1. (Mt) – Walmart's Implementation of Strategic Options
APA formatting for in-text citations and for your reference list Company is Walmart Inc.,
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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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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_et
hi 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
