Development of Strategic Plan for Wal-Mart

Introduction3

What is the Ideology of Strategic Management?3

Discussion4

Importance of Strategic Management4

Environmental Scanning5

Strategy Formulation5

Strategy Implementation6

Strategy Evaluation6

The Strategic Position of Wal-Mart7

Overview of Wal-Mart Inc and its Strategies8

Strategies of Wal-Mart9

Cost leadership10

Differentiation10

Focus10

Challenges Faced by the Company11

Financial Resources11

Human Resources12

Physical Resources12

Intellectual or Intangible Resources13

Comprehensive Analysis of Wal-Mart13

SWOT Analysis13

Strengths13

Weaknesses14

Opportunities14

Threats14

Conclusion15

References17

Development of Strategic Plan for Wal-Mart

Introduction

This paper aims at developing a strategic plan for the company Wal-Mart as a management consulting company, in the development of new product line with the expansion of their current production capacity in the local market, together with the globalized impacts. According to Porter, (2002) the main problematic cause lies in the deficiency of characterizing the strategies and the effectiveness of operations. The maintenance of quality with efficiency has a consequence in the techniques and tools of the management. The management of benchmarking the quality, time management, outsourcing, partnering and re-engineering is the main considerations of an organization in its strategic management.

This paper contains in-depth analysis of the company Wal-Mart in terms of its SWOT analysis. These analyses are going to assist the evaluation of the company, yielding the better strategies of management to be followed. The strategic management is the main source of success for the organization. The researchers have proposed several theories in this regard, enduring the existence of the company with proper planning and strategies (Fishman, 2006).

What is the Ideology of Strategic Management?

Strategic management encompasses the steps of analyzing, decisions making, and then acting accordingly pertaining to the sustenance of the competitive advantage within an organization. It contains the analysis of the goals of the company including the mission, vision and objectives of the company, together with the analysis of the organizational environment both internally and externally (Dess, et.al 2005).

The organizations are then required to make decisions strategically. The decision making process entails the thorough consideration of the competency of the market. All the industries in the competitive environment are evaluated in order to attain better competency; then the decisions are taken to maintain the competency with those industries. Similar is the case with the Wal-Mart to consider the competency of the environment at first. This step is greatly important to the organizational existence. Then the organization is supposed to execute the decisions in terms of actions in implementing the strategies (Dess, et.al 2005).

This step demands the allocation of resources in the designing of the organization for bringing the intended decisions in reality. The understanding of competency and the requirement of getting competitive advantage needs to be considered by means of proper evaluation. The organization is supposed to position itself as the producer of low-costs with the development of unique services and products enabling the organization to charge first-rate prices maintaining the quality (Dess, et.al 2005).

Discussion

Importance of Strategic Management

The idea of strategic management is not a new one as numerous researches have been carried out in this regard. The whole management is the cycle of planning and then executing the intended decisions. The process of strategic management is an on-going procedure and practice within an ...