External Business Environment – Business Continuity PlanEssay Preview: External Business Environment – Business Continuity PlanReport this essayExternal Business Environment – Business Continuity PlanEvery industry has a leader who has a strategically very intelligent business plan and follows practices that become guide for the rest of the industries and sometimes across the industry. Wal-Mart is one such organization which has so many unique practices that pages and pages have been filled describing them. Wal-Mart is a perfect example of a company that has learnt from the mistakes of others and made it to the top by making constant efforts at keeping the customers extremely satisfied and providing top-notch uninterrupted service. This paper deals with understanding the external business environment and its impact on the firms strategic business continuity plan with regard to Wal-Mart stores in U.S. Secondly, the paper has analysis of the general, industry and competitor environments and the role of business ethics in gathering competitor intelligence.
External business market and its influence on the firms strategic business continuity planThe external business market of Wal-Mart is extremely unique and dynamic. The external business market of any company has a lot of influence on the Business continuity plan. The business continuity plan attempts to ensure that critical IT services must be delivered to guarantee survival and meet legal obligations of an organization in the event of a disaster. It is a kind of proactive planning. The first influence of the external business market in the strategic business continuity plan of Wal-Mart is that the external business market is very dynamic and prone to a lot of changes and this leads to the importance of the development of agile IT and other systems which can be changed as when the need arises. Second, the external environment also has risks like terrorist attacks, hurricanes, floods; earthquakes and so on also have an influence on the Business Continuity Plan. Necessary programs and technology is acquired to ensure that the firms can recover the data and other critical information after the disaster has stricken. For instance, once Hurricane Katrina made its way off of the Gulf Coast, Wal-Mart discovered that more than 170 stores and approximately 34,000 employees were somehow impacted by the storm. Yet a finely tuned disaster-recovery plan helped the chain successfully tend to the needs of its employees, stores and consumers. Storm modeling solutions were used to forecast the speed of the winds and so on. The external business market also consists of a lot of fluctuations and uncertainty in terms of the availability of various types of resources. This influences the BCP by including a component for identification of adequate number of resources such as personnel, infrastructure and money to support business continuity if the Wal-Mart stores get hit by a disaster.
Wal-Mart stores have a huge number of people coming to them every day and there can be no scope of error at any stage of purchase. But, 8,000, 000 cards were overcharged at Wal-Mart because of hard ware problems ! This is the magnitude of risk associated with the extremely dynamic environment of operation. Business continuity planning includes many other concepts like Risk Assessment, Business Impact Analysis, Disaster recovery plan, business recovery plan, business resumption, contingency planning, and crisis management and so on.
Analysis of general, industry and competitor environmentThe general industry has a lot of shift towards achieving sustainability, making food, medicine, clothing and other common items more affordable to the common people. For instance, Wal-Mart is working with Michelle Obama to make healthy food affordable to the people in the U.S. There is also an increased emphasis on having long term relationships and mutually beneficial relationships with all the stakeholders. For instance, the industry lays lot of emphasis on developing healthy relationships with the farmers. It is not just about sales and profits, its more about the manner in which such profits are gained and the contribution that the company is making to the society and the not so lucky people. The performance of the economy on the whole also as a great impact on the retail industry and stores likes Wal-Mart does get impacted. The profits in this industry are directly related to the GDP and other important parameters of health of an economy.
The retail industry is a sector of the economy that is comprised of individuals and companies engaged in the selling of finished products to end user consumers. Multi-store retail chains in the U.S. are both publicly traded on the stock exchange and privately owned. Wal-Mart is one such company that operates in the larger retail industry. The retail industry is very big in size and is extremely dynamic in nature. It is the second largest industry in U.S. and Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer in the world. An estimates two-third of the U.S. GDP comes from retail consumption.
The competitor environment is very interesting. The primary competitor to Wal-Mart stores in U.S. comes from general merchandise retailers, supermarket retailers and warehouse clubs. The top competitors of Wal-Mart compete both at the domestic, national as well as the international level. In general merchandise retailing, the primary competitors of Wal-Mart is Target and Kmart. Some other competitors include Circuit City and Bed Bath and Beyond. In fact the competition occurs on various fronts like pricing, location, store size, technology and innovation, merchandise mix, offers and discounts, overall image and so on. The competition is also based on how well the companies are able to integrate many functions such as purchasing , manufacturing, advertising, shipping, etc and how the economies of scale are achieved. Such functions have the ability to give significant
to the customer both in terms of overall brand performance and in the number of items that can be delivered. The competitive position in the store marketplace is also significant as it reflects the competitive level, size, technology, inventory value, variety of products and stores. This fact can play a very strong role in the growth of such a competitive industry like Wal-Mart. It can also put the customer at a disadvantage in terms of the quantity and price, because of its limited number of stores and the number of products of various brands.
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2. A Business Model with Target and Kmart in Touch
In its new strategy to support both new and existing products, Wal-Mart has created a new concept for a retail business that will support both its growing international footprint and its ability to operate in a variety of different markets. In this concept the new brand will include some of the features of a store business. An example would be the ability to have a direct approach to both physical and online offerings and to provide a competitive view of the new retail environment. It’s also possible to integrate existing, existing, retail stores and provide access to customers from one to another. The combination of these features can be very attractive to customers both inside the store and outside of Walmart, and the concept should appeal both to non-Wal-Mart retail customers and non-Wal-Mart domestic and international customers alike. While the concept will certainly be well integrated within a store environment to accommodate both local and international use cases, it won’t be complete without other components related to product development and marketing. This includes features such as product quality control which will improve the product quality and will enable customers to use the product at a higher level of quality.
For example, many of the key components of the new format of the company will be incorporated into the process of creating their retail product line, which will be designed around the concept. The new brand concept will utilize a wide range of products in the store, each carrying a minimum of one new product in total. The store will operate in several verticals, each with unique content and designs and will include a store design that is aligned with the new store concept.
In addition to the changes to the new format Wal-Mart has begun to make, the new stores will also employ new concepts in which the store utilizes different components. For example, the store concept will be an online store where Wal-Mart stores will offer different online products from different parts of the US and globally, which Wal-Mart stores will have limited geographic reach and will offer at retail only. Wal-Mart will also employ new technology to create new and enhanced store experience and in-store location concepts and experiences, such as a mobile app for mobile, a social media mobile app for iOS and Android devices, a online web site for online sales at Wal-Mart Stores and a website with more than 120,000 membership in nearly 30 countries. Also, the store concept will be a global digital service where Wal-Mart stores will have exclusive digital accounts. Finally, the store concept will be a social network experience where customers can interact with other members as well as create, log, submit and use mobile and desktop mobile accounts for purchases on their mobile device. A store concept approach that will utilize new technologies to promote and connect with existing members of the organization or to create new services or products by taking them on a deeper social dimension, so that they can become part of a more open, open store to the outside world in their own way and take part