Implementation Of Strategic Management At Woolworths

Task

It is often noted that implementation is the most difficult aspect of strategic management. With reference to your organisation, how might this be the case?

You are required to write a 3500 word report including 200 words of an executive summary, but excluding references and appendix. You should also perform the following tasks:

1. Identify and discuss the strategy that the organisation (or SBU) is implementing/has implemented by examining its strategy statement and/or its value chain activities.
2. Evaluate the suitability of the organisation's current business strategy based on the outcomes of your analysis (e.g., the identification of the organisation's current strategy and the most significant factors affecting the organisation's performance, and your understanding of the organisation’s strategy). If the current strategy is not suitable, please recommend no more than two alternative strategic initiatives that the organisation should pursue and justify your recommendations.
3. Evaluate the implementation of strategy.
4. Develop your conclusion.

Rationale

Completion of this assessment should facilitate the development of a good understanding of what is involved in the process of strategic implementation. This assignment serves a number of purposes:

• be able to identify and explain the key components of strategic management such as strategy analysis, strategy formulation and strategy implementation, and their interrelationships;
• be able to review and evaluate the evolution of ideas and practices leading to the development of strategic management and its relationship to other management practices and principles;
• be able to identify and differentiate between functional areas such as marketing, finance, operations and human resource management and evaluate how they should act conjointly toward the attainment of the organisations strategic aims and objectives;
• be able to evaluate the importance of developing strategically appropriate relationships between people, processes, functions, structures and even organisations; and
• Be able to critique, act strategically, and make recommendations in the context of the potential of strategic management vis-a-vis the realisation of organisational change and/or success in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors.

Introduction

The project report has been designed to conduct an in-depth analysis of the Australian Supermarket giant Woolworth along with its industrial performance and strategic decision-making. The report will study strategic management as well as a corporate strategy adopted by Woolworth; focusing on product innovation and data utilisation in order to create customer satisfaction. It will further evaluate macro-environmental factors of Woolworth and its influence derived from industry through PESTEL as well as Porter’s Five Forces analysis. Woolworth has expanded over the years into many new businesses considering the industry attractiveness for each new venture; the same would be briefly discussed and explored in the report.

Industry and Woolworth

The Australian supermarket industry is classified as a mature market with respect to retailing groceries and food line business where organisations are employing cost-based factors rather than differentiation to compete with each other. In the mature market like this growth rate has been squeezed from 3.4 in 2012 to further decline expected between 2012 and 2017. Woolworth and Coles are the two giant players in the Australian market with a collective market share of 70% leading to product-based wars. The price war between the two for regular groceries has led to product becoming loss leaders where the products are sold at below the cost in order to stimulate sales as well as customer footfall in stores (Meshbauddin, 2012). 

Woolworths Ltd. established its first store in Australia in 1924 was primarily a retailer that has accessed in-depth in supermarket industry of the Australian retail industry with its presence in areas like hotels, general merchandise stores and petrol and gas stations. Woolworth huge retail product portfolio comprises of grocery, liquor, electronics,   general merchandise, fresh food products, and fuel. The company currently owns 577 general merchandise stores, 2,330 divisions and 284 hotels. The primary areas of the company’s operations include Australia and New Zealand with subsidiaries in China, India and Hong Kong (Woolworths, 2009).

Strategic Management Implemented by Woolworths

Strategy Statement Analysis External Analysis

Woolworth, the next big retail giant has recently announced a three-year strategy that it believes would help in transforming the organisation into a customer-first business as well as would help neutralise its competitors. The strategy would mainly focus on improving core efficiencies, initiating new efficiencies as well as introducing innovative products and services to meet customer requirement. Woolworth will practise the Lean Retail model to improve efficiencies over customer services and product; adding 58,000 work hours per week to uplift customer service level and further to coordinate this they have combined the Australian and New Zealand food business under one division in Banducci. Also, they have flagged revised their loyalty system on cards having more offers for targeted customers (Kyle, 2010). 

To initiate product innovation, Woolworth is establishing a new division as Woolworth FoodCo responsible for improving sourcing partnership; develop a new product category, improvising on a fresh supply of meat as well as processing etc. Woolworth has recently announced that for the next two years it will let go of its earning to invest $500 million of cost saving into food and grocery pricing along with improving services in its 900 stores. This money will be coming from its cost-saving initiatives in IT, logistics, supply chain and store support services. To further regain its corporate performance over competitors it has announced a management shake-up in the supermarket (Woolworths, 2009).