...Study: 6 – Wal-Mart Case Study: Data Communications at Wal-Mart Erin Barraclough Case Study: Data Communications At Wal-Mart • Case Study - Data Communications At WalMart Page 116 1. How has Wal-Mart improved its data communication systems for suppliers? 2. What are some typical data communication applications in Walmart? 3. What are some of the applications of wireless technology in WalMart? 4. What are some of the features and capabilities of VMS? • Due Date Saturday, September 21, 2013 11:59:00 PM CDT (Bidgoli, 2013, p.. Question 1) Wal-Mart has improved its data communication system for its suppliers through various approaches. The main reason for doing so is to, remain the lowest cost retail merchandiser. The first improvement Wal-Mart has done to improve its communication system was adding a customized web site for its suppliers. This customized network has enable suppliers to retrieved, all sales, inventory, and forecasting data through faster connections. To make sure that the confidentiality of data is maintained, Wal-Mart has implemented a security system to ensure that no suppliers can access each other’s data. The second improvement to the data communication system was allowing the suppliers, Web-Based access to Wal-Mart’s Retail Link system to access information in the database. Question 2) Wal-Mart utilizes various data communication system to remain at the top of the retail business. Some typical data communication...
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...its competitors and can be achieved in two ways: comparative advantage and differential advantage. In the case of Wal-Mart, it has achieved sustainable competitive advantage through comparative advantage by beating its competitors with the lowest cost structure. It has done so by valuing its employees, creating successful vendor relationships, and building an efficient operation management system. Walton believed that if the employees are treated well, then they would treat the customers well. Thus, Wal-Mart implemented several programs to motivate and empower their employees. For instance, in the “Yes We Can Sam” program, employees were able to provide suggestions to make processes more efficient. In 1993, Wal-Mart was able to implement 650 of these suggestions and it resulted in an estimated savings of over $85 million. In another program, Wal-Mart empowered department managers by allowing them to be store managers of their own “store within a store.” With this sense of responsibility, sales in some areas exceeded $1 million. There was also a shrinkage program that provided employees a bonus if the store had shrinkage below a certain percentage. Through this program, Wal-Mart’s shrinkage cost was estimated to be at 1.7% compared to 2% for competitors. Lastly, Wal-Mart had a profit sharing plan for employees after only one year of employment. Wal-Mart contributed a percentage of an eligible employee’s wage into their profit sharing account which the employee could...
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...2. What are Wal-Mart’s Competitive Advantages? Wal-Mart’s strategy is based on ensuring customer satisfaction and high-volume sales by offering a diverse range of products at low price and with relatively good service. A key factor underpinning the phenomenal growth and success of Wal-Mart has been the way in which it has matched its internal resources and capabilities (what it does well) with its external environment (what the market demands and what the competitors offer) to satisfy customer needs, maximise revenues for shareholders and innovate and diversify ahead of the competition. Stalk, Evans & Shulman (1992: 57) maintain that Wal-Mart epitomises “capabilities-based competition”. Competencies are the collective learning, technologies and culture in an organisation which arise through the integration of diverse production skills, harmonisation of technologies, and open communication and commitment across organisational boundaries. Core competencies enable access to wide variety of markets, add customer value, and are difficult to imitate and thus constitute a source of competitive advantage (Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). Wal-Mart’s competitive advantages include: • Sophisticated logistics system – Wal-Mart’s internal capabilities in inventory management and distribution have played a key role in maintaining its ability to continuously deliver on its CVP of ensuring the maximum availability and accessibility of goods, being trustworthy, and ensuring ‘everyday low prices’. Supply...
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...business initiative being used is Supply Chain Management. A supply chain management system is an IT system that supports activities by automating the tracking of inventory and information among business processes and across companies. Wal-Mart is to ensure that all their suppliers are using Electronic Product Codes and for those who do not have the capability they work with them to find packages that are within their price range. This allows for a successful ensuring that customers get what they order in a timely manner. It allows for logistics, fulfilment, production, revenue and profit, cost and price efficiency Riding a rising six-year trend,Walmart reported grosses of $486 billion in the fiscal year that ended in January 2015, an increase of almost $10 billion from fiscal 2014. That's up from $408 billion over the past five years, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch. That income was generated by more than 4,500 stores in the U.S. alone, and fed by a sprawling supply chain, which moved from No. 14 to No. 13 on research and analyst company Gartner's annual ranking. Walmart’s inventory management funnels information from stores such as point-of-sale data, warehouse inventory and real-time sales into a centralized database. The data is shared with suppliers who know when to ship more products. Supply chain integration connects the flow of work and information among all links in the supply chain to maximize efficiencies. For Walmart, its SCM methods yield lower...
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...importance for us to complete this assignment. During the preparation of this assignment we were having problems in making it but our lecturer and tutor helped us lot and we are able to complete it in time. Table of content Executive summary: 4 Overview of the organization: 6 Issue analysis: 8 Chosen information systems: 9 A)Decision support system 9 B) Customer relationship management information 9 C) The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) System: 9 Detailed Analysis of Wal-Mart’s Supports system: 10 Organizational impacts: 15 Competitive Analysis of Wal-Mart: 16 References 19 1. Executive summary: The chosen organization “Wal-Mart” has shown continued success in their use of information technology with e-commerce. a system that allows managers to view point-of-sale information and the use of RFID chips. Wal-Mart had established itself as the largest retailer all over the world. This report...
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...P E S INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY BANASHANKARI 3RD STAGE BANGALORE. Term paper submission on “SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AT WALL-MART” -SUBMITTED BY SUJAY C 1PB12MBA51 INDEX S.NO DESCRIPTION 1. INTRODUCTION TO SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT 2. LEVELS OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT 3. HISTORY-WALMART 4. WAL-MART INTRODUCTION AND ITS BUSINESS PROCESSES 5. SUPPLY CHAIN MANGEMENT AT WAL-MART 6. PROCUREMENT AND DISTRIBUTION 7. LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT 8. INVENTORY MANAGEMENT 9. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AND BUSINESS MODELS USED AT WAL-MART 10. RFID IN WAL-MART 11. EFFICENCY IN SUPPLY CHAIN WITH RFID 12. CONCLUSION Introduction to Supply Chain Management Supply Chain Management is the discipline which encompasses the end to end business activities carried out in any business, independent of the manufacturing or service sectors. It is the synchronization of a network of facilities and distribution options that performs procurement of materials, processing the materials into finished products, and distribution of the products to customers. SCM is seen as involving five fundamental processes. These include planning, sourcing, making, delivering, and returning. Typical supply chain showing interrelations...
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...1) Wal-Mart Company has been able to lead the retail industry, because it focused on specific customers and applied many measures to satisfy them. In fact, Wal-Mart company targets customer who buy merchandise in bulk, and has succeed to locate her stores at a suitable places where consumers could have access easily. One of the innovations of the Wal-Mart-mart company is that she procured goods directly from manufacturers without facing all intermediaries. Therefore the organization has gained enormously in terms of margin thanks to economies of scale. In fact, Wal-Mart has quickly realized that the success would be to seduce the supplier before the customer, that why the company makes effort to understand their cost structure so as to build a long term relationship. Moreover, the Wal-Mart supply chain management succeed because of its distribution strategy, at first, Wal-Mart has a lot of distribution stores located on different cities in the United States, Second, the strong relationships between supplier and client make the company able to stock up every two weeks, third, Wal-Mart distribution centers ensured a steady and consistent flow of products to deal with the request. Furthermore, Wal-Mart has a varied range of product that can satisfy the majority of customers. Another crucial element which the supply chain management of Wal-Mart depends on is her logistic infrastructure, indeed, Wal-Mart distribution centers are serviced by a lot of company-specific vehicles, making...
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...Wal-Mart | Telecommunications and Networks | SAN, VoIP, Wireless Networking | Dominique Jordan 10/9/2011 | Save money. Live Better. This is the famous slogan of one of the largest retail chains in the world. When Sam Walton first founded the company he built the company with three basic beliefs in mind. These beliefs are: Respect for the individual, service to the customer, and to strive for excellence. With beliefs like these how could the company fail. I do not think that he had in mind the turmoil the company would endure in the future. Sam tried to stick by his word and tried to stay true to his beliefs but when a company grows, so does its problems. I am currently employed by Wal-Mart and my role in the company used to be training coordinator. As a training coordinator, I facilitated orientations, administer, maintain and oversee facility training by communicating training plans, monitor and track completion of training by Associates, review training reports and communicate training issues to Management. I also communicate Company personnel information and coordinate personnel-related activities by auditing personnel files; entering, checking and processing payroll; coordinating, recruiting, hiring, training and evaluation processes; facilitating training and maintaining personnel and employment documentation. My current role in the company is an operations zone supervisor. Unlike my counterparts that deal with the merchandising of the store, I deal with the...
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...Case 1-2, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Discussion Questions: 1-1. What is Wal-Mart’s strategy? Answer: The major wining strategy of Wal-Mart is selling branded products at low cost with large volume by improving their operation management system, utilize their buying power to lower the price from their vendors. The second strategy is to use “saturation” strategy for store expansion and further expansion to worldwide. The third strategy is Wal-Mart’s commitment to customers; always provide excellent service to their customers to make their customers always feel that Wal-Mart is very accountable and friendly. The fourth strategy is respect for the individuals, which Wal-Mart treads their employees well and push them to excel in what they do to increase employees’ loyalty and dedication. 1-2. What is the basis on which Wal-Mart builds its competitive advantage? Answer: The fundamental basis is lowering the cost as much as possible. Wal-Mart has implemented the world most effective operation management system to reduce its cost on operation management, such like: 1. Reducing warehouse storage cost by utilizing RFID technologies, just-in-time method. 2. Reducing products distributions cost by carefully select the distribution center locations and store locations, and building up self owned world largest tracking networks. 3. Increase the efficiency of communication and information sharing by building up satellite communication channels and real-time information system, which...
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...of ethics in the field of marketing is incredibly important as dishonesty is frowned upon and the marketplace will respond negatively to a dishonest firm. Firms are in a constant battle competing with one another trying to create the best marketing mix. Having a solid mix, companies have a well-established product, price, promotion, and placement to attract customers and maintain them for years. Wal-Mart, well known for their cost leadership strategy providing goods at the cheapest price has taken it a step further with their new online price comparison tool. An article in the money section of The Intelligencer, a local newspaper for Bucks County, Pennsylvania on Sunday, March 23rd explained the tool. The article is titled “Wal-Mart’s New Pricing Game. As stated before, Wal0mart competes in a cost leadership strategy. Cost leadership, in basic words, means the lowest cost of operation in the industry. Wal-Mart has been known for many years to offer the lowest prices giving their customers the biggest bang for their buck. The Intelligencer’s article reports that Wal-Mart is introducing an online tool allowing “shoppers to compare prices its prices on 80,000 food and household products to those of its competitors”. The tool is referred to...
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...Title: Wal-Mart’s Purchasing Process To: Dr. Franklin Mitchell From: Mark Bieker Class: Class: AC 550 Accounting Information Systems Date: October 10, 2011 Introduction Wal-Mart was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 with the first Wal-Mart discount store opening in Rogers, Arkansas. The company was officially incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on October 31, 1969. Currently, Wal-Mart has stores in 50 states in America and 15 countries worldwide, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom. The growth of Wal-Mart over a period of 49 years is remarkable and has lead Wal-Mart to become the biggest retailer in the world. Wal-Mart also has a strong community presence in the areas the stores are located. Wal-Mart’s purpose is to save people money and to help them live better. In 2007, Wal-Mart changed its slogan from “Always low prices” to “Save money. Live better.” This slogan is demonstrated in the products that Wal-Mart sells. Wal-Mart will not be undersold. Wal-Mart caters to the low income and middle income people by offering goods at low prices. These low prices are demonstrated in the products Wal-Mart sells. The products include: food, drink, clothing, jewelry, electronics, automobile supplies, sporting goods, toys, and furniture. Basically, Wal-Mart offers customers a one stop shopping experience. In order to provide this variety of...
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.............................15 References………………………………………………………………………………………..17 Q – 1) Compare Wal-Mart experience in countries such as Germany and South Korea on one hand, and China on the other. What determine Wal-Mart's success or otherwise in these markets? What lessons should Wal-Mart learn from these experiences? Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is an American public corporation that runs a chain of discounted stores throughout the world. Wal-Mart was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. The main head office of Wal-Mart is in Bentonville, Arkansas. Approximately 2,100,000 employees work in the Wal-Mart stores around the world. About 100 million customers each week visit the stores; Wal-Mart provides its customers low prices for their products. The slogan for Wal-Mart stores was low prices always. Now the new slogan is saving the people’s money so that they can have better lives. This slogan basically shows the 3 groups 1) Hispanics, 2) African-Americans and 3) rural residents of the country, which makeup of the 100 million customers who visit the stores each week. (Wal-Mart, 2010) Wal-Mart in Germany Wal-Mart is not a success in Germany. The organization is having communication problems with its employees. It has been speculating in the retail market that Wal-Mart is still not quite able to understand the $370 billion German market. It’s being 15 years since Wal-Mart has entered the German retail market (i.e. in 1997), and still the company has approximately 2 percent...
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...Introduction to Information Technology - Organizational Systems Wal-Mart is one of the largest retailers in the world based out of the United States with locations in other countries as well. Running an organization the size of Wal-Mart is a humongous task that requires reliance on heavy duty IT systems. Some of the biggest IT systems Wal-Mart uses include a Transaction Processing System, Management Information System, and Decision Support System. Its Transaction Processing System makes all routine daily tasks automated using raw data as its input. It then summarizes, records, and synchronizes this data. It uses a universal product code to ensure accurate pricing, improve efficiency, reduce shrinkage, and enhance communication amongst different channels. The TPS uses a satellite system and electronic scanning of UPC (uniform product code) at the POS or point of scanning (Fishman, 2006). The Management Information System or MIS uses data collected from the TPS by creating performance and evaluation reports used by middle management. These are usually used to explain, and assess information collected for financial purposes and evaluations. The other major IT system Wal-Mart uses is a DSS or a Decision Support System which is used primarily by executive management. Ever since Wal-Mart started using DSS, its profits and customer satisfaction ratings rose dramatically. Its DSS is also commonly known as a data warehouse, a digital hub where its entire customer related information...
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...Memorandum RE: Wal-mart Case Study DATE: April 15, 2013 ******** The key source of Wal-Mart’s success through 1994 was their ability to optimize and be innovative in the area of technology. Wal-Mart not only exceeded their competitors in the amount they invested in technology - which was over $700 million from 1987 to 1994 - but was also well ahead of their competitors in the use of technology to reduce expenses. Through the use of technology, Wal-Mart was able to manage their company’s inventories more efficiently within their warehouses while also enabling them to utilize the assets of their suppliers. Wal-Mart’s inventory and sales data were tracked via UPC codes. This “tracking technology” allowed them to ensure accurate pricing, improve efficiency by the utilization of shelf pricing versus price tags (which was still being used by their competitors), along with the ability to identify inventory that was stolen from one store and attempted to be returned to another. With this cutting edge technology, combined with the installation of a satellite system, Wal-Mart had greater communication between stores, improving inventory control, resulting in reduced overstocks and inventory shrinkage, while allowing them to also track the daily results across all of their stores. Wal-Mart’s distribution network also benefitted from the investment in this satellite system. For example, when a consumer purchased an item such as a bottle of Just for Men’s Gray-in...
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...Qatar University College Of Business & Economic Spring 2012 Submitted By : Sara Jumah Al-Marzouqi 200900354 Submitted To : Dr Mohammed Nishat Faisal Course : Production & Operations Management Group L51 Subject : Inventory Management Project Subject List Part I Pages 1) Introduction 3 2) The Meaning Of Inventory Management 3 3) The Importance Of Inventory Management 3 , 4 , 5 4) How Does Wal-Mart Manage Their Inventory 5 , 6 , 7 5) Conclusion 7 , 8 Part II Pages 1) Networked Inventory Management Information Systems ( Emerald ) 9 , 10 2) Zero Inventory And Firm Performance (Taylor & Francis) 10 , 11 3) Managing Inventories In The Machine Building Industry (science direct ) 11 Introduction: Part I In any business or organization, all functions are interlinked and connected to each other and are often overlapping. Some key aspects like supply chain management, logistics and inventory form the backbone of the business delivery function. Therefore these functions are extremely important to marketing managers as well as finance controllers. Every organization constantly strives to maintain optimum inventory to be able to meet its requirements and avoid over or under inventory that can impact the financial figures. Inventory is always dynamic. Inventory management requires constant and...
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