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Comment by wyck | Hacker News Reader

It is a bit strange how the in-house and other competitor is also mentioned, Walmart are big on data warehousing and management, in a lot of cases they are pushing innovation and r&d, in some cases for decades. This article needs to show a more detailed analysis of when it does actually work, a fraud KPI ?, or something else besides some anonymous complaints.

You can trick any system, but that's not telling on it's overall effectiveness.

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Walmart pushing innovation? Citation needed.

Their new kiosks are so infernally slow that I like to imagine they're electron apps running on a raspberry pi, which would make them the very peak of innovation.

Same for McDonalds' ordering kiosks. They feel webtechy in the worst way. Plus they're horribly organized, probably to try to boost sales. Unless the line at the counter's over 4 deep I can't imagine the kiosks being faster, even if there's no wait for them.

McDonald's replaced their menus with video ads to pressure customers into spending more and missing the value meals.

So I stopped shopping there. Wendy's FTW.

Or they have "time spent in store" as a KPI because the more people are in the store, the more they'll buy... and slow kiosks will keep you around.

You may not like it, but this is what peak tech looks like.

Tech has been Wal-Mart’s competitive edge for decades. They had an IBM and electronic POS since 75 for inventory management. They had a company wide network in 77. In 87, they installed the largest satellite network at the time. Allowed two-way data (inventory and sales) and voice communication and one way video to all of their properties. They built an enterprise DW in 90 and put EDI through the internet in the mid-90s. There is a reason they could beat every other retailer on cost for decades until Amazon came around.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cio.com/article/2437873/45-...

Sorry but a citation is not needed, they have poured vast amounts of money into IT infrastructure, logistics, supply/demand, warehousing, POS, RFID, the list goes on. How do you think they became so large? Technology you take for granted everyday started out funded and developed by Walmart (usually in collab with IBM, TI, etc). They have brought money and the desire to the table in tech for over 40 years, often pushing the envelope of what's even possible.

Walmart has been pushing innovation for decades now: https://www.walmartlabs.com/. How do you think they got so huge?

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