Walmart Mexico, also known as Walmex, is the largest division of Walmart outside the U.S. As of October, 2022, Walmex operated 2,804 retail outlets in Mexico, under the Walmart Supercenter, Superama, Sam's Club, Bodega Aurrerá, Mi Bodega Aurrera, Walmart Express, and Bodega Aurrerá Express banners.
Consolidating data systems and accelerating data processing
Walmex faced enormous business challenges caused by fragmented business processes. The delay between online orders and stores receiving orders was resulting in items being sold without being available, leading to order cancellation, lost revenue, and bad customer experiences. Moreover, the fragmented data landscape was resulting in an accounting nightmare with 200 different payment methods and associated tax accountabilities. Access to data from the existing data lake was very slow and expensive, taking forever for the queried result set to appear. Additionally, the company faced data governance and security challenges due to thousands of point-to-point connections between data-consuming applications and data sources.
Walmex started using The Denodo Platform in 2019, which uses data virtualization to consolidate data systems in real time while increasing data visibility. The Denodo Platform enabled Walmex to immediately identify the required information without looking at different sources. The company gained significant savings, and that became more evident with the COVID-19 pandemic, when the organization's requirements grew more complex.