced its Polaris search engine.

The amount of data gathered by Walmart has raised privacy concerns.

Cash handling

in 2016, Walmart began a drive to automate much of the cash handling process. Walmart began replacing employees who count currency by hand with machines that count 8 bills per second and 3,000 coins a minute. The processing machines, located in the back of stores, allow cashiers to process the money for electronic depositing.

TECHNOLOGY USED IN WALMART:

1.Application

JavaScript: Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions

Python: A clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

Node.js: A platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications.

React: A JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

Java: A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible.

MySQL: The world’s most popular open-source database.

AngularJS: Superheroic JavaScript MVW Framework.

jQuery UI: Curated set of user interface interactions, effects, widgets, and themes built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library.

Ruby: A dynamic, interpreted, an open-source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity

2.Utilities

Postman: Only complete API development environment.

Elasticsearch: Open Source, Distributed, RESTful Search Engine.

PayPal: Send Money, Pay Online or Set Up a Merchant Account.

PyTorch: A deep learning framework that puts Python first.

Solr: An open-source enterprise search server based on Lucene search library, with XML/HTTP and JSON APIs, hit highlighting, faceted search, caching, replication etc.

AssemblyAI: API for customizable speech recognition.

Snappykit: Create a stunning website for your mobile app.

3.DevOps

GitHub: Powerful collaboration, review, and code management for open source and private development projects.

Git: Fast, scalable, distributed revision control system.

Docker: Enterprise Container Platform for High-Velocity Innovation.

Jenkins: An extendable open source continuous integration server.

Kubernetes: Manage a cluster of Linux containers as a single system to accelerate Dev and simplify Ops.

Ansible: Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine.

Notepad++: Free source code editor and Notepad replacement.

Prometheus: An open-source service monitoring system and time series database, developed by SoundCloud.

Jasmine: DOM-less simple JavaScript testing framework.

4.Business Tools

Slack: Bring all your communication together in one place.

Jira: The #1 software development tool used by agile teams to plan, track, and release great software.

Confluence: One place to share, find, and collaborate on information.

Microsoft Office 365: Enterprise-class set of productivity tools and cloud-based email.

Facebook Workplace: An online team collaboration tool.

SWOT ANALYSIS:

Walmart’s Strengths — Internal Strategic Factors

1. Brand recognition — With millions of customers visiting Walmart every day, it is the most recognized retail brand in the world. There are over 60 million items available at the Walmart online store.
2. Global expansion — Walmart has recently purchased ASDA, the UK based retailer and Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart. Besides, it has created a joint venture with India’s biggest retail store Bharti. These global expansions have proven to be a great success for the company.
3. Global presence — In 2017, Walmart opened 47 new stores in Central America, 15 in Chile, 11 in the UK and 4 in China. Its international operations have increased its sales and global presence.
4. ‘Every Day Low Prices’ strategy — Walmart is based on economies of scale agenda that’s why it can offer low prices. It has fixed costs for thousands of products. Thus, it’s one of the cheapest shopping places in the world.
5. Global supply chain and logistics system — The distribution and logistics systems are the core competencies of Walmart. It uses Information Technology (IT) to efficiently monitor the performances of every product in each store in each country.
6. Human Resource Management — Employees are the key assets of Walmart. It hugely invests its time and money in developing and managing its employees. 1% of America’s working population is employed at Walmart as per Business Insider.
7. Effective resource management — Walmart efficiently manages its resources including information systems, supply chain networks, distribution facilities, knowledge, and other skills. It has excellent operations in all the locations.
8. Strong market power over suppliers and competitors — Its large organizational size and global reach have made Walmart capable enough to exercise market power over suppliers and competitors.

Walmart’s Weaknesses — Internal Strategic Factors

1. Employee treatment and working conditions — Walmart has received criticisms and lawsuits several times regarding its workforce. Low wages, inadequate healthcare, and poor working conditions are few of the issues that have been publically criticized.
2. Large span of control — Its highly extended size and massive span of control could leave Walmart weak in some areas.
3. Thin profit margins — Walmart focuses on a cost leadership strategy. It results in thin profit margins for the company.
4. Gender discrimination — A lawsuit was filed against Walmart in 2007 that allegedly claimed gender discrimination in job opportunities at Walmart. Female employees are discriminated in regards to promotions and pay scale as per this lawsuit.
5. Imitation — Walmart’s business model can be easily copied. The company doesn’t own any specific competitive edge over its rivals except its huge business size.

Walmart’s Opportunities — External Strategic Factors

1. Expansion to other markets — Walmart can gain the opportunity by expanding its business to the markets which are not yet ventured. These may include China, Middle East countries, and Latin America.
2. Strategic alliances — Walmart has the opportunity to create strategic partnerships with major firms or merge with other global retailers. Acquisitions of small companies can also be a profitable opportunity for Walmart.
3. Enhancing human resource practices — Bringing advanced improvements in human resource practices can be a favourable opportunity for Walmart. As it highly relies upon its workforce, bringing innovation in its human resource management is a crucial opportunity.
4. Improving quality standards — Low-cost products render low quality sometimes. Walmart has the opportunity to enhance the quality standards of its products to address the health concerns of consumers.

Walmart’s Threats — External Strategic Factors

1. Impeach 45 Controversy — Recently, Walmart was publicized for “Impeach 45” controversy. It sold T-shirts printed with the words ‘Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required’. These shirts claimed to imply promotion of violence. However, Walmart overturned the controversy claiming that the T-shirts were sold by third-party sellers on Walmart’s Marketplace instead of Walmart itself.
2. Fake craft beer controversy — Walmart was sued for selling fake craft beer in 2017. Though it was made by WX Brands, the beer was labelled and marketed as ‘Trouble Brewery,’ a non-existent production company.
3. A primary target of competition — The world’s largest grocery retailer, Walmart is always a primary target for competitors. Target, its direct competitor, offers similar products but with higher quality. Similarly, Costco offers customers to buy items in bulk. Additionally, these companies have a relatively good reputation for treating their employees well compared to Walmart. Both companies are also publicly supported in these areas.
4. Political and Legal Issues — This is also a threat to Political and legal affairs can always hinder the company to operate in some countries.
5. Small-scale online e-commerce companies — Many small-scale and individual online selling companies have entered the market offering similar products at similar prices on their websites. It can be a threat to the company’s future standing.
6. Technical issues on the website — Customers have complained many times that there are some technical issues with Walmart’s website. The products are not listed in an organized way on the website, and it runs slowly. However, Amazon is known for its fast, effective, and organized website, making an excellent online shopping experience for customers.