WAL-MART

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart

Paper 1

Title: The Customer Service Perspective

Module: Module 2

Class: Business Integrated Projects

Paper: Case Assignment

Number of Pages: 4

A strategy-oriented organization for managing a great strategy will need something more than determining strategies for business. In order to maximize efficiency, the strategies and standards of evaluation of all these units should be converged and linked with each other. These links are considered as the strategic architecture of an organization. An outstanding strategy at macro level of a company includes a system being made of interlined components precisely (William 2006).

The model of balanced scorecard (BSC) for units of common services defines an opportunity of integrity and synergy and creates that. This model shows that how these organizations create value. The model of balanced scorecard (BSC) gives its attention to intangible assets in addition to tangible assets and finally the strategies of an organization are classified in four domains of financial, customer, internal processes, growth and learning.

The selected company is Wal-mart. The company operates retail stores in different formats worldwide. In United States of America, the retail formats implemented by the company include supercenters, discount stores, neighborhood markets, and Sam's Clubs. In the global arena, the company operates in El Salvador, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Brazil, China, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Japan, Puerto Rico, Mexico, India, Nicaragua, and the United Kingdom.

The company's headquarter is located in Bentonville, Arkansas. As of today, the company employs nearly 2.1 million people. Since operating in a highly competitive international market, the company is experiencing several risks, including market risk, commodity risk, foreign exchange risk and interest rate risk (Soderquist 2005).

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world with over $400 billion in annual revenues and fast approaching 10,000 stores across the globe. The company primarily operates supercenters, followed by wholesale warehouse clubs and also is testing a smaller store format for urban areas, which the company has yet to penetrate. Groceries account for roughly half of total sales with the other half in general merchandise that includes items in hardliners, apparel, health and wellness, entertainment, and home goods.

Analysis

This framework which is shown in Figure 1 (Vance et al. 1994) presents instruments and methods which are appropriate for types of organizations (in various sizes). It helps with strategists to identify, evaluate and choose strategies. This framework (Figure 1) has five main stages including:

i) Starting stage

In this stage, the mission of an organization is determined and its vision and mission statement are prepared.

ii) Input stage

At this stage, the necessary main data are specified for the development of strategies. This stage includes the formation of the matrixes of external factor evaluation (EFE) and internal factor evaluation (IFE). It is likely that more knowledge about the input and output of organization will lead to change of mission of organization even during the process of strategic management. The data which is obtained at this stage (input stage) gives a base to compare and consider different strategy options, assess them and select the best strategy (Troy ...