APA formatting for in-text citations and for your reference list Company is Walmart Inc., 1000 Words (Not including Reference page) Please include Reference Page with all utilized References (APA Format) Times New Roman Text, 12 size font, Double Spaced Implementation of Strategic Options: For this assignment you will develop an implementation plan for the actions you proposed in the previous assignment. For the current assignment please address the following items: What are the major actions and investments the company will need to take in order to implement the strategic plan? Major actions could include things like making acquisitions, forming new strategic alliances, building or updating facilities, major technological changes, organizational restructuring, divestments, and other large scale actions related to a particular strategic initiative. What additional actions will need to be taken in order to ensure that the major actions discussed previously go smoothly? Such actions may include things like gaining access to investment capital, hiring new talent, making sure that the strategic initiative and the associated changes are understood throughout the company, training or retraining employees, due diligence in the case of acquisitions or partnerships, and other supporting activities relevant to implementing the strategic initiative. Provide some time estimates for completion of the components of your plan. You should include a timeline or a Gantt chart to provide a visual representation of the implementation plan. Running Head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART Strategic Management- Challenges, and Guiding Policy and Set for Coherent Actions: Wal-Mart Student’s Name Professor’s Name Course Title Date of Submission STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART 2 Diagnosis of the challenge State the challenge While Wal-Mart implemented the principles of lean and agile design in its supply chain management (SCM) (Jawad, 2017) as a means of process optimization to reduce costs, the company has had problems with this strategic design. This has happened through incurring more additional costs, the lack of immediate tests for their solutions, and varied interests between the individual shareholder perspectives (Interaction Design Foundation, 2018; Ignatius, 2017). This has seen the company shift their brand appeal over the last decade to appeal high-income consumers (Interaction Design Foundation, 2018). For example, they rebranded to launch a highfashion campaign (Interaction Design Foundation, 2018), ventured into e-commerce but ended up being late (Ignatius, 2017), started stocking all different customer products and it receiving massive competition in analytics and customer understanding, a field that is had a competitive edge on (Ignatius, 2017). Provide evidence about the importance of this challenge – why is this the main challenge The lean and agile design in SCM is a huge benefit for organizations that seek to minimize costs and optimize their processes (Jawad, 2017) but in order to be successful, companies must be strategic in their implementation more so by focusing on integrating Agile methodology and systems thinking as the principals in SCM (Interaction Design Foundation, 2018) According to Rigby, Day, Forrester and Burnett (2000:181) “These systems analysis and redesign methods are excellent at describing and modeling the physical flow of materials, inventory a data a demand patters”. International Design Foundation (2018) gives a success example with Rodale Inc., a publishing company that benefitted from such collaboration and STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART 3 reclaimed its lost revenue of $50 million and improved its customer satisfaction from a D to an A. Discuss the company’s current position relative to competitors in addressing this challenge According to an interview with Doug McMillion the CEO of the firm, the company has implemented various strategies in order to recover its competitive advantage of being a leader in analytics, customer understanding through re-strategizing its agile methodology. According to the Harvard Business Review article, the company is improving its digital and technical talents in this big data era in order to provide new and continuous technological skills that will help in continuous improvement of its strategy in SCM while competing with main competitors such as Amazon. It has also initiated the Agile Product Development platforms which help in real-time monitoring of the supply chain, product testing, user feedback while setting a stage for the company’s massive entry into Artificial Intelligence (Woods, 2017). Guiding policy Wal-Mart’s Guiding Policy Wal-Mart has different strategies as well as policies for each of its business unit which might not conform to the Statement of Ethics (Wal-Mart, Global Statement of Ethics, p3). However, there is one conspicuous and overriding policy, the Low-cost Sustainable Product Strategy/policy which feeds the agile methodology that the company has implemented in its SCM. This policy recognizes the demand for a systemic index which can be used to define measure as well as compare product sustainability in the market. This involves the integration of practices that help in proper design operational processes to reduce costs and using materials that are offered by natural resources while optimizing the processes of production. The broader packaging initiate by the company presents shared values that direct to value innovations in its STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART 4 sustainability program. Wal-Mart has identified the reduction of packaging and transportation costs as the major dimensions of achieving low-cost sustainability. This then brings in the idea of agile methodology into perspective. How this Policy has Shaped Past Strategic Choices This policy has dynamically shaped Wal-Mart’s choices both positively and negatively. In the positive aspect, the yearn to achieve sustainability brought about the creation of various internet ions such as The Sustainability Consortium 2009-2015which was aimed at designing and developing holistic public standards which would be used to measure product sustainability (Spicer & Hyatt, 2017). However, this strategy faced a lot of limitations, for example, member companies had to incur transaction costs of reporting, auditing and well as communicating the product sustainability information despite the intervention (Spicer & Hyatt, 2017). The company then implemented the Sustainability Leaders program which aimed to offer leadership on guidelines to use to achieve low-cost product sustainability. It also promoted the establishment of the supplier-focused strategy which works with suppliers to encourage low-cost innovation. (Spicer & Hyatt, 2017)However, the challenge with this strategy is that it solely works with the suppliers without close consideration of customer preferences thus calling for a balance between the customer-facing and supplier facing sustainability initiatives (Spicer & Hyatt, 2017). How this policy applies to address the current challenge. The Low-cost Sustainable Product Strategy/policy is a good directive for the achievement of SCM sustainability (Spicer & Hyatt, 2017). This policy led to the development of agile methodology as strategic outreach to the organization’s SCM process optimization and cost reduction. It has helped in refocusing on what intervention to integrate into the methodology with Wal-Mart opting for the Agile Product Development intervention that focuses on STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART 5 optimizing product flow and manufacture (Woods, 2017). It has also helped the company to focus on sustainability measures across its operations and not in the SCM alone by considering systems thinking although the company remains a long way out on this. Set of Coherent Actions Strategic Action Plan One of the most applicable strategic actions that would empower the company’s policy is integrating the collaboration between system thinking and agile methodology. Systems thinking will help the organization understand the relationship between the different components and problems even in different business units while the agile methodology will help in improving solutions. What Wal-Mart lacks as International Design Foundation (2018) puts it is lack of immediate test of a solution and immediate identification of its root cause. This can only be done by considering the relationships that the solution has on other organizational facets which can be easily attained through system thinking. After identification of this relationship, it then becomes easy to integrate agile methodology to influence these solutions. What Wal-Mart is trying to achieve as well as specific actions that can be taken to achieve this Wal-Mart is trying to achieve a holistic approach towards attaining its goal of achieving low-cost sustainable products. It is trying to do this by devising various sustainability projects programs and interventions which are not delivering as expected. Wal-Mart needs to consider a design approach in its agile methodology. This involves the integration of systems thinking with the agile methodology. This involves various steps: (i) Breaking information into nodes and links STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART (ii) Visualizing information by sketching it in physical space in order to understand the systems at hand and the relationships (iii) Collaboration through stakeholder participation and involvement (iv) Fast release of solutions to encourage user feedback (v) Iteration of the feedback and determination of changes needed to improve the solutions. Describe how these actions address the challenge and fit with the guiding policy. These actions follow a sequential process from identifying the real problem and its root cause, identifying possible solutions, involving stakeholders, gaining feedback and using this feedback to improve the process/products. This cycle helps in a multifaceted problem-solving strategy. 6 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART 7 References Ignatius, A (2017) “We Need People to Lean into the Future” Harvard Business Review, Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/03/we-need-people-to-lean-into-the-future Interaction Design Foundation (2018) Wicked Problems: 5 Steps to Help You Tackle Wicked Problems by Combining Systems Thinking with Agile Methodology, Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/wicked-problems-5-steps-to-helpyou-tackle-wicked-problems-by-combining-systems-thinking-with-agile-methodology Jawad, S (2017) A Literature Analysis of Wal-Mart-s Supply Chain Excellence in Term of Integration, Distribution, and Operations (Bachelor Thesis). Available from Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences Database Kumari, E., & Tewari, V (20-18) Strategic Management of Wal-Mart, Research Journal of Social Sciences, 11(1): 32-36 Rigby, C., Day, M., Forrester, P., & Burnett, J. (2000). Agile Supply: Rethinking systems thinking, systems practice, International Journal of Agile Management Systems, 2/3 (20000): 178-186. Spicer, A., & Hyatt, D (2017) Wal-Mart’s Emergent Low-Cost Sustainable Product Strategy, California Management Review, 1-26. DOI:10.117/0008125617695287, G Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Global Statement of Ethics, Retrieved from https://www.walmartethics.com/content/dam/walmartethics/documents/statement_of_ethi cs/Walmart_Statement_of_Ethics_English.pdf STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART 8 Woods, D (2017) Real-Time Feedback: Agile Product Development at Wal-Mart, Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2017/04/18/real-time-feedbackagile-product-development-at-walmart/#580f83647559 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-WALMART Appendices Appenix1: Wal-Mart’s SFAS Table Matrix 9
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