Now Trending: Big Data at Walmart.com
November 24, 2013 Leave a comment
November 22, 2013, 12:09 PM ET
Now Trending: Big Data at Walmart.com
By Noelle Knox
Big Data is so integrated into the finance department at Walmart.com that the analytics team can’t change an Internet search algorithm or pay more for GoogleGOOG -0.21% Ad Words without the green-light from the division’s chief financial officer. “It’s really been in the last couple of years, since we invented that algorithm, that the role of the CFO has changed. You need to be able to understand how it works at a pretty detailed level,” Liz Coddington, vice president of finance and CFO of Walmart.com, told a CFO conference this week.“I have to spend a lot of time with the engineers to understand how it works so that when they say, ‘What do you think?’ I don’t just say, ‘That’s fine,’ and realize it doesn’t work after we’ve spent a couple million bucks.”
Her division is now hiring more engineers out of school than graduates with master’s degrees in business administration. She said she looks for candidates who are smart, can build relationships and have an “intellectual curiosity.” In exchange, she said, she can offer them an almost unparalleled opportunity to work with massive quantities of data.
Ms. Coddington stressed that the power of Big Data is in moving the business forward and avoiding “analysis-paralysis.” She tells her team to bring her analysis, not simply data. Walmart.com now uses data to understand what’s trending in social media, as well as buying patterns among similar types of customers and what competitors are charging in real-time.
“You may not have perfect information, but we have enough to know our risk is only between X and Y and therefore we’re comfortable moving forward…You have to be careful that you don’t get to the point that you can’t run your business because you’re waiting for data,” she told the audience at the MIT Sloan CFO Summit in Boston Thursday.
Walmart.com, for example, recently learned via social media that “cake pops” were popular with consumers and the company was able to respond quickly and get them in stores.
The nation’s largest retailer also recently changed its online shipping policy based on Big Data analysis. Walmart.com increased the minimum online order with free shipping to $50 from $45, but also vastly expanded the number of products that were included to improve the shopping experience.
The previous shipping program, she said, “was a terrible customer experience.”
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