Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face a shortage that no supply chain can restock: the time spent performing administrative and operational tasks that, while vital, do little to enhance the customer or associate experience. A recent survey of 500 small business leaders by Walmart Business, the retailer’s omnichannel division for businesses and nonprofits, found that approximately 40% of their work week was taken up with these tasks.
Relieving that time pressure with features such as automated ordering of supplies and advanced procurement tools is one of the key goals of Walmart Business, according to the division’s SVP and General Manager Ashley Hubka, who shared her take on SMBs’ biggest current challenges and what they’re likely to encounter in 2026.
Retail TouchPoints (RTP): What are the biggest current operational and overall business challenges for SMBs?
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Ashley Hubka: Leaders of these organizations have a lot on their plates; they’re wearing a lot of different hats, but the creativity, flexibility and adaptability they show, particularly with time pressures, is really impressive. They are definitely time-constrained, because their customers are expecting really clear communications, faster and faster service and increasing personalization — they expect the businesses they use to know them. They might even expect more personalization from a smaller company than from a bigger brand. So we’re always asking, how do these SMBs get more efficient, and how do they use technology to do so?
RTP: Are there challenges that are specific to the retail sector of SMBs?
Hubka: One of the things we’re all mindful of this time of year is inventory. Retailers want enough to avoid disruptions and keep operations running, ensuring they’re in stock for holiday demand. But they also don’t want to overstock, because that means they will have higher storage and carrying costs and can risk spoilage [of perishable items].
Then the question becomes, how do the SMBs work with suppliers to minimize these pressures and add options? Maybe they need to stock up on customer-facing items, for example, but they could cut back on office supplies or cleaning supplies. SMBs want to have good suppliers who can be very responsive when you quickly need something.
RTP: How does Walmart Business help with executing on these decisions?
Hubka: Let’s take the example of how you manage your purchasing. With Walmart Business, you can put items on a subscription, to be delivered in the quantities and the cadence that you want. So, for example, if you’re a local coffee shop, you could get cups and paper goods delivered on a regular cadence. But if the shop runs out of milk in a late afternoon rush, the SMB can get on the Walmart Business website or app and have it delivered. We can have it to them in less than three hours, in many places in less than one hour, thanks to our 4,600 stores that are within easy reach of 90% of the U.S. population.
Additionally, Walmart Business purchasing and procurement tools allow SMBs to create a list that “lives” in their account, like their weekly order for office supplies or monthly order for cleaning supplies. They also have the ability to set spending limits and designate who approves purchases, to spread out the purchasing responsibility but still retain, as an owner or leader, control of who’s purchasing, what they’re purchasing and how much they’re spending.
RTP: What are some other resources that are available to SMBs?
Hubka: We have communities of practice, a cross-industry group of other business owners — with just one of each type of business [to avoid competitive issues] — that’s plugged into the local community. It’s a place where participants can learn, share best practices and make referrals to each other.
There are other communities SMBs can belong to that are industry- or vertical-specific, and that can help with things like tapping into social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. You could learn [social media skills] from someone else who had started their business five years ago, using digital media to learn from others in the industry.
There’s also AI, which is proving to be really powerful with the free and low-cost tools available — $20 per month is affordable for SMBs. And I’ve seen a shift, from people using AI to do their own work on an ad hoc basis to people using it to do collective work on a systemic basis. So while individually you might ask an AI tool about your own writing, SMBs can move toward taking this data and making recommendations for your business. In the coffee shop example, it could be used to analyze usage of coffee cups and discover which day of the week you had to order more. It’s operational in a really pragmatic way to [use AI] to be able to say, “That’s where we should set our subscription level.”
RTP: What do you see on the horizon for SMBs in 2026?
Hubka: The environment is always changing, and the only constant is change, but we’re adapting — SMBs are really exemplars of being adaptable and flexible. We have seen from our survey that SMBs are making growth a top priority: nearly 50% of SMBs and nonprofits plan to increase investments in sales and marketing this coming year. It will be a customer-facing, revenue-generating cycle of investment with an emphasis on growth.
SMBs also will continue to prize flexibility in areas such as price and service. They’re looking for it in their tools and their vendors/suppliers and partners — that ability to tailor to the flexibilities of how the SMB needs to operate.
I also think the trend toward speed will continue to accelerate, both specifically around speed of delivery and more broadly around speed of response. Everyone’s expectations have ratcheted up, and our customers are contending with this challenge: to deliver on the speed expectations of their customer.
