Wal-Mart unveils Global.com

Wal-Mart has revealed plans to run e-commerce operations across the globe in part of a shake-up of its online operations. The company said: “In the US we have a strong and growing e-commerce business. In this past year, we expanded that business even further by leveraging our large store base through our site-to-store initiative. The ability to allow our customer to take advantage of Walmart’s price leadership whenever and wherever they want is what underpins our multi-channel strategy. Now that we have a well-defined blueprint to continue to grow our online business, it’s time to leverage our size and global footprint to take advantage of this evolving customer trend. To accelerate the execution of these plans, we are announcing today several changes in how we pursue this business opportunity both here in the US as well as globally. In order to fully evolve into a multi-channel retailer here in the US, we need to make our organisation, particularly in Merchandising and Marketing, channel agnostic.”  With the appointment of President and CEO of Walmart.com, Raul Vazquez as EVP and President of the newly-created Walmart West Business Division, his role as CEO of Walmart.com US will not be replaced. Instead, Walmart will integrate its merchandising and operations capabilities of the dotcom organisation with those of its traditional retail business. To lead this effort, Steve Nave has been promoted to Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Walmart.com US Business Unit, reporting to John Fleming. Additionally, to ensure the integration and co-ordination of marketing activities as well as taking advantage of the increased importance of online as a media channel, Walmart will now align the online marketing function under the leadership of Stephen Quinn, Chief Marketing Officer of Walmart US.  To leverage scale and drive efficiencies as Walmart pursues new e-commerce opportunities around the globe, it is creating a new unit that will be responsible for driving online growth around the world – both in developed markets where Walmart currently has stores and an online presence and in markets where it does not. This new organisation will be called Global.com. To lead this new global initiative and to ensure Walmart reaches its ambitious expectations relative to growth and speed, it has promoted Wan Ling Martello, formerly the Chief Financial Officer of Walmart International, to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Global.com. In her new role, Martello’s primary responsibilities will include: development and execution of a global strategy for e-commerce; establishing cross-functional and cross-border Walmart relationships designed to accelerate and broaden growth in the global online channel; and the creation of technology platforms and applications that can be used effectively in every Walmart market. Consistent with that objective, Martello will have a dotted line reporting relationship with the dotcom business unit leaders in every existing Walmart market. In order to carry out the third responsibility mentioned above, the following Walmart.com teams will become part of Global.com and will report to Martello: Product Management, Application Development, Platform Engineering and Strategy.  www.planetretail.net