Introduction
Walmart Canada was established in 1994. Its inception was as a result of the collapse of Woolo, a subsidiary of Woolo Canada, which was renovated and given a Walmart banner. In addition to taking its place, Walmart Canada also retained all the former employees of Woolo. This then marked the beginning of operations for this company. Walmart Canada has since grown considerably and has emerged successful in management, marketing, service provision and expansion.
Walmart Canada has many discount stores distributed all over Canada and its environs. Their sizes vary from 51000 up to 15000 square feet. The stores house general merchandise and a wide variety of foods stuffs. In addition to the food, most of these stores also have;
- Pharmacy
- Garden center
- Tire and lube express
- One hour photo processing lab
- Bank branch
- Portrait studio
- Optical center
- Fast food outlet
- Limited grocery outlets
The Walmart Canada discount stores include full service supermarkets that have poultry and meat, bakeries, frozen foods, garden products, dairy produce, delicatessen and seafood. In addition to these, most of the discount stores also have pharmacies, pet shops and garden centers. The stores ensure that their clients are provided with virtually every service they may need once they visit. This is an ingenious way of harnessing all the business opportunities that may exist when a client visits these outlets.
This resulted from studying the markets and evaluating the specific needs of clients and their determination to have all their requirements provided at only one stop. After evaluating all the specific needs of clients, the stores began offering other supplementary services like video rentals, vending of cellular phones and hair and nail services. Quite a number of alcove shops also sprung up around the stores to capture that market too.
On the 8th of November, 2006, the concept of Walmart Supercenter was introduced in Canada. This concept had succeeded in the United States of America. This was the reason why it was brought to Canada since there were great chances of its survival and subsequent success here. Just as was forecasted, the concept grew rapidly as it attracted an overwhelming crowd of customers. Within a couple of years after creation, the concept had already brought enormous profits to the corporation.
Body
Walmart Canada embraces quality of services, innovation and utter customer satisfaction. All the goods and services provided in its stores are exactly what its clients need. This implies that the stores capture a wide range of the available markets in a bid to maximize on their profit margins.
This is done through effective market study and exemplary managerial skills that make good use of the available resources to capture a good percentage of the market share. Many have wondered how the organization manages to handle the wide range of services while registering huge profits in the process.
The organization manages this by paying particular attention to its management of operations. It focuses on a number of key factors including employee training in a bid to equip their workers with exceptional skills to handle their clients and provide explicit services to all of them.
This organization also embraces the application of technology which has a wide range of benefits. It uses technology for management efficiency and entertainment too. Absolute customer satisfaction is the key idea behind making new customers and retaining existing ones. For this reason, Walmart Canada uses technology to appeal to all the five senses of its clients (Jones, & Robinson, 2012).
As a way of ensuring efficiency, Walmart separated all its onstage public areas from its backstage operational areas. This limits the clashing of interests between its clients and employees in the operations.
Continuous improvement of quality of services and goods has ensured that the company not only remains the preferred choice for its clients but also the number one amongst competitors. Additionally, the company has also invested much effort in listening to customer complaints and this has driven the organization to greater successes.
The company’s operational management
Company’s operational management is the key component of the organization as it is charged with critical management and decision making roles. The three most important issues related to this part of the organization are cost, quality and efficiency. All its subsequent roles revolve around the three key issues.
For instance, the operations management of the company focuses on designing services, goods and the processes of executing them. It is also charged with the responsibility of managing the processes of executing duties and continued advancement of processes, goods and services (Christopher, 2005).
Operations managers of this organization are quite significant in the management of supply chains, forecasting, technology selection and purchasing. They also play an imperative role in quality assurance capacity and resource management, and process design. Additionally, the managers do scheduling and job design for the organization. All these area aimed at coming up with the most viable and profitable business concept.
The company, through the operations management, understands the significance of the proper management of goods and services. For instance, it understands how quality goods and satisfactory services blend to come up with the most comprehensive product mix. Its service management incorporates human resources, marketing and operations functions.
This is done in a bid to create, plan and convey services and goods in the most satisfactory manner. The company also ensures that all its services and goods have their moments of truth (Jones, & Robinson, 2012). This implies that any experience customers have with the company, be it in transaction or in any of the delivery systems, ensures that they are impressed.
Other ordinary but very important techniques used to customize guest experience in the stores include a cordial welcome to the premises by employees and employees who seem too impatient to offer their help. The company has also invested in client benefit packages. These are not indispensable to primary services and goods of this organization but are meant to merely enhance them. They include online customer support services and debit cards.
The company’s value and supply chains
Just like every other organization, the sole purpose of this corporation is to offer value to both its stakeholders and clients. Value may be described as the sensitivity of benefits offered by goods and services to both buyers and sellers. Therefore, value is perceived as the estimated benefits in comparison to the cost to clients. It is, therefore, important that businesses like this have a high ratio of value so that both the business and its clients obtain maximum satisfaction (Christopher, 2005).
Walmart Canada has formulated a few strategies to ensure that its value ratio is maintained at the highest level possible. For instance, it has tried to increase its perceived profits while putting its prices at a constant. It has also tried to reduce its prices on some services and goods in a bid to increase its perceived benefits.
This is not only beneficial to its customers but to its stakeholders. In addition to the strategies, the organization has also ensured that its value chains are upheld with sincerity and exceptionally high quality. This chain begins from the organization’s suppliers that are charged with the responsibility of providing inputs to the company. The company then converts the inputs into value added services and goods through its facilities, money, information and labor (Jones, & Robinson, 2012).
As a way of maximizing on profits, the company has considered outsourcing some of its goods and services. The management of the company evaluates all the profit margins provided by virtually all the goods and services produced and offered within the organization.
This is aimed at evaluating the validity and viability of in-house production of the goods and services as compared to their outsourcing. In the event that some goods or services are found to be cost-effective when produced by suppliers, the management then contracts other service providers to sell to them the services or goods.
The company’s performance measures
It is important that a big organization like Walmart Canada evaluates its performance on a regular basis (Jones, & Robinson, 2012). There are quite a number of categories that form the basis of the evaluation of organizational performance.
These include finances, quality, time, customer and market, innovation and learning, flexibility and sustainability. As a commercial organization, financial measure is prioritized at Walmart Canada. The basic measures here include revenue, pretax profit margin, use of assets, growth, return on investments and earnings per share.
Market and customer measures may incorporate client satisfaction, client accounts, client complaints, perceived value and average client retention. Walmart Canada has a client contentment system that provides client rating on goods and services. This system is meant to show the relation between the rates as presented by clients and the clients’ probability to visit the stores next time.
Market measures, on the other hand, focus on the percentage of sales of new products, business growth, market share and markets dictated by the geographical positions of the outlets (Christopher, 2005).
The company’s competitive advantage
Competitive advantage is an organization’s capacity to attain financial and market superiority in its field over its competitors. In order to ensure that it has the much needed competitive advantage, Walmart Canada has formulated key components it is managerial positions that counter competitors’ strategies in the fight to woo more clients and retain them at the same time. First, it ensures that all the unique needs and expectations of customers are well understood by its management.
Additionally, its management has put in place strategic measures that formulate effective value chains with the capacity to meet all the customer needs and expectations. As if that is not enough, the organization has leveraged and built operational capacities aimed at supporting the priorities of their clients (Christopher, 2005).
It is also important that the company comprehends the specific needs and wants of clients. It is only through this that it will be able to fully satisfy them by providing exactly the needed and expected services and goods. The company has therefore ensured that it meets all order qualifiers intended to conform to the minimum recital level that is needed for a company to stay in business.
Walmart Canada has further gone a notch higher to meet order winners that are aimed at differentiating the benefit packages of clients from other competitors in the markets (Jones, & Robinson, 2012). This then makes Walmart Canada a winner in attracting clients.
The company’s services’ and goods’ designs
It is important to note that the configuration strategies for goods and services are highly dependent on the client’s needs and the markets targeted by the goods. They are also dependent on the values that clients would want to see when they visit an outlet for goods and services.
For instance, clients would want to be associated with outlets that are more responsive to their needs, those that are most convenient for them, those that provide sufficient information about their products and services and those that enhance their experience through entertainment.
The fact that clients always want several channels for purchases cannot be forgotten in this case. Therefore, a company that understands all these will stand a better chance of wooing more clients to purchase its services and goods (Christopher, 2005).
Walmart Canada should evaluate and know all the loopholes in its market and formulate rational strategies that can see it through the struggle in the competitive market. It is supposed to design goods and services that are in line with the specific and unique requirements of its clients and that conform to the specific terms of clients. These designs are guided by quality function development which aims at incorporating the voices of clients in every organizational decision (Jones, & Robinson, 2012).
Conclusion
The success of an organization is measured by the satisfaction it offers to both its clients and stakeholder. Organizational success is, however, a fundamental component that needs utter precision in organizational decisions and strategies.
Quality and customer satisfaction form the basis of the growth of profit-oriented organizations. Therefore, it is imperative that corporations like Walmart Canada focus their resources towards satisfying both their stakeholders and customers in order to achieve desired financial and reputational results.
References
Christopher, M. (2005). Logistics and supply chain management: Creating value-adding networks. Harlow, England: Prentice Hall/Financial Times.
Jones, P. & Robinson, P. (2012). Operations management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.