From its humble beginnings as a small discount retailer in Rogers, Arkansas, Walmart has opened thousands of stores in the U.S. and expanded internationally. Through innovation, Walmart is creating a seamless experience to let customers shop anytime and anywhere: online and in stores. In addition, the organization is creating opportunities that bring value to customers and communities around the globe. Walmart operates approximately 10,500 stores and clubs under 46 banners in 24 countries and eCommerce websites. The company employs 2.3 million associates worldwide and nearly 1.6 million in the U.S. alone. Walmart’s Procurement Team comprises over 500 employees, operating in 8 key markets with a global Indirect Material Spend of over $45B.
“Cirtuo has helped to mature our Category Strategy methodology while delivering significant productivity improvements. The AI helped eliminate human error, inconsistency, and biasness, which generated actionable insights and objective strategies. It has also enabled more rapid onboarding of new Walmart Associates through knowledge preservation of existing categories managed by other sourcing professionals. We are more able to confidently present robust and consistent category strategies across all our categories in each market"
— Travis Johnson – Senior Director, International Procurement & Technology Enablement, Walmart
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Not only does Cirtuo provide digitized content, but its use of Artificial Intelligence advances Walmart in its Digitalization goals. The GSC functionality is paramount for productivity as
it ensures users know where to start and when to end and then gain critical insights for their category that lead to important business initiatives that deliver value. Cirtuo’s technology governance plus Walmart’s Critical Thinking and Category Strategy training has led to more actionable Category Insights for Walmart. Cirtuo allows real-time “refresh-ability” of strategies due to changes in market dynamics or internal business requirements. Walmart believes that they are advancing their employees as technology capabilities within Cirtuo advance. The solution improves the way of thinking and enforces appropriate governance.
Lastly, Cirtuo enables greater procurement professionalism as Walmart acquires the capacity to advance the organization’s maturity with Category Strategy driving a top-down approach to working on the right initiatives for that category. As a result, Walmart has more confidence in attracting top sourcing talent as new hires enter a company with quality processes and advanced technologies.
At DPW 2023 in Amsterdam, Michael DeWitt, Vice President of Indirect Spend Management and Center of Excellence for Walmart International, shared the global retailer’s vision on the future of procurement. In Michael’s keynote, he emphasizes the transformative impact of AI implementation and how Cirtuo drives tangible business impact for Walmart.
At Cirtuo Procurement Forum 2023, we sat down with Travis Johnson, Sr. Director International Procurement & Tech Enablement at Walmart, to discuss how Walmart leverages Guided Strategy Creation as a central element in their Procurement digitalization strategy. Hear from him how they increased the consistency of strategies, became faster atdeveloping strategies, increased the consistency, and improved their onboarding and knowledge sharing.
