Walmart offers its e-commerce know-how to other retailers

Walmart aims to serve up e-commerce solutions, including delivery and pickup, to other merchants as part of a partnership with technology provider Adobe.

Plans call for Walmart to integrate its Walmart Marketplace third-party retailer e-commerce program, in-store fulfillment and pickup technologies with Adobe Commerce, San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe’s commerce solution for merchants and brands.

Through the Adobe Commerce platform, merchants will be able to leverage Walmart’s cloud-based services to offer pickup and delivery to their customers. These retailers also will be able to reach new customers on the Walmart Marketplace, where they can access Walmart’s fulfillment services to offer two-day shipping nationwide, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retail giant said.

“We’ve built new capabilities to serve the evolving needs of our own customers, and we have a unique opportunity to use our experience to help other businesses do the same,” Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner said in a statement. “Commercializing our technologies and capabilities helps us sustainably reinvest back into our customer value proposition.”

Walmart noted that it has enlisted technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud-powered checkout and pickup capabilities to bring customers more convenience and enhance their omnichannel shopping experience. The company said it will now provide this tech-driven functionality to other retail businesses to help them improve their customer experiences and operate more efficiently.

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“The core mission of helping people save money and live better is at the heart of every idea, including Scan & Go and checkout technologies, AI-powered smart substitutions and pickup and delivery,” according to Suresh Kumar, chief technology officer and chief development officer at Walmart. “Combining Adobe’s strength in powering commerce experiences with our unmatched omni-customer expertise, we can accelerate other companies’ digital transformations.”

Tapping Walmart’s fulfillment capabilities, Adobe Commerce customers will be able to show store pickup eligibility and available pickup times online; offer multiple pickup options, including curbside and in-store pickup; provide store associates with advanced mobile tools to optimize pick path and multi-order pickups, as well as validate item selection and manage substitutions, Peter Sheldon, senior director of commerce strategy at Adobe, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Adobe Commerce merchants, too, will be able to provide order pickup communications, check-in options to notify store associates, accurate customer ETA, and arrival detection, he said.

Related:Walmart enlists artificial intelligence for online grocery substitutions

In addition, Adobe Commerce retail users will soon be able to syndicate and sell their products on Walmart’s Marketplace, giving them access to millions of customers who frequently shop on Walmart.com, Sheldon noted. The Walmart Marketplace now has more than 100,000 sellers.

“Lastly, we’re already working on consolidating our other channel solutions into a single, unified extension to enable our retail customers to easily manage multiple sales channels via a single integrated tool that provides easy, straightforward account setup and catalog syndication,” Sheldon added.

In its most recently completed quarter, Walmart saw its U.S. e-commerce sales climb 37% year over year. The company reported that U.S. digital sales have more than doubled over the last two years. 

Adobe said its U.S. retail customers will be able to integrate Walmart’s omnichannel retail technology into their own storefronts beginning in early 2022.

“We’re excited to collaborate with Walmart to help Adobe merchants expand their businesses to new channels and offer shopping experiences that increase their competitiveness and fit well with shifting consumer behaviors in an increasingly digital economy,” stated Anil Chakravarthy, executive vice president and general manager of digital experience business and worldwide field operations at Adobe.