Walmart intros employee-based app to help shoppers order items

12/4/2018
A new app enables Walmart associates to place online orders for customers — directly from store aisles.

Walmart on Tuesday introduced a new employee-based app designed to save the sale. Internally known as “Dotcom Store,” the app enables customers to work with associates to order items that may not be available on store shelves, as well as pay for merchandise.

Here’s how it works: Using the app, which is downloaded on a mobile device, associates can look up out-of-stock merchandise. (The app is directly integrated to Walmart’s e-commerce site.) Customers can choose to have the item shipped to their home or delivered to the store for free, and the associate will print a receipt or send an email that must be presented at any register in the store, according to a blog on Walmart’s website.

Customers pay for orders using cash, check (a new option), credit card or Walmart Pay, a mobile wallet that stores customers’ preferred gift, debit and credit cards, and enables them to pay through their device.

“This new app connects our stores and Walmart.com to enable a new, convenient service, and it’s also the latest in a series of apps associates now have to help them serve customers even better,” the blog reported.

Walmart’s other custom-built employee apps include PlanIT, which keeps associates up-to-date on company and store announcements; the Receiving App that reveals which products have just arrived at the store, and the Downstock App that keeps associates abreast of merchandise available on store shelves, according to separate blog on Walmart’s website.

Walmart’s Price Change app delivers information about necessary product price updates. It also categorizes them by aisle so associates receive them in the order they should be made, creating an efficient path through the store.

An Availability app gives associates insight into how their store is performing over time, including when out-of-stocks occur. Meanwhile, the Sales app updates a store’s sales numbers in real time so that associates know how their designated areas are performing against the previous year, down to specific products.

“[The] suite of custom-built apps for associates … allows them to manage a variety of routine activities directly from a mobile store device. From the moment a product arrives in the back room to the second a customer finds it on the shelf, an ecosystem of data gives associates new visibility that helps them make informed decisions quickly, thus allowing them to take on more ownership of their work,” according to Walmart.
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