AI-driven stakeholder collaboration: How Walmart built a community of policy-makers

Traditional engagement methods are limited in their ability to deliver quantitative and qualitative data simultaneously 

Traditional engagement methodologies focus on either going deep, primarily through focus groups, or going wide, using surveys to arrive a statistically significant data. Furthermore, surveys and focus groups in practice don’t facilitate real-time feedback for participating stakeholders, making the interactions unidirectional. Howspace’s AI-powered platform allows the Walmart public policy team to simultaneously go deep and wide with large cohorts of stakeholders and capture the full scope of the participants’ lived experience.

Luis Renta, Manager at Walmart PolicyLab, emphasized the need for a more effective approach:

“If you really believe in listening and co-creating with this group, you have to figure out a way to actually engage via a method that makes their contributions not only valuable to us, but valuable to them.”

Additionally, Walmart PolicyLab encountered issues with:

• Long iterative feedback loops, where valuable insights were lost due to the delayed analysis process.
• The challenge of scaling conversations to engage hundreds of thousands of stakeholders effectively.
• Overcoming skepticism that stakeholder input was merely being extracted without tangible benefits.

“If you really believe in listening and co-creating with this group, you have to figure out a way to actually engage via a method that makes their contributions not only valuable to us, but valuable to them.”

Real-time feedback and AI analysis enable deeper insights

To address these challenges, Walmart PolicyLab implemented Howspace, an AI-powered platform designed to facilitate large-scale discussions and enhance stakeholder collaboration. The platform enabled:

• Real-time interaction and feedback, ensuring immediate engagement.
• Integration of qualitative and quantitative insights, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of stakeholder perspectives.
• AI-driven analysis, summarizing large volumes of responses and identifying sentiment.
• Cross-referencing of viewpoints, enabling deeper insights and inclusive decision-making.
• A collaborative space, where stakeholders could engage with one another, fostering a sense of community and shared purpose.

With the help of Howspace, the public policy team moved from traditional data collection to dynamic, co-creative engagement, ensuring that stakeholder contributions were not just recorded but actively valued.

Towards more inclusive, People-Powered Policymaking (P3)

“I knew that the system would work the moment I saw the cascading responses to questions and how people were reacting to each other.”

Howspace has played a crucial role in redefining what is possible in stakeholder engagement, using AI to move the frontier. AI has empowered Walmart’s public policy team to engage innovatively with stakeholders, making the co-creation of public policy efficient and inclusive. This transformation has led to:

• A more inclusive policymaking process, where stakeholders feel heard and valued.
• Accelerated feedback loops preserve the momentum and “magic” of initial discussions.
• Enhanced engagement, as stakeholders now interact with each other and contribute to meaningful conversations.

Luis highlighted the power of real-time engagement:

“I knew that the system would work the moment I saw the cascading responses to questions and how people were reacting to each other.”

With Howspace, Walmart’s public policy team is working to transform decision making, focused on becoming a facilitator of diverse, community-driven decisions. The AI-powered summarization ensures that meaningful feedback is quickly identified and acted upon, making the policymaking process more agile and responsive.

Curious to see how Howspace can support your stakeholder engagement? Book a demo today and discover the power of Howspace for yourself.