This paper presents an in-depth managerial analysis of Walmart Inc. It describes the enterprise and its environment, administrative functions, and an analysis and recommendations for Walmart to achieve effectiveness, efficiency, and stakeholder satisfaction. The four management functions will be discussed, comprising of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling as they pertain to the company’s activities. Therefore, the organization’s business activities can be understood through such an evaluation.
Also, evaluating Walmart’s management and the evolution of management theories can lead to a better comprehension of the organization itself. Thus, such an analysis can ensure that proper recommendations can be made for the improvement of Walmart’s business practices, as long as its administration chooses to adopt the proper decision-making process to measure and monitor the possible alternatives, and actions to achieve the organizational objectives.
Introduction
U.S-based Walmart Stores Inc. runs almost 10, 500 stores and clubs in 24 nations. It also launched eCommerce sites and has auxiliaries in 24 nations (Walmart Inc., 2021). It is viewed as one of the biggest international businesses all in terms of income. In the 2020 monetary year, Walmart achieved an all-out income of $559 billion, positioning top among the U.S. retailers, while Amazon followed by $386 (Kohan, 2020). Walmart’s interests include in-store network robotization and consistent client experience add to its achievement in the U.S. retail area. The organization’s developments resulted in speed-up development in medical care, monetary administrations, and promotion.
Hence, a thorough examination of Walmart Inc.’s business processes is timely and relevant. Moreover, this study aims at formulating suggestions on ways to improve the organization’s viability and productivity from the perspective of managerial practices.
General Description of the Walmart and Its Environment
Walmart’s international business processes include such territories as Canada, Brazil, China, South America, and the UK. In addition, the association has likewise ventured into numerous different countries, where the center plan of action is identified with its evaluating technique (Fletcher and Arnold, 2019). The major part of Walmart’s clients is middle-class people from a metropolitan area, and this social group has been the main target audience for the services’ development (Tomey, 2019). Along these lines, the organization focuses on providing a business structure with carefully worked-through business processes which have empowered the business to extend universally. Additionally, Walmart emphasizes the role of innovation in gaining success in competition.
Walmart has made a few online business sites and it has been chipping away at utilizing innovation to push development (Fletcher and Arnold, 2019). The usage of various techniques such as mobile apps allows the company to get to customers directly. It also facilitates sales since viable internet platforms enable clients to purchase online. Currently, the organization’s Internet platforms have been evaluated as most user-friendly and, as a conaequence, allowing Walmart to go some steps beyond its competitors (Crosby and Bryson, 2018). Other recognized brands in the market include Amazon, Home Depot, the Kroger Company, and Walgreens Boot Alliance.
Portrayal of Managerial Functions
Nowadays there are two main functions on which the organization focuses: lowering the products’ prices for clients while simultaneously diminishing production costs and purchasing materials straightforwardly from producers. The current processes of the organization, thus, aim to follow these criteria:
- Meeting buyers and sellers – Walmart has confidence in long-term relationships with its customers and suppliers considering it the most viable way to success.
- Understanding their expense structure – The maintenance of the balance between quality and price.
The logistics is done through a worldwide information-sharing framework called Retail Link, which is intended to overcome any issues between the organizations and the supply chain. It also involves constant surveys of authorized deals information, recovering the stock level information, and downloading of procurement orders.
Walmart stores more than 80,000 items in their stockrooms and, thus, provides 85% of the stock directly. The recharging is done in two days with the transportation cost about 3%. The segmentation of the product’s dissemination is done through classification dependent on the amount of merchandise. The refined standardized identification innovation and handheld PC frameworks in which the stock levels data could be achieved by every worker help in the progression of materials.
Planning
Planning is a blueprint of the achievements and specifies the required tasks, schedules, and allocations of an organization. There are many aspects of company planning at Walmart’s stores and operations. The association utilizes “intending” as a tool to decide its objectives and assist the administration with characterizing the designs to accomplish them (Arnold et al., 2018). The VP and the central tasks officials are ordered to set up essential objectives and plans in such a way that they meet all the criteria of productivity and adequacy.
The organization also has a specific procedure to grow its activities on the worldwide business sectors and develop its product get. The top management is tasked with the responsibility of coming up with strategic plans and goals that directly reflect to commitment to efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. The tactical aims and plans are responsibilities left for the middle management team at the company. An example of tactics implemented is Walmart’s super promotions to maximize demand. Walmart advances the shopping experiences of customers by making the products easily visible at specifically chosen departments that never existed before.
For Walmart management, opportunities are seen when there is an upsurge in the potential accomplishments compared to the given current limits. The company in 2008 announced its remodeling exertions that will advance the sales and the shopping experiences of consumers. The management has also tried to create good atmospheric which will change “economy-conscious” clients to Walmart’s loyal customers.
Organizing
Walmart organizational structure has always been the determinant of most the activities. Walmart has a vast history in success and growth advancement internationally hence depicting a strong organizational set up (Alvesson, M., 2012). To maintain its relevance and efficient competitive advantage over other companies offering the same content distributing services like Amazon, Apple & Google, the company interacts both the organizational culture and structure (Arnold et al., 2018). The association has a powerful worldwide administration structure facilitated from it settle in the US.
The hierarchical part has got perpendicular command and authority channels all-through the organization while the functional based part involves certain groups of workforce that are set to complete specific functions in the organization. Each employee has a superior whom they report to either directly or indirectly (Joseph et al, 2016). They are the ones that give out appropriate directives to the middle managers who will implement them (McMann, 2019). This structure has helped the corporation to streamline its monitoring and control activities to be effective. A disadvantage of such a structure is that lacks enough support that could make the company more flexible.
Walmart organizational culture has four key elements that control the behaviors of employees and ensures the company’s capability to add worth to the delivery of retail facilities and relevance services to customers (Joseph et al, 2016). The cultural aspects include: customer service, strive for success, integral actions, and individual respect. Walmart gives the customers first priority in all its activities, ensures excellence in its workforce teams from individual workers up to the entire company, promotes positive virtues like honesty and fairness in the company, and makes sure it identifies each and every employee for the success of the entity.
Leading
The company adopted two forms of leadership from its founder Sam Walton. The participative or democratic style and the transformational leadership style. The democratic style of leadership allows the input of the peers and members of the workforce but the final decisions are made by the participative front-runner (Geier, 2016). This type of leadership helps increase the employee morale since their active participation in decision making processes makes them feel essential by the suggestions they give to their leaders (Nguyen et al., 2017). The transformational type of leadership also relies entirely on communication from top management in achieving goals.
Walmart has always used the best formalities when choosing and employing its leadership team. It emphasizes on an extrovert type of workforce. These are individuals who are outgoing, social, and affectionate. They also appear to be energetic and are always in the forefront in a variety of organizational functions (McMann, 2019). Loyalty of leaders and the workforce team is also an essential part of Walmart’s leadership management sector.
The company executes advancing administration changes consistently to improve its operational efficiencies (Springer, 2020). An organization with less employee motivation, is mostly vulnerable to both internal and external problems since the workforce will not be dedicated in ensuring the company’s stability (Furlich, 2016). A good leadership reputation will always yield positive results hence Walmart has put this to key.
Controlling
Walmart uses technology frequently in controlling most of its activities. Deployment of advanced innovations has enabled the corporation to reduce high management hierarchy in the information systems of the organization. Likewise, the control work serves to guarantee the administration creates and carries out execution norms. Representatives should adjust to norms of incredible client support. Walmart uses Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which took over from the use of paper in purchase of orders and invoices. All information on the organizations inventory and sales is stored in a specific database. This stores data easily and makes it manageable and readily accessible in decision making sessions. It also reduces the use of man power and the use of paper directly.
Examination and Recommendations
Amazon, a critical contender of Walmart, has put resources into global business sectors to help its development. Concerning the threat of competition, Keyes (2019) suggests that Walmart should shift its main focus from worldwide development issues to withstand its competition with Amazon and centers around high-development markets, particularly in those that have been effective instead. India stays a key objective market for Walmart’s extension technique as indicated by Meyersohn (2018). The board focuses on Walmart’s development in India, as opposed to Europe where the competition is high. Keyes (2019) argues that although Walmart is right to follow high potential business sectors, it should not dismiss “aggressive” business sectors such as UK and Brazil.
At the same time, Shoulberg (2020) noticed that notwithstanding Walmart’s accomplishment in the U.S. market, its endeavors to extend internationally have never achieved the ideal point, particularly in the UK. Thus, there is a pressing need to enhance consumer loyalty in various worldwide business sectors. The store is utilizing innovation to improve the clients’ shopping experience. Ladd (2018) suggests that Walmart should nor concentrate on conveying staple goods as a technique to improve proficiency. Despite the fact that Walmart conveys food supplies, Ladd (2018) argues that the store should focus on increasing its capacities to deliver non-staple products as fast and convenient as they accomplish staple goods orders.
With respect to commitment, the government assistance of workers is a basic part of Walmart’s prosperity. Workopolis (2017) argues that other than expanded pay rates and wages, the way individuals feel at work likewise matters an incredible arrangement in improving their profitability. Walmart, hence, should focus on steady improvement of representatives’ government assistance to guarantee high efficiency and productivity. According to Joseph et al. (2016), Walmart’s organizational structure and culture are very essential for the business. However, it can advance by incorporating a system of more human values and ensuring that they are implemented actively.
Conclusion
This paper analyzed and described planning, coordinating, leading, and controlling of managerial processes in Walmart Inc. It demonstrates that these sectors of the organization’s activity form the core part of all business processes. They also become inherently linked with the executives’ capacities, globalization, coordination, innovation, correspondence, and data frameworks. The analysis shows that the processes become increasingly quantified.
Various parts and functions of the executive managers and employees are completed proficiently and successfully. The buying cycle in Walmart is planned methodically. At the same time, the organization could benefit from shifting its main focus from international presence to the development of their business structure and processes which lie in the core of their system.
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