Wal-Mart Pulls Further Ahead with Accenture Training Program

To consolidate its supply chain mastery, a hallmark of high performance, Wal-Mart needed to streamline its stock replenishment system. Accenture developed a custom-made, retail-specific inventory management program for Wal-Mart, drawing on features of the Accenture Supply Chain Academy's inventory program for manufacturers and leveraging its wealth of retail expertise.

Wal-Mart Stores is the world's largest discount retailer, with an enormous network of stores, distribution centers and suppliers. Throughout its 40-year history, the company has grown rapidly, while evolving from a traditional discount chain to include grocery, international and warehouse outlets. Across more than a dozen countries, some 1.3 million Wal-Mart associates serve about 300 million customers every year.

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In 2004, Wal-Mart executives determined that company-wide skills in replenishment were less advanced than those in other areas. Inconsistent processes across regions were common. Leading practices were usually identified through trial and error. And the analytical proficiencies needed to make superior stocking decisions were often unavailable. Perhaps most important, optimal replenishment practices had not been established across stores and departments.

To remedy the problem, Gary Maxwell, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of merchandise replenishment, set out to locate a retail equivalent of the inventory management training programs developed by manufacturing-oriented organizations. No such program existed. But then Maxwell struck up a conversation with Accenture—inquiring whether the latter's widely respected Supply Chain Academy might be able to develop a certification program for retail inventory management. The response was positive: many of the features of Accenture's inventory management program for manufacturers could be transformed for a retail setting. And with thousands of highly experienced retail and supply chain management professionals, Accenture was the optimal partner to help make it happen.

By January 2005, Accenture, Wal-Mart and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) completed an online Retail Supply Chain Certification (RSCC) program for rollout to Wal-Mart suppliers and in-house professionals. The program—more than 50 hours of content representing the best thinking of experts from Accenture, Wal-Mart, more than a dozen universities, RILA and several other professional organizations—is the first of its kind. It consists of 27 courses categorized by:

• Supply Chain Fundamentals.
• Statistics & Probability.
• Forecasting and Planning (e.g., measuring forecast error and variability; demand planning; and rorecasting simulation).
• Inventory Management (e.g., calculating safety stock, inventory management simulation and modeling and fetail cross docking).
• Performance Metrics.
• Collaborative Planning, Forecasting & Replenishment.

After piloting the RSCC with a group of 20 Wal-Mart associates and several suppliers, there was a full-curriculum launch with about 100 Wal-Mart supply chain associates at the company's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters and select locations overseas. From this group, 80 associates were certified.

Accenture's Retail Supply Chain Certification program represents a new level of professional excellence in retail inventory management, as well as a consistent, repeatable process for retailers and retail suppliers.

According to the Retail Industry Leaders Association, "[N]o other [training] program offers such broad content with such extensive depth and global reach." On the supplier side Wal-Mart vendors are better positioned to hire and train good people. And since internal performance metrics and quantification are part of the curriculum, it is not surprising that Wal-Mart-specific benefits have been significant and visible:

• Improved ability to put the right product in the right place at the right time.
• Improved ability to put the right employee in the right job at the right time.
• More advanced technology skills for supporting replenishment.
• Greater consistency in training and skills assessment.
• Increased career-enhancement potential, job satisfaction and workforce retention.
• Better metrics for evaluating replenishment performance.
• Opportunity to use inventory/replenishment/forecasting competencies as market differentiators.