2. What role did Sam Walton play in the development and maintenance of the Wal-Mart’s culture? Sam Walton founded Walmart for the aim of making people save money while shopping and live better. This couldn’t be achieved without a strong culture of all employees working together to fulfill that purpose. Sam Walton incorporated this culture into every aspect of the business, where you can find a set of beliefs for all employees such as high customer service, respect for the individual, striving for excellence and acting with integrity.
Customer satisfaction surveys and focus groups are two popular methods for listening to customers. Customer Satisfaction Surveys Research indicates that independent customer satisfaction surveys are the first step to measuring your organizations ability to meet and exceed customer expectations for service. It is the most common best practice tool that is used by organizations to capture customer feedback. Focus Groups Listening to your customers in direct feedback sessions is another best practice and when utilized in conjunction with customer satisfaction surveys can be a very powerful communications tool. Focus groups provide an opportunity to strengthen customer ties by forming stronger one-on-one customer relationships.
In order to be competitive and also profitable, companies need to find ways to reduce or eliminate costs associated with routine and repetitive business transactions. Those transactions often fall in the areas of purchasing, billing, accounts receivable, and accounts payable. It is in these areas that the confusion caused by translating part numbers is most noticeable. Time spent translating one part number to another part number for the same item adds very little, if any, value to the transaction. The errors that result from errors in translation are the cause of many problems in invoicing and making payments.
This growth mitigates any negative effects of offshoring. Offshoring also helps a company be closer to its global customers, thereby providing appropriate offerings to its regional market and ensuring speedier problem resolution. Developers and support personnel in the relevant geographies have a better understanding of customers' needs, regulatory compliances and regional preferences, and can better implement the product or provide the service. In addition, offshoring alleviates problems created by time differences, enabling companies to support remote customers too in a virtual 24-7 operation. For companies with constrained resources, offshoring also offers better utilization of capital investments through remote usage in multiple time zones.
The company’s objectives include continuing to secure sustainable growth through acquisitions and then attain successful integration of those acquisitions. In addition executive management seeks to improve the company’s business activities by implementing infrastructure improvements, improve the quality of customer service, and lower operating costs. Although these objectives are of significant importance the executive managers also recognize the need to implement financial strategies to reduce risk and to implement a strategic growth management plan. Functional Tactics Functional tactics are derived from the company’s business strategy
Best-Practice Integrated Supply Chain Management and its Competitive Advantage Survival of companies in today’s economy requires continuous process innovation. Firms often seek competitive advantage through product features, price, promotion, and advertising, while failing to see the value of an exceptional service operations system. It is best-practice integrated supply chain management that enhances the firm’s marketing effortts to create competitive advantage. Supply chain management is rare in today’s business organizations because of its complexity, but its process intricacy makes it difficult for competitors to replicate a successful system. Supply chain management is the complex process of managing systems to ensure that products are where they should be when they should be there, while minimizing costs and creating opportunities for profit.
Customer service is something we do for customers that improves the customer’s experience and that happens before, during and after a purchase of services or products. According to Harris (2010) customer service is essential to any business because it will guarantee that the customer will give you good feedback and with that you will have a great reputation. Great repetition of the business will make for more business by new customers, and will keep your older customers returning. Another reason it is important is because customers are key to your company’s success. A positive customer service experience I have had personally was when I called my credit card company to dispute chargers.
(Points : 5) Relationship marketing strives at “building enduring relationships with people and organizations in order to earn and retain their businesses” (Kotler & Keller 2009, Pg. 20). Relationship marketing delivers many benefits to the business as it allows you to reduce marketing expenses, build referrals, and grow the company’s business aligned with the clients’ needs. “The ultimate outcome of relationship marketing is a marketing network consisting of the company and its supporting stakeholders, customers, employees, suppliers, distributors, retailers, ad agencies, etc with who it can build mutually profitable business relationships” (Kotler & Keller 2009, Pg. 22).
Mintzberg's Organizational Configurations Ι - Financial services firms are known for having tight procedures and rigorous control systems. Staff in design agencies, on the other hand, can sometimes seem to operating as free agents. Big organizations merge to achieve "synergies", but they sometimes also split divisions out into separate, more agile companies. So why are these organizations so different? The reason for this variety is that an organization's structure can make a real difference to the way it performs.
What are the main benefits assumed to flow from a merger or takeover? Why do so many mergers and takeovers fail to deliver improved financial performance? Illustrate your answer with relevant financial case analysis. In a highly competitive environment, many companies find it difficult to increase their market share, and hence have no choice but resort to restructuring, mergers and takeovers. Such decisions are forced to be made as mergers and takeovers encourage the increase of share market dominance, obtain economies of scale and create synergies.