Store Assist Overview

Walmart’s Store Assist provides an order management, picking, dispense, and pickup technology that works at a variety of picking, dispense, and pickup locations and methods.

Store Assist seamlessly integrates with the Store Assist store app that client personnel use. Client employees will know when a customer is coming to the client location, be prepared for the customer’s arrival, and dispense the customer’s order quickly and efficiently. Shoppers will know what items customers ordered, pick the correct items or comparable substitutions, and stage the items—whether for pickup or delivery—so customers can receive what they ordered.

Store Assist offers a variety of requests, webhooks, and prepackaged features to enable software integration. Using these tools, client developers can amend existing software to offer accurate and reliable order create and cancel management, payment authentication, and order updates. These tools ultimately allow client store employees to have orders ready for handoff with minimal customer wait time.

Businesses across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada use the Store Assist solution to offer customers a fast and reliable pickup and delivery experience. Checkin and Dispense (a key component of Store Assist) has helped scale Walmart’s U.S. grocery pickup and delivery business.

Feature Highlights

Store Assist is made of the Picking and the Checkin & Dispense components. Picking is the process in which the order is fulfilled (at the store or through delivery). Checkin & Dispense focuses on offering customer arrival detection to employees while reducing customer wait time. Features vary by component.

Picking Features

The list below displays all available Picking features in Store Assist. The features available for each client depend on the details the client provides.

Single Order and Multi-Order Picks: This Store Assist Picking component improves picking efficiency by letting shoppers work on one or more orders simultaneously.
Substitutions: This Store Assist Picking component manages substitutions by letting shoppers manually pick substitutions or use the Smart Substitutions Engine to suggest recommendations for items/products. Customers can review (approve/reject) these substitutions.
Prepackaged Exceptions and Alerts: This Store Assist Picking component manages provides customers with live fulfillment updates through in-app push, email, or Short Message Service (SMS).
Express Order Fulfillment: This Store Assist Picking component helps shoppers pick items in customer orders quickly and accurately. Store Assist ensures this by providing item image and location details, verification through barcode Universal Product Code (UPC) scan, and item quantity validation. Further, the Pick Path Optimization Engine assists shoppers with order priority, navigation in the physical retail space (in other words, the most efficient paths to collect items), and order batching.
User-Friendly iOS and Android App: This Store Assist Picking component can be downloaded from an app/play store or embedded into the existing employee or shopper device. This app supports a variety of shoppers, including store employees, crowdsourced works, and third-party contractors.
Staging: This Store Assist Picking component relates to the physical space in the store where orders are kept before they are dispensed or handed off to the customers.

Checkin & Dispense Features

The list below displays all available Checkin & Dispense features in Store Assist.

Accurate Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA): This Store Assist Checkin & Dispense component uses estimated time of arrival (ETA) to help client employees detect when the customer will be approaching the client store.
Arrival Detection: This Store Assist Checkin & Dispense component accurately detects the customer’s arrival and allows the store to coordinate order preparation, which saves time and allows a smoother pickup experience.
Identification Options: This Store Assist Checkin & Dispense component allows the customer to provide vehicle details and parking space number so that a store employee can coordinate more effectively with the customer.
Notification Support: During the customer’s trip, this Store Assist Checkin & Dispense component continually identifies the customer’s location and sends notifications to the store employee to prepare the order and have it ready.

Training Mode Features

Training mode allows the tenant to use the existing Store Assist app to train store associates on different features and capabilities. Retailers can place training orders, and associates can use the same app to process these training orders without impacting real customer orders.

Stay in Touch

Contact an assigned account manager for more information about technical questions, bugs, comments, and learning more about the Store Assist product.

Terminology

The following terms are used in Walmart Store Assist.

Term	Description
BOPIS	BOPIS is Buy Online Pick up In Store, a term used interchangeably with Store Assist.
Checkin Identifier	A checkin identifier is an identifier that Checkin generates to manage the checkin lifecycle. Checkin considers a customer checkin to be valid for the current day only, meaning it expires at midnight.
Container Consolidation	Container consolidation is the process where associates combine ordered items from multiple containers (totes) into fewer containers in an effort to save space.
Container Deconsolidation	Container deconsolidation is the process where associates obtain one or more new containers (totes) to redistribute an overflow of ordered items from existing containers.
Dispense	Dispense is a milestone in the fulfillment process where the order is handed over in the store/location to the customer, driver, third-party or contractor for pickup or delivery.
Location	Location is a synonym for store. See Store for more.
Nilpick	Nilpick is an indicator that a line item (or portion thereof) cannot be fulfilled.
Order Identifier	An order identifier is an identifier that the client generates for its orders, also known as order number in some components.
Order Lines	Order lines are the various lines in a multi-item order, each with a line number, quantity, or substitution allow/disallow.
Picking	Picking is the process a shopper goes through when gathering customer-ordered items in the store/location.
Pick List	A pick list is a grouped list of line items that contain a subset of items from one or more orders that may or may not contain sequentially ordered item locations.
Pickup Point	A pickup point is any destination location where a customer is enroute to pick up an order.
Pick Walk	A pick walk is the process in which a pick list is fulfilled, usually traveling from location to location within a store according to the items in a pick list. Sometimes the term pick walk is used interchangeably with pick list. A pick walk is typically an extended version of the pick list that recommends a specific sequence in which associates visit the item locations.
Quality Check	A quality check is a Store Assist component that lets pickers systematically check the quality of picked items.
Receiver	The receiver is the individual to whom the order is dispensed. The term is synonymous with the term customer.
Shopper	A shopper is a store employee, crowdsourced worker, or third-party contractor who picks items on a customer order. Also known as a picker.
Store	A store is where the fulfillment (picking, packing, and more) happens. It is also known as a location.
Store Assist	Store Assist is a program that is also known as Fulfillment as a Service.
Tenant	A tenant is a user of Store Assist/commercialization that will be provided isolation at the interfaces to access Store Assist.
Unpick	Unpick is the act of removing a picked item, post-pick, and replacing it with another, customer-approved item.