Wal-Mart is one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world today. Its aggressive adoption of information technology to improve logistics and back-office efficiency has been a major source of productivity during the information age. Wal-Mart has a specially designed system in which each store is electronically connected to a secure Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. This is how they are able to track sales and volume of each individual product sold in each store to be able to automatically reorder and stock their inventory.
Because of its heavy investment in information technology, Wal-Mart has worked hard to keep competitors from learning its technological secrets. Wal-Mart has filed several trade secrets lawsuits in Arkansas on companies that have attempted to get to their employees such as Amazon.com. However, Wal-Mart shares many of its secrets with the United States government, specifically the Pentagon. Wal-Mart collaborates with the Pentagon in the Total Information Awareness System, part of the Homeland Security Bill. Because over one hundred million Americans visit a Wal-Mart store each week, it has become a human analysis trap, analyzing transactions from credit card purchases to security cameras to find patterns that might indicate unusual activity. A surprising fact stated in the article that supports human transaction analysis is when “Federal officials in their investigation of the 9/11 hijackers discovered through video cameras and inventory sales records that a couple of the hijackers had shopped at a Wal-Mart where they purchased box cutters.” In the near future, it would not be surprising if systems using facial recognition could allow the tracking of purchases even of cash customers. Within hours of the World Trade Center towers collapsing, top executives at Wal-Mart and officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were in contact. Wal-Mart agreed to divert several truckloads of materials, including bottled water, work boots for rescue workers, and cots, to the rescue effort in New York City. This accentuates Wal-Mart’s generosity and patriotism in a money hungry world.
Wal-Mart’s single flaw lies with its relationship with its small communities. Even though it generates well over two hundred billion dollars each year, having over 3,500 stores and over 1.5 million employees, “Wal-Mart is beset with union battles and workers’ lawsuits not to mention citizens’ groups who bemoan the retailer’s impact on local culture and mom-and-pop businesses.” Through whatever hostilities the company faces, critics could never diminish Wal-Mart’s magnitude in the marketplace.
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Wal-Mart has become one of the most successful companies in the world, staying faithful to their slogan, "Save Money. Live Better". It is not surprising to hear that they have kept technological secrets from their competitors in order to stay ahead of the game and keep their customers, but, what does surprise me is their collaboration with the government with a human analysis trap. Although this seems to be a great idea in order to detect unusual activity, I wonder how realistic it is in preventing incidents from occurring in the future. Such examples include the purchase of box cutters by the hijackers before the attack on 9/11. How can we assume that when a customer is buying a dangerous device from Wal-Mart, that it will be used for something as horrible as a terrorist attack? It doesn't seem plausible. But, if in fact, the securities can prevent mishaps in the future through facial recognition in the camera systems, then more power to them.
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