ON COMING TECHNOLOGIES

CIO: What do you see coming in retail technology in the next five years?

Turner: I'm excited about the future. There will be some great opportunities in storage. We will have ubiquitous storage within the next three years that will help us truly drive anywhere-anytime-anything computing, which is very important for our business. I think that wireless will continue to be exploited, and at some point our customers will walk into one of our stores or a Sam's Club and use their own device on our network to accomplish whatever they want. We're in the process of building an infrastructure that will enable that.

Radio frequency identification is also exciting, and we're working with MIT on the development of "cheap chips". I think that you will see cheap chips replace barcodes over time, and we'll be able to intelligently drive the supply chain through what's on the shelf and what's in the back without our associates having to verify it.

Voice over IP will certainly take off and will lower costs and help us all from an infrastructure standpoint. We all know what it's like today when an associate moves or transfers and you have to change the phones. They'll simply be able to take the phone with them, plug it back in, and everything will be working without any systemic changes.

I think voice recognition's time will come in the next three years. We have not scratched the surface with this technology in retail and certainly not yet at Wal-Mart. We are using some voice recognition technology in our distribution centres, but I think you will continue to see more and more areas where it's exploited, and it will eliminate the need for some of the mobile computing we do in our stores, clubs and distribution centres today.

CIO: What about the future of your custom applications?

Turner: From a development standpoint, I think the biggest opportunity we have is leveraging information. In the future, we should actually be simulating our business with an inductive model versus a deductive model to determine our opportunities to maximise sales before the actual event occurs. An example would be, say, that we start running Easter [simulations] in December so that we can better prepare and know what the Easter business will look like. We're really excited about the potential for predictive information and simulation.

We've also got a strategic initiative going on with self-service. We are working to provide self-service technology for our associates, prospective associates, customers and members, and to eliminate paper and paper forms. Having an associate portal and devices on our sales floors will let customers and members get product information, and let us do computer-assisted selling.

CIO: What is your process for evaluating new technologies?

Turner: We leverage a lot of different fronts. We're plugged into the research and development labs of all of our key suppliers, whether it be Cisco, IBM, NCR, AT&T or HP. We spend a lot of time in Bell Labs, research centres and other places helping influence where we might go in the future.

We also have a team of people that helps us do proof of concept and pilot key technologies that could be coming in the future. We need to look at the technology in a pilot environment so we can really understand its ramifications or benefits.

And everybody is expected to be an expert in the industry or business that they're in, and we rely on them to make sure that we hear about all the ideas that come together, especially those that come from the people who actually do the work.

CIO: How do you do that? Say somebody in the IS group somewhere has an idea for something. How does it get to you?

Turner: Just walk up and tell me. It's a very open environment. As an example, we will have training sessions or grassroots sessions with key [internal] customers where we break down their area to see what we can do better and how we can do it. We're proactively looking for those things that can help us change our company. And when you get proactive, you can play offence as opposed to defence where you're reacting to a set of issues. Proactively driving a set of strategies or driving a set of new initiatives helps get those customers on your side. They believe that they are part of the process and that you are there to help.