????世界最大的零售商沃爾瑪正在努力把自己打造為世界上最全面的購物運營商，無論是在線上還是在線下。沃爾瑪希望在這個過程中利用Walmart.com網站吸引大量的新客戶。

????《財富》（Fortune）雜志于周二在科羅拉多州阿斯彭舉辦的科技頭腦風暴大會（Brainstorm Tech conference）期間，沃爾瑪（WMT）首席信息官卡瑞南?特雷爾以及沃爾瑪全球電子商務業務首席執行官內爾?阿什在名為“電子沃爾瑪”（E-Walmart）的專題會上討論了該公司在結合沃爾瑪龐大的核心業務與互聯網和移動技術方面所做的努力。

????沃爾瑪在財富美國500強排行榜上（Fortune 500）位居榜首，去年的銷售額達到了驚人的4,660億美元，在全世界擁有1萬多家店面，其中有4,000多家店面位于美國。沃爾瑪在使用技術進行物流管理方面一直處于領先地位，如今，它維護的服務器已經多達3.8萬臺。沃爾瑪也正在搭建世界上最大的私有云平臺。特雷爾說：“我們在大數據開始流行之前就已經擁有了大數據業務。”她說，沃爾瑪今天的產品數據已經達到了“兩位數拍字節”，而這些數據來自于沃爾瑪的12萬家供貨商。

????然而，相對而言，它的在線業務較為落后。沃爾瑪預計，今年的在線銷售額將達到100億美元。為幫助改變這一現狀，沃爾瑪于去年聘請了之前在哥倫比亞廣播公司互動媒體集團（CBS Interactive）CBS擔任負責人的阿什。

????阿什表示，試圖把在線業務看成徹底獨立的業務這一想法是錯誤的。他說：“拋棄1萬家店面和2.4億名客戶的做法是愚蠢的。”但是，他也不希望看到Walmart.com僅僅成為公司的一個附加業務。他說，最好的策略是打造無縫體驗，這樣，客戶可以隨心所欲、隨時隨地地光顧沃爾瑪。

????為了幫助零售大軍與阿什和其團隊進行對接，沃爾瑪打造了一個系統。借助這個系統，沃爾瑪在美國所有4,000家門店經理的獎勵依據將是各自區域的全部銷售業績，包括線上和線下的銷售。阿什說：“這個舉措為完整的購物體驗帶來了140萬名擁護者。”

????關于這個體驗，其中的一個例子便是公司為去年黑色星期五瘋狂購物日所推出的1小時特別保證服務。沃爾瑪為三大熱銷技術型產品亮出了大幅折扣價，包括蘋果（Apple）的iPad 2。在這一個小時之內，沃爾瑪保證光顧沃爾瑪店的任意顧客都能夠按這個折扣價購買這款商品。如果店面的商品賣光了，沃爾瑪會從客戶那搜集信息，然后通過網絡兌現訂單。

????實現這個目標需要從上到下的協作，即從企業層面一直到所有4,000家店面的銷售登記處。阿什和特雷爾說，公司做到了這一點，而且僅用了30天來進行準備。

????至于如何衡量沃爾瑪電子商務的成功，阿什表示，顧客可能會來實體店購物，也可能通過移動設備采購，也可能坐在沙發上用筆記本購買，或者結合以上幾種方式來購物。如果哪一天，沃爾瑪我們不再關心顧客到底是在采用哪種方式進行購物，沃爾瑪的電子商務就算成功了。“無論是美國本土的沃爾瑪，還是全球的沃爾瑪，這就是我們目前正在探索的領域。”（財富中文網）

????譯者：翔

????The world's largest retailer is working hard to make itself the world's most seamless operator in shopping -- both on- and offline. It would like to attract a lot of new shoppers to Walmart.com in the process.

????In a session titled "E-Walmart" at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., on Tuesday morning, Wal-Mart (WMT) chief information officer Karenann Terrell and Neil Ashe, CEO of global e-commerce for Wal-Mart, talked about the company's efforts to marry the scale of Wal-Mart's core business with Internet and mobile technology.

????Wal-Mart ranks No. 1 on the Fortune 500 with a mammoth $466 billion in sales last year and more than 10,000 stores world-wide, including over 4,000 in the U.S. It has long been a leader in using technology to manage logistics and today supports 38,000 servers. The company is also building the world's largest private cloud. "We had Big Data before Big Data was cool," said Terrell. Today, it has "double-digit petabytes" of product data, she said, from its 120,000 suppliers.

????However, in a relative sense, its online business, projected to be $10 billion in sales this year, has lagged. Ashe was brought in last year from his previous job as the head of CBS Interactive (CBS) to help change that.

????Ashe said that it would be wrong to try to think of the online business as completely separate. "It would be foolish for us to run away from 10,000 stores or 240 million customers," he said. But neither does he want Walmart.com to be merely an add-on. The best strategy, he said, is to create a seamless experience in which a consumer will come to Wal-Mart whenever, wherever makes sense for him or her.

????To align the interests of its retail foot soldiers with Ashe and his crew, the company has created a system in which managers at all 4,000 Wal-Mart stores in the U.S. get credit for all sales in their zip codes, whether on- or offline. "That creates 1.4 million advocates for the holistic shopping experience," said Ashe.

????One example of such an experience was a special one-hour guarantee event the company ran for last year's Black Friday mega shopping day. Wal-Mart offered deep-discount prices on three in-demand tech products, including the Apple (AAPL) iPad 2. Any shopper in a Wal-Mart store during the one-hour window was guaranteed to get that item at the discount price. If the store ran out, Wal-Mart collected information from the customer and fulfilled the order through the web.

????Pulling that off required coordination all the way from the enterprise level down to the registers at point of sale in all 4,000 stores. Ashe and Terrell said the company was able to pull it off with only 30 days of preparation.