EXCLUSIVE: How Walmart Business serves commercial, nonprofit customers

The Walmart Business program is providing value to business and nonprofit entities that want to make purchases from Walmart.

Chain Store Age recently spoke with Ashley Hubka, head of Walmart Business, about how the program, originally launched as an e-commerce site with an assortment of more than 100,000 products curated for organizational shoppers in January 2023, is moving forward with its mission of providing convenience, savings, and necessary products to its base of business, nonprofit and governmental customers.

How would you define Walmart Business?

Walmart Business exists to focus on the unique needs of businesses, nonprofits and government entities. We get to draw on all the assets and capabilities of Walmart, whether that is assortment, everyday low price, supply chain network, store footprint, or e-commerce, fulfillment and delivery technologies. 

We get to leverage all of that and then build on top the things businesses or organizations need, such as tools to manage their spend or additional assortment. That’s how we think about the role Walmart Business can play for its customers and inside of the Walmart ecosystem.

What does Walmart Business offer?

We have a dedicated website and app. Walmart Business has a broad range of supplies, including packaged and fresh food, office supplies, cleaning supplies, technology, apparel, workwear, footwear, professional items and facility needs. 

In terms of saving time, we offer an omnichannel experience, so customers can shop the website, app, or in store, but they can also have items delivered for a scheduled pickup. 

The other thing we have that's a real time saver is subscriptions. Customers can put essential recurring items on subscription and ensure they're going to show up and save the time of having to go get them or to you worry if they are in stock. 

This is all built on a foundation of multi user accounts, meaning an organization can share purchasing across all of its users and allow everyone to purchase what they need, but have visibility to all of the purchasing across the organizational account. 

Walmart Business customers can even do things like share a payment method so everyone can use it, but only the administrator who controls the card can actually see the full details. 

Why did Walmart launch Walmart Business?

Walmart has a long history of serving businesses and nonprofits, in our stores and online and we looked at that customer behavior. We also looked at external data and that's what led us to start Walmart Business in early 2023. 

As we talked to organizations across sizes and industries we heard three consistent themes. First, they wanted to save money and simplify their business purchasing. Second, that they wanted to stay in stock and in control, and third, they were looking for efficiencies to operate and grow. 

With that in mind, we launched Walmart Businesses as a dedicated omni channel experience for businesses, nonprofits, and as government entities. 

How have Walmart’s business and nonprofit customers responded?

I'll give you two examples. One, we have a local nonprofit in the Bentonville, Arkansas area that prepares home cooked meals, seven days a week, and just shopping for these items took them about five hours a week.

Using the Walmart Business offering as well as the delivery we can provide out of Walmart stores, the nonprofit has been able to save a great chunk of that time and put it back into its core services.

In another example, we had a business customer that shared how it is leveraging the Walmart supply chain to have more just-in-time delivery of most-needed items. Instead of stocking bigger quantities in its warehouse and using up cash flow, the Walmart Business customer is able to rely on the Walmart supply chain and order these items as it needs them. 

How does Walmart Business use Walmart’s artificial intelligence capabilities?

We have implemented AI-driven capabilities on the Walmart Business site that respond that are responsive to what is the customer's behavior, what is the customer's journey on the site, where are they engaged? Where are they clicking? What are they paying attention to? 

Based on that, we can provide different prompts or different experiences to those customers that are AI-driven and responsive to a customer's own actions in a way then that is that is personalized and tailored. Walmart Business also benefits from AI-based automation in the Walmart supply chain across the different facilities in the network. 

How will Walmart Business utilize AI in the next six to 12 months?

The emphasis on AI is very real and present for us, like I think it is for all companies.  Every time we find opportunities that are consistent with being people-led and tech-empowered, and where AI lets us go further and faster, Walmart Business will incorporating those, either on the front end or on the back end.