Many companies are exploring generative AI, but it’s still early days for the technology, which only became widely known in November 2022. GenAI shows great promise, but will the hype translate to ROI?

For Walmart, it already has. During its last earnings call, the giant retailer reported 4.8% YoY revenue growth, bolstered by 21% growth in its e-commerce function. Walmart executives credited e-commerce growth to several factors, including improvements in deliveries, but one stood out: generative AI.

Walmart was able to roll out these AI tools relatively quickly because of its prior investments in technology, Anshu Bhardwaj, SVP and COO of Walmart Global Technology and Walmart Commerce Technologies, told CFO Brew.

For the past several years, Walmart has focused on “platformizing” its technology, she said, bringing it onto its machine learning platform, called Element. The platform provides a “base level of capabilities and functionality” with governance, compliance, security, and ethical safeguards built in, Bhardwaj said.

Checkin’ out that catalog: Walmart’s product catalog is a vital piece of its operations—it’s what customers use to find products and how the company tracks inventory and delivery orders. Over the past few years, the catalog has expanded as the retailer increased the number of sellers and items for sale, especially online. Populating and cleaning up the catalog is a huge task, but recently Walmart’s gotten an assist from generative AI. It used “multiple large language models” to “create or improve over 850 million pieces of data,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said during an earnings call, a task that would have taken “nearly 100 times the current headcount to complete in the same amount of time.”

For more on how Walmart is leveraging GenAI, click here.—CV

It can be a challenge, especially for growing companies that have to make difficult trade-offs as they balance spending for next-day wins aaand long-haul prosperity.

That’s why Brex is here to help. Brex offers corporate cards, expenses, bill pay, and travel on one AI-powered platform and is used by tens of thousands of companies looking to boost control, earnings, and speed.

Curious about what Brex can really do for you? They can help you:

• Direct spend exactly where you want.
• Automate and streamline financial busywork.
• Prioritize real-time visibility into your spending.
• Earn more every time you spend with high-value rewards.

Make every dollar count with Brex.

When Kabir Ahmed Shakir joined Tata Communications as CFO in 2020, he found the company mired in what he called “satisfactory underperformance.” The Tata Group, a massive Indian conglomerate, had bought the telecommunications company from the Indian government in 2002, and it was still largely stuck in slow-growth mode. But Shakir and CEO Amur Lakshminarayanan jump-started the company with a bold new strategy.

A hard reset: In 2020, Tata Communications was mired in a phase of “low- to mid-, sometimes mid- to high-single digit growth, low profitability, low ROIC,” Shakir told CFO Brew. “For donkey’s years, this company had negative net worth.”

Shakir and Lakshminarayanan, who started as CEO in 2019, determined that the organization needed a reset.

“We said, ‘Okay, the only way out of this is to grow,’” Shakir recalled. They launched a new strategy which revolved around “moving away from selling products to selling platforms and solutions,” he said. The plan also included improving financial fitness and making the organization more agile while adopting a go-to-market strategy that involved going “deeper with fewer” customers.

Communication technology, Shakir explained, has become the “foot in the door” Tata uses to expand its offerings to its customers. Its goal is to move “up the food chain” and no longer be thought of as simply a “dumb” pipeline provider, he said; it now also offers such solutions as unified communications as a service, cloud platforms, IoT capabilities, and more.

For more on how Tata Communications is driving growth, click here.—CV

Designer Wylie Robinson and a friend had a brainstorm one night, waiting to be rescued when their car broke down in the snow: Why not make blankets out of the same puffy, insulated material as the sleeping bags that were keeping them warm? They developed what became known as the Rumpl blanket.

The blankets, marketed for camping and other outdoor recreation, were a hit. The founders raised almost a quarter million dollars during their first Kickstarter campaign. But the outdoor boom during the pandemic really kicked Rumpl into high gear: Its revenue grew 500% between 2020 and 2022, Robinson said.

But as the company reaches its tenth anniversary, it’s rolling out a new-and-improved Rumpl. What’s more, the new Rumpls will cost less than the previous version, and have lower margins. Though the decision is not without risk, Robinson, the company’s CEO, believes it will position Rumpl for higher sales.

Outfoxing the copycats: Why alter a beloved “hero product,” and potentially disgruntle its fans? In a word, Amazon.

Once Rumpl became popular, Robinson told CFO Brew, other companies began selling similar blankets. Some of the imitations came from established outdoor brands, but the biggest threat Rumpl faced was from “direct-from-factory Amazon competitors,” Robinson said. “They modeled the entire form factor and feature set off ours,” he said, down to the hang loops that exist solely to attach tags to. Robinson decided a redesign would help Rumpl “reset the bar” for the puffy blanket category and set itself apart from competitors.

Click here to read how Rumpl is dealing with an increasingly competitive market.—CV

Under control. Old systems for planning, spending, and tracking company spend are disconnected and put finance teams on defense. But there’s a better way. Brex is an AI-powered spend platform built to help finance teams make every dollar count with proactive controls, powerful automation, and high-value rewards. Learn more.