Walmart 2013 Annual Report Download - page 4

2 || Walmart 2013 Annual Report
At Walmart, we’re excited about the progress in our business
and have condence in the strategies we’re executing in each
operating segment. I feel very good about the areas where
we are strategically focused, and we are prepared to acceler-
ate these eorts. We’re delivering on the productivity loop
and being even more disciplined about operating expenses
and capital spending. We’re investing to serve more customers
globally, especially in e-commerce. We’re putting a major
eort into making sure we have the best retail talent at
every level of our organization. And we’re taking our model
for making a dierence and applying it in new ways to some
of society’s toughest challenges.
More often, I see customers using a mobile phone to check
the price of an item. The era of price transparency is right here,
right now and in real time. We welcome Walmart being a
showroom for online shoppers. This may surprise some people,
but because we’re really churning the productivity loop, we
have a lot of open road ahead. If we oer the right assortment,
the lowest prices and the best experience, customers choose
Walmart whenever and wherever they shop.
Walmart has now leveraged operating expenses for a third
consecutive year. In fact, every operating segment grew sales
faster than expenses. We continue to invest savings into
lower prices and improving returns. I’m pleased with the
progress we’ve made with innovations around workforce
planning, on-shelf availability and sourcing. These areas –
and many others – are key priorities for our management
teams. We’re on track to meeting our goal to reduce operating
expenses as a percentage of sales by at least 100 basis points
by scal 2017.
We’re also applying this same discipline to capital expenditures.
We’ve reduced total remodeling costs for Walmart U.S.
50 percent over the past two years and are lowering construc-
tion costs around the world. Last year, we invested $12.9 billion
to add 34.6 million square feet of retail space. We’re also better
matching our systems investments to the size of the retail box
and the need of the market. Whether it’s expense leverage or
capital discipline, Walmart is accelerating the productivity loop
to drive prices even lower for our customers.
Delivering a seamless shopping experience
By bringing together best-in-class online, mobile and social
capabilities and our over 10,700 stores, we are building what
no other retailer – online or otherwise – can. We can oer
customers a truly seamless experience that empowers them
to shop in the way most convenient for them – anytime
and anywhere. Over the past year, we’ve made signicant
investments in talent and technology to accelerate progress
toward this vision.
One success is our new search engine for walmart.com,
which delivers more relevant results to online shoppers and
led to increased sales conversions. We’re also testing some
great innovations, such as same-day delivery of purchases
from our U.S. website. We just expanded mobile self-checkout
through our Scan and Go™ app. Perhaps most important to
our growth plans, we’ve launched a multi-year process to
build the next generation global technology platform. By
having the ability to connect every product in the world
with every customer in the world, we’ll be able to accelerate
our expansion of e-commerce operations. Right now, we
At Sam’s Club, exciting merchandise at great values drives
strong member engagement.
Exceptional customer service is a key contributor to
Walmart Canada’s strong market position.