Walmart’s burgeoning slate of white-label retail tech will be made more widely available via a new partnership with Salesforce. Retailers will now be able to plug into Walmart Commerce Technologies’ Store Assist local fulfillment services and the Walmart GoLocal delivery solution through the Salesforce AppExchange.
The new partnership is part of a growing push by Walmart to mimic the business model of arch-rival Amazon: packaging the technology built to power its own operations and offering it as a service to other retailers. Just like Amazon’s AWS, Walmart now offers a portfolio of cloud-based third-party services through its Commerce Technologies division, including checkout experiences, omni-retail fulfillment capabilities such as curbside pickup and BOPIS and retail intelligence offerings for inventory forecasting, pricing and personalization. The separate Walmart GoLocal service features white-label delivery capabilities and is already being used by retailers including Chico’s FAS and The Home Depot.
“Through this partnership, retailers can leverage the same innovative and scalable technologies that power Walmart’s pickup and delivery experiences,” said Anshu Bhardwaj, SVP of Technology Strategy and Commercialization at Walmart Global Technology in a statement. “The same technology that powers Store Assist has enabled Walmart to fulfill over 830 million orders across over 4,700 Walmart stores.”
Salesforce merchants will now have access to two of Walmart’s key white-label services — GoLocal for same-day delivery and Store Assist, which helps retailers leverage their local stores as fulfillment centers to enable services like BOPIS. These tools can then be combined with the Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Order Management solutions, enabling retailers to efficiently manage the entire omnichannel shopping experience across one platform.
Advertisement
“Shoppers continue to expect brands to deliver highly connected and frictionless experiences across physical and digital touch points; in fact, one in five online orders placed the weekend before Christmas were picked up in-store,” said Rob Garf, VP and General Manager of Retail at Salesforce in a statement. “With the combined power of Walmart and Salesforce, retailers can drive success with best-in-class technology to advance their omnichannel capabilities, drive efficiency and ensure that every purchase quickly gets into the hands of the shopper — no matter where they are.”
Walmart isn’t alone in looking to have its in-house tech do double duty. Other retailers building out capabilities to join the burgeoning “as-a-service” industry include:
- Gap, which launched the GPS Platform Service in August 2022, making its logistics and fulfillment network available to brands of all sizes;
- American Eagle Outfitters, which is quickly growing its own third-party fulfillment service through the acquisition of AirTerra and Quiet Logistics, now being used by retailers including Fanatics;
- ThredUP, which has packaged its tech into a “resale-as-a-service” offering now used by dozens of retailers including Hot Topic, Torrid and Athleta; and
- Instacart, which already powers ecommerce and fulfillment for hundreds of grocery retailers across North America and is now building out offerings across digital advertising and insights.
