How Sam’s Club Puts Technology in Service of Its People
Thinking about technology differently has been a key ingredient in the differentiation strategy at Sam’s Club, from creating frictionless shopping opportunities to recently rolling out a completely checkout-free prototype store in Texas. Chris Nicholas, the company’s president and CEO, took the keynote stage at this week’s Groceryshop conference in Las Vegas to discuss the club retailer’s latest technology solutions, e-commerce and being able to leverage Walmart’s prowess.
Since 2016, Walmart-owned Sam’s Club has endeavored to put technology in service of people, focusing on people-led technology instead of trying to make technology fit into its operations for its own sake, Nicholas explained. “[W]e got really excited about some of the problems that members were asking us to solve, and right at the heart of that was ‘please take friction out of my life,’” he said. “And so we knew that technology would be the way to do that.”
That new prototype store in Texas, Nicholas said, is a statement of where the company wants to go in the future. Located in the Dallas/Fort Worth suburb of Grapevine, the soon-to-open location is fully digital, with customers using the company’s Scan & Go app on their smartphones to ring up their purchases as they shop.
Instead of checkout stands, the store will have an area dedicated to online-only items that shoppers can purchase on the spot to then have delivered to their home – ranging from artificial Christmas trees to Mercedes-Benz SUVs.
“[W]e’ve created these inspiration spaces that are purely things you can buy online,” Nicholas explained. “And so people, not only are they shopping with their phone online, but they get to transact and buy something online whilst they're shopping in real life. And I think this really exciting connection in real life and online, and those two things being inextricable, is really exciting.”
As for e-commerce, Nicholas explained that Sam’s Club has the benefit of being owned by Walmart – the retailer has already spent a lot of money building underlying technology platforms and supply chain technology that helps create better product flow.
“So we can offer our members unique efficiency, unique simplicity in their lives through e-commerce that the club channel can't normally do because it's such an investment that would need to be made,” Nicholas said. “So we get to keep prices low, and give them convenience too. And I would say the members really need it and want it. Our members need us to be there to serve them as they want.”
Artificial intelligence and computer vision have also been important pieces of the technology puzzle for Sam’s Club, solving problems for both its members and associates. Task automation that allows employees to spend more time serving customers is high on the list of tech-enabled efficiencies brought about by computer vision.
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According to Nicholas, the retailer now employs a system that takes more than 23 million images a day of where all of the inventory is in the club, then connects to an associate's personalized device to tell them what the next task is. This year alone, that system will help take one hundred million mundane tasks off employees’ shoulders.
“[T]he reason that's important is, I won't have fewer associates, but now those associates can spend time connecting with members,” Nicholas explained. “They can help them connect on big, digitally engaged, they can help them connect with the services that we're creating. They can help do the work of e-commerce.”
Groceryshop is taking place from Oct. 7-9 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
