Wal-Mart



Table of Contents

Introduction1

Analysis2

i) Starting stage3

ii) Input stage3

iii) Stage of adaptation or comparison3

iv) Balanced scorecard (BSC)4

v) Translating strategies and determining objectives and performance measures4

Wal-mart Balanced Scorecard5

The Connection between Strategy and Performance Measures9

History of Wal-mart11

Wal-Mart SWOT Analysis15

Mission Statement15

Strengths15

Market Leader With Unprecedented Scale And Wide Product Assortment15

Internal Weaknesses16

Big Box Retailing Format Led To Low Penetration In The Urban Areas16

Litigations Affect Labor Relations Adversely17

Key Challenges17

Opportunities20

Retail Sectors & Emerging Markets20

Grocery and Food20

Growth in Internet Retailing to Serve Larger Market21

Threats23

Competitive Advantages24

Strategic Choices25

Porter's Four Generic Strategies26

More Global Sourcing and Direct Sourcing To Reduce Costs27

Strategy Implementation28

Conclusion29

References33

Wal-Mart

Introduction

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.

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 2001).

iii) Stage of adaptation or comparison

At this stage with regard to the data resulting from previous stages, while considering the mission of organization, the main internal factors (key strengths and weaknesses) and main external factors (strategic opportunities and threats) are compared with each other and in fact a kind of balance is created among them. At this stage, internal and external factors are compared with the help of various instruments to identify the strategies of organization. At this stage, SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity and threats) Matrix is used to adapt the aforementioned factors (Troy 2001).

iv) Balanced scorecard (BSC)

At this stage, the already identified strategies of the previous stage (stage of adaptation) are judged based on objective ...