Operational Tactics and Strategic Goals Presentation

Structure Follows Strategy –SWOT

Emma Trevino

March 14, 2018

Jill Patterson

Introduction

In the management of the finances of a business, the operations have to be taken into consideration. Any business that works with strategic management in mind has to be considerate of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; this necessitates SWOT analysis conduction at least at the end of every quarter. A SWOT analysis refers to a framework for the identification and due analysis of the internal and external factors that can have an influence on the practicability of a business’ scheme or products. This paper will give invaluable insights on the SWOT Analysis of Wal-Mart and document company details from an interview conducted on the leader or manager of the organization.

Wal-Mart; an Overview

Wal-Mart is the largest discount retailer in the globe. The corporation started out as a very small chain of departmental stores in the rural United States. It was founded by Samuel Walton in the year 1962 and presently is one of the biggest employers in the United States (Kinicki, Williams, Scott-Ladd & Perry, 2014). The store has many a time been criticized for running small-scale "mom and pop" stores out of business with its very low prices. A multitude of the stores belonging to Wal-Mart are deemed Super Wal-Marts and they basically offer automotive repair shops and grocery stores for customers.

Interview

Doug McMillon is the president and the CEO of Walmart Incorporation. I chose to interview him because I needed an individual who was well versed in the ins and outs of the departmental store chain. Doug helped in presenting a well thought out description of the company, his opinion on company finances and the relationship it has with customers, suppliers, employees, and the community at large.

Interview Questionnaire

The interview is composed of open-ended questions which aim to get as much information as possible from the interviewee. They are shown below:

· What are the primary strengths of Wal-Mart?

· What are the opportunities at the predisposition of the company?

· What opportunities does Wal-Mart foresee itself pursuing?

· What are the weaknesses of Wal-Mart?

· How does competition manifest itself in Wal-Mart?

· What threats haunt the management of Wal-Mart?

· What are strategies for growth and developmentis Wal-Mart pursuing?

SWOT Analysis-Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart’s Strengths

With respect, the SWOT analysis of, the strengths of Wal-Mart is all relative to the size of the business. These strengths give the company the capability to withstand threats irrespective of all its weaknesses. The strengths of Wal-Mart that better its chances at further global growth include a large global organization size; a global supply chain; and a high-efficiency supply chain.

Walmart’s world organizational size gives the firm a lot of profits to fund expansion and growth. The world supply chain also offers the company business resilience from risks that are market-specific (Lombardo, 2017). Moreover, the supply chain of Walmart has a high efficiency due to advanced technologies for the monitoring and controlling the movement of supplies from suppliers to its stores.

Weaknesses of Wal-Mart

The weaknesses of Wal-Mart impose challenges on the ability of the company to withstand threats such as competition. These weaknesses bear a direct relationship to the genetic strategy of the company. Wal-Mart also makes use of the cost leadership generic strategy, which presents thin profit margins and easily copied business models among other things.

Opportunities for Wal-Mart

As a company, the departmental store chain enjoys opportunities that are centered on improvement and expansion of corporate practices. These chances are connected to the world’s economic state of affairs. Moreover, the human resource management condition in the firm brings forth chances for continuous improvement. The opportunities for Wal-Mart are the betterment of human resource management, expansion in developing countries, and improvement in quality standards.

Threats Troubling Wal-Mart

The threats to Wal-Mart as a business are connected to the condition of the retail market and the alterations in the tastes, perceptions, and preferences of customers regarding the products that they pursue. The threats should compel Wal-Mart to take up some strategic changes that are competitive in the industry. Within the framework of this particular tool i.e. SWOT analysis, all the market pressures to Wal-Mart are cutthroat rivalry, in the pink lifestyle trends, and small-scale/individual e-commerce selling.

SWOT Analysis Summary

Wal-Mart enjoys a considerable amount of corporate strength given that it has an online presence and a lot of brick and mortar stores all over the world. The company’s organizational size enables it to secure a lot of clients. Secondly, the supply chain betters the transferability of goods from the stores to retailers; placing goods at the disposition of customers.

The weaknesses of Wal-Mart stem from the fact that the company operates on thin profit margins. Since Wal-Mart reduces its vending prices, it correspondingly requires lessening its income margins and being reliant on amount of sales. The second mover pricing approach ie the cost leadership strategy also makes the corporate strategy of Wal-Mart very easy to replicate. The firm is devoid of meaningful competitive differentiators, save for the grand size of its business.

The opportunity for Wal-Mart to grow and develop in developing nations can be grounded in its high-growth economic condition. On the flip side, the chances that come with HRM practices directly connect to the criticism directed to the company's employment practices (Greenspan, 2015). Wal-Mart's chance to better the quality it presents to customers resonates with considering the health effects of utilizing low-cost an in some instances low-quality products.

Finally, with respect to threats, it is worth mentioning that the healthy lifestyle is an opportunity and a threat. It threatens the business of Wal-Mart since a multitude of goods on the company's product basket are not healthy, natural, or organic. As such, Wal-Mart should watch on the quality that it presents to customers. Other imminent threats that face Wal-Mart's growth and development include aggressive competition especially in the name of e-commerce carried out by small-scale customers (Martínez, Galván & Alam, 2017).

Conclusion

From the SWOT analysis, it becomes clear that the internal and external forces of Wal-Mart are important in the development strategy of the company within the retail sector. In as much as these factors may vary over the course of time, the growth of Wal-Mart is very much dependent on the ability of the departmental store chain to maximize its strengths. In addition to that, notwithstanding of the corporation’s few shortcomings, its strong points are far extra remarkable respects. Wal-Mart can make use of its strong suits to go against the pressures that face its franchise as these are very relevant issues in making sure that the continued leadership of the business as the chief retailer in the planet is maintained.

References

Greenspan, R. (2015). Walmart: Five forces analysis (Porter’s model). Panamore Institute.

Kinicki, A., Williams, B. K., Scott-Ladd, B., & Perry, M. (2014). Management: A practical introduction. McGraw-Hill Education Australia.

Lombardo, J. (2017). Walmart: Organizational Structure & Organizational Culture. Panmore Institute.

Martínez, A. B., Galván, R. S., & Alam, S. (2017). Financial Analysis of Retail Business Organization: A Case of W-/*al-Mart Stores, Inc. Nile Journal of Business and Economics, 3(5), 67-89.