Team Eagle
Dhanish Goswami (15476)
Ning xinping (16825)
Keyi Zhou (16516)
Samjhana lama (14886)
Pravallika Kortaala(18893)
In organizational behavior class, all of the students are intended to learn adapting in diversified environment consisting motley of people, policies and business culture.
Thus, our team Eagle thought, why not starting off with fixing the problem of world’s largest retail organization, Walmart.
Walmart has scrutinized from its ambitions to day to day goals. Narrowing down some of the specialities of Walmart, claimed by the company itself, following are the major ones.
Everyday low prices on a broad assortment – anytime, anywhere.
“Every Day Low Price (EDLP) is the cornerstone of our strategy, and our price focus has never been stronger. Today's customer seeks the convenience of one-stop shopping that we offer. From grocery and entertainment to sporting goods and crafts, we provide the deep assortment that our customers appreciate — whether they're shopping online at Walmart.com, through one of our mobile apps or shopping in a store. We currently operate three primary store formats in the U.S., each custom tailored to its neighborhood. Greg Foran is Walmart U.S. President & CEO.”
Working at Walmart
“A job at Walmart means an opportunity to build a career. About 75% of our store management teams started as hourly associates, and last year, we promoted about 200,000 people to jobs with more responsibility and higher pay. In the U.S., the average, full-time hourly wage is $13.39. Learn more about the opportunities and benefits we offer, as well as our commitment to hire 250,000 veterans.”
Community Giving
Walmart gives back to every community in which it serves. Learn more about the Walmart Foundation and our $2 billion commitment to fight hunger in the U.S.
Environmental Sustainability
Walmart is the largest onsite green power generator in the U.S. Learn more about our sustainability initiatives in the United States and around the world.
Stores
Walmart has stores in 50 states and Puerto Rico offering low prices on the broadest assortment of products through a variety of formats including the Supercenter, Discount Store and Neighborhood Market.
Distribution Centers
Walmart's 150+ distribution centers are hubs of activity for its business. Its distribution operation is one of the largest in the world servicing stores, clubs and direct delivery to customers. Walmart transportation has a fleet of 6,100 tractors, 61,000 trailers and more than 7,800 drivers.
The distribution center network delivers general merchandise, dry groceries, perishable groceries, along with other specialty categories to our consumers daily.
There are 6 disaster distribution centers, strategically located across the country and stocked to provide rapid response to struggling communities in the event of a natural disaster, which is very impressive considering the fact that Walmart cares about the wellbeing of its nation, its people and has prepared as much as they could to subsidize when in need.
Around the world, we help families save money so they can live better. We use our size and scale to provide access to high-quality goods and fresh, nutritious food at everyday low prices—while creating opportunities for our associates and small and medium-sized global suppliers.
Amongst all of these philanthropic to commercially successful stories, we have missed the problems from minor to extremely critical yet unresolved ones at Walmart. Hence, our group, Team Eagle, came up with the notion to solve those faced yet untangled , realized yet overlooked problems.
While working on this project we learned innumerable things. First, we got opportunity to work on the actual company, which exists and is a major part of American economy, and it enabled us to look forward to this project, analyse the problems related to that business by talking to the customers of that company and employees currently working.
Our team consists of five(5) members. First, we decided to sit together and talk about the company. On initial days, we decided to brainstorm on the problems related to Walmart business. We also visited local Walmart superstore to talk with their few employee and assistant manager, who was available to answer our queries, at different locations.
Most of the employees provided us identical problems. Hence, we spread out all the problems and pointed out the mode of all the collected information regarding our mission
We decided to further research on kinds of issues that are recorded in other parts of the world through internet and other handy resources.
We gathered enough information regarding all these issues and the finalized product of our project is ready to be presented.
We found couple of incidents on poor management skills of managers at Walmart. Similarly, Management also faced backlashes and consequences from unethical choices.
“On November 13, 2012 U.S. District Court Judge Robert N. Blackburn gave final approval of an $8 million settlement of Gianzero et al v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Civil Action No. 1:09 -cv -00656-REB-BNB (U.S Dist. Court Colorado) a class action lawsuit alleging that Wal-Mart conspired with its claims adjuster, Claims Management, Inc and the insurer of Concentra Health Services to make it difficult for medical providers from making independent assessments on the best care for injured workers. Colorado law prohibits outside interference in determining care. Workers alleged that they did not feel they were receiving unbiased treatment. Wal-Mart fought this case for three years prior to settling. Wal-Mart and its adjuster paid $4 million, and Concentra Health Services paid the remaining $4 million.”
We came up with some solutions to the management related problems with the Walmart.
Problems:
Human Resource Management
Customer service
Store presence and design
Human Resource Management : Walmart’s employee training and performance management are determinants of the company’s human resource management capability in supporting global expansion. As the company expands, so do its HR needs for specific knowledge, skills and abilities for a truly global workforce.
One source of Walmart’s service problem appears to be lack of employee training. But there appears to be another challenge, more fundamental, for Walmart — management’s failure to connect with customer.
“There are many managers, in addition to the Manager. Problem perhaps is the management at middle level, who wield their absolute power, and cannot see the importance of simple matters such as customer service.”
Apparently, the managerial revolution that has swept the American enterprise world missed Walmart. Walmart experiences a variety of performance problems. However, some of the most significant are as follows:
Lost productivity because of tardiness and absenteeism
Inaccuracies or errors in recording or reporting
Negativism or hostility in customer relations or workplace relations
Solutions: There are different types of training needs analysis available. In Walmart’s case, the following types of training needs analysis apply:
Work/task analysis
Cost-benefit analysis
Organizational analysis
During the training analysis, walmart should prioritize customer service and ethical importance in Walmart’s premises. To address this problem, Walmart encourages employees to participate in organizational activities, including socials. Also, the firm should provides benefits and incentives to help reduce negativity and social loofing in the workplace. Walmart’s human resource management should always stay on the lookout for other performance problems that can be solved through HR training, compensation, and related approaches. Some of the examples are:
To make strong relationship between company and employees Company should give them:
1.proper wages, (depending on timely assessment of performance)
2.Health and medical services, Be it part-time or full-time
3.paid holidays,
4.proper breaks between working hours or company should provide them free meals such as breakfast, lunch or dinner on workplace.
If workers inside any company are not happy or satisfied, then the growth of company is very difficult. They should give first preference to solve the disputes of employees of the company.
To improve customer service: Some of the things Walmart promises to have cheap prices but those are still expensive if compared to other sources, Walmart should keep their promises of having lowest prices so that customers can come back to buy. And second most important thing is during a hiring process a proper training should be provided to the hired employees so that they can Provide excellent customer service.
Customer service
Some opportunity cost of Walmart being a low price retail store are:
Not an individually specialized customer experience
Incidents of maltreatment to customers.
Walmart ranked in last place and Nordstrom's ranked in first in the American Customer Satisfaction Index of department and discount stores
Solution to these problems related to customer services can be:
Building public image with the help of public relation strategies
Making changes in advertising strategy.(online marketing)
Involving more in philanthropic activities (already involving in women empowerment and Entrepreneurship)
Going glocal through social media, other online approaches.
Store presence and design
Another problem is Walmart’s store presence.
Store layout and design compromises customer convenience and space in some cases
Congested area that can hinder the customer service and presence.
Overpacked and overstocked in the counter
Solution to that problems is to change the layout, design and decision to put only limited and customer-effective products in the register area, hence, uncluttering or limiting the products can be effective and attractive at the same time.
On the other hand, Wal-Mart, as the world's largest traditional retailer, relies on its strong supply chain information technology with line-based network chain has been based on the international market and continues to develop for more than 54 years. However, in recent years, as a case of traditional enterprises tipped by the Internet wave, Wal-Mart has been frequently mentioned by many market analysts and investment companies, and even critics have pointed out that Wal-Mart will become the biggest victim of the e-commerce era. Is why?
In the past for a long time, no one would question Wal-Mart is a technology leader, but now many retailers have mastered enough to match the supply chain information technology. After entering the 21st century, few have heard of Wal-Mart's technological innovation, and when people talk about the latest technology in the retail industry, the first thought is often e-commerce, such as Amazon's online retailers have become a leader in technological innovation.
Many technology companies will be the market value beyond Wal-Mart as an important milestone. July 2015, Amazon in the market value of the official beyond the traditional retail crocodile Wal-Mart. For the entire electricity industry, this is undoubtedly a milestone moment, because Amazon officially in the market value of the traditional retail predators Wal-Mart, a symbol of the largest online retailers finally put the largest physical retail chain from the market value overturned To the ground.
With the intensification of competition, online and offline boundaries of the fuzzy, Amazon and Wal-Mart collision more and more intense, the conflict will be more and more. We will not only see a variety of electricity technology, application and marketing innovation is quickly put into the battlefield in order to expand each other's advantages, but also see the line line in the contrast of this power how to shift, until the integration.
And Wal-Mart to the main line, electricity business strategy, supplemented by the strategy, Amazon is always highlight the main line to the storage center as the support of the expansion strategy. And ultimately to seize the size of the market and achieve profit on the same thing the nature of business. In fact, Wal-Mart is also in force e-commerce.
Market data show that Wal-Mart is now second only to Amazon and Apple's third largest Internet retailer. However, due to Wal-Mart's late start of e-commerce (the end of 2010 began to set up a special WalmartLabs, a high-profile solicitation of technical engineering talent, to focus on the development of electricity providers), coupled with Wal-Mart is currently in a passive catch-up situation, the development of the entire electric business Construction, he needs a period of time to adjust and optimize the logistics and distribution system, in order to meet the business standards for electricity business.
On the other hand, Amazon's own logistics system has been completed in the past 10 years to complete, not only to the Amazon self-service orders to provide fast and convenient logistics services, but also become a three-way sellers can provide logistics warehousing services Give Amazon a profitable support business.
If Wal-Mart wants to go beyond Amazon, it needs to use its own store network to seek benefits. In order to go beyond Amazon, Wal-Mart is simplifying its management team, integration of electricity and physical store business. Now Wal-Mart has a new chief technology officer, Jeremy King, who is responsible for online and offline business, and Tony Rogers is responsible for marketing Wal-Mart stores, Jet.com and Wal-Mart stores in the United States. Integrated management allows Wal-Mart to be more competitive online. Wal-Mart is the second largest US business website, it is still behind the Amazon, with the Amazon's growth rate continues to go far beyond Wal-Mart, the gap between the two will be growing.
1. Reshape electrical business
We will reshape the business and create a first-class shopping experience that will allow consumers to save money in a new way," said Marc Lore, Wal-Mart's digital operations director. "Lore was the director of Jet.com, Buy more, save more "value proposition, Wal-Mart's huge supply chain so that he can keep this idea. Wal-Mart has more than 4,600 stores in the United States, of which 3,500 are super shopping centers with an area of more than 100,000 square feet. Investing more resources to the store will be the key to Wal-Mart to provide a good online shopping experience, reorganization of the management team is also for this. This means that Wal-Mart is not just simply improving online orders and delivery services, while Wal-Mart also efforts to expand online grocery order service, because recently Amazon is trying to attract grocery consumers. Wal-Mart's store can be used as an order processing center, the supply chain will become its pillar. Using these resources to quickly complete online orders will allow Wal-Mart and Amazon to have the same shopping experience, which may mean that the online shopping experience to increase the storage space, personnel or even covers an area.
2. Before the Amazon into "Wal-Mart", Wal-Mart first to become "Amazon"
Wal-Mart integrated Jet.com and invest more resources to the business platform at the same time, Amazon is accelerating to grab Wal-Mart's market share. Amazon is expanding grocery business. Amazon began to launch the Prime Fresh miscellaneous distribution service in the market, and recently also opened the high-tech convenience store Amazon Go. The convenience store allows consumers in the absence of tellers, but also checkout. With AR technology, consumers buy products, the Amazon will be directly from the user account on the collection. But the Amazon Go store concept seems unlikely. If Amazon can allow more consumers to buy food on the platform, or will accelerate Prime Fresh expanded to new markets. Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States, and the grocery category is very important to the company. It is not only the source of most of Wal-Mart's revenue, but also brings traffic to other categories. If more and more people began to buy groceries, then Wal-Mart will lose a substantial revenue. That's why Wal-Mart is trying to beat Amazon. Now there are more than 100 markets can use Wal-Mart grocery shopping services, Wal-Mart is still testing the new store concept, such as gas station convenience store pickup and fuel, so that consumers refueling, the way to extract grocery shopping orders.
To the "Wal-Mart" intimate words
From a consumer, the user's point of view, a decline in the enterprise, are all tread, and now the Internet era is extremely rapid changes, if not timely transformation, keep up with the pace of the times, and then large enterprises will be on the verge of bankruptcy. Wal-Mart is now e-commerce is actually very good, all customers want to think of unexpected, and then the store pick up. Convenient to customers, is Wal-Mart's first step in building e-commerce. In fact, Wal-Mart is mainly a bulk shopping, and its development is not familiar with e-commerce, it is better to develop their own familiar group shopping, hold their own areas more important than the development of territory.
In the United States is already anti-urbanization process, the population living is very scattered, to the distribution of electricity to bring great inconvenience and difficulties, Wal-Mart's supermarkets are basically in the high-speed road hub, a radius of 10-20 km people can drive 1 -2 weeks to focus on procurement, no doubt than the special distribution of electricity more economical, this supermarket is indeed more suitable for American way of life. Amazon as the representative of the electricity business model, the United States mainstream shopping way to add, unless the US logistics costs fundamentally change, otherwise Amazon in the United States can not completely replace Wal-Mart.Moreover, Wal-Mart's electricity business from the end of 2010 to build, but from the growth point of view is really good. From the following official material point of view, Wal-Mart focus on product optimization, as well as offline combination.As a traditional offline retailer, Wal-Mart's online transformation is very good, and its business growth is second only to Amazon with ebay, which is mainly due to customer line recognition with him over the past 50 years Build a strong product supply chain.
Another issue is pointed towards the Logistics system of walmart; difficult to reduce costs.
The effect of the highly automated logistics system under the synergies of efficient information systems is that Wal-Mart minimizes product inventory and transit time, effectively compressing operating costs, and its distribution center from the order of the store to the manufacturers purchase and delivery as long as two days, which played a key role in this system is the United States extending in all directions of the highway and Wal-Mart in the United States more than 3,000 stores and reasonable layout of the escort center. But Wal-Mart (China) is experiencing bottlenecks here. For the highway, China's development level is still very low, to 2035 to reach the United States in early 1950, the level of 89 million km. Which makes Wal-Mart's escort chain greatly reduced. And in the escort center, Wal-Mart's escort center only in Shenzhen and Tianjin, two. Which makes the practice of building a store around a zombie center can not be implemented in China. So far, Wal-Mart in China set up more than 50 stores not only did not reduce costs, but increased the logistics expenditure.
With the scientific and technological innovation to improve the supply chain, optimize the logistics management For Wal-Mart, to adapt to changes in the Chinese market, we must first in accordance with the requirements of supply chain management, through the restructuring of business processes to transform. In the organizational structure of innovation, the elimination of various departments, the functions and the gap between the enterprises, cross-sectoral, cross-functional and cross-enterprise management and coordination. At the same time, increase the intensity of information technology, promote communication technology and electronic information technology-based modern commodity circulation technology, and gradually realize the market information transmission of digital, network and intelligent, to achieve information management. Such as the establishment of business information systems and business decision support systems, commodity supply systems, e-commerce network systems, and the use of modern information technology transformation and equipment Wal-Mart, manufacturers, suppliers, distribution centers and retailers to share demand, inventory status , Production capacity, distribution status and other information, so as to maximize the demand to meet consumer demand
Another issue is information systems; difficult to show advantages.
Wal-Mart's leading and efficient information system is highly regarded by the industry, with its own commercial satellite, Wal-Mart has easily achieved the global network of information systems. Through this network, the world more than 4,000 stores within an hour for each commodity inventory, shelves, sales all inventory again. The close contact between the internal and external information systems enables Wal-Mart to synchronize with the supplier's daily sales, transportation and ordering information, store sales, order and match. In addition, since 1980, Wal-Mart began to force suppliers and their information system docking, which is the Wal-Mart system can play an important role in the United States. However, at this stage of China's business environment bound to Wal-Mart this advantage to play. Most of the domestic suppliers of low level of information, and Wal-Mart can only be a simple data exchange. At the same time, due to policy constraints, Wal-Mart's satellite communications system can not play a role in our country, its global procurement system, the effective sharing of global logistics system in China's market greatly reduced.
Background logistics system can not do all the same as in foreign countries with the same tight, can not play should be efficient. Cross-regional chain escort is difficult to achieve, greatly affected the implementation of Wal-Mart in China's reserve price policy. In the United States, Wal-Mart's attitude to suppliers is not only require suppliers to produce products in the rank of similar products to the front, and claimed that "no EDI (data exchange interface), do not come to me." In China, Wal-Mart is facing another piece of the scene. Wal-Mart in the global implementation of the principle of direct purchase from the manufacturers to reduce costs. But it is difficult to achieve in China. On the one hand, the number of Chinese manufacturers, small size, widely distributed factors led to the Wal-Mart is difficult to deal with manufacturers independently.
Similarly, there is questions regarding Localization and the repeated neglect.
Wal-Mart has been fantasy in China to copy it in every region around the world have adopted a consistent business model and cultural philosophy, but often failed. The problem here is that the system can be reestablished and that culture can not be simply copied. Because the construction of corporate culture is not written in the manual, shouting slogans, meeting education can be achieved. Corporate culture is a business in the development process of the business philosophy, values and moral norms of the accumulation, it penetrated the enterprise every employee thinking. Such as the same is to accept the idea of the customer first, because Wal-Mart's staff performance is indeed something may be very different. So the problem of corporate culture is the management of Wal-Mart in the phenomenon behind many of the crux of the phenomenon, now the situation has shown that Wal-Mart in the process of localization acclimatized.
It can be said that if the logistics problem is only Wal-Mart's Mishap, then in China, "the shape of God does not like" corporate culture is Wal-Mart's internal injuries.
Nevertheless, there are enough room for improvements at Walmart if we think about future and the possibilities. World is constantly changing, it is extremely dynamic depending on the geographical location; so are the people. Presently, we can experience the energy of people rushing to sports club and gym, sweating, panting and burning fats. The scenario might not be pleasant but truth is definitely inevitable, that people are chasing for healthy body despite all kinds of hard-work and struggle to wear that body. So, retailers are also jumping in with aggressive marketing because they are completely aware of their income sources, they know the pressure point of their capital growth. Thus, Wal-mart should also step up and endorse, promote healthy groceries. And then, influx of people at walmart can be witnesses and stakeholders of Walmart can take a breath of relief.
We, Team Eagle, tried to discover some new ideas, if old then modified ideas to provide solutions to current Walmart’s plight. We definitely hope that some of the solutions are already in the mind of Walmart’s management team and working on implementing those solutions. In the mean that, it should not forgotten that Walmart has its core values, which is missed by its managers and employees heavily and the consequences are difficult to handle.
Walmart proudly promotes its values and behaviors but sadly not implemented and communicated transparently amongst the managers to subordinates.
Service to the Customer
Customer First – Listen to, anticipate and serve customer wants and needs
Frontline Focused – Support and empower associates to serve customer everyday
Innovative and Agile – Be creative, take smart risks and move with speed
Respect for the Individual
Listen – Be visible and available; collaborate with others and be open to feedback
Lead by Example – Be humble, teach and trust others to do their jobs; give honest and direct feedback
Inclusive – Seek and embrace differences in people, ideas, and experiences
Strive for Excellence
High performance – Set and achieve aggressive goals
Accountable – Take ownership, celebrate successes and be responsible for results
Strategic – Make clear choices, anticipate changing conditions and plan for the future
Act with Integrity
Honest – Tell the truth, keep your promises and be trustworthy
Fair – Do right by others; be open and transparent
Courageous – Speak up, ask for help, make tough calls and say no when appropriate
References
Thompson, Andrew, Walmart’s HRM: Training, Performance Management, Panmore Institute, Web 2017
Panos Mourdoukoutas ,Walmart's Outdated Management Style Is Failing Customers, Forbes Magazine, Web 2016
Walmart, Our story, Corporate page, Web 2017
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