Change Management Assignment PDF

Change Management
This essay investigates the importance and reasons why Walmart changed over time and the factors
that have pressure Walmart to change and will analyse consequences if they did not manage change
effectively. It will also explain and evaluate different strategies and specific strategies used by
managers to implement change and how effective these strategies effect their business.
Change management is the process of organisations implementing change in their business to
enhance current dissatisfactions or are preparing for change to adapt and succeed into the future
business environment that may prevent them into failure. According to Todnem (2005) in the
business environment managing change continuously is a necessity in order to sustain and succeed
in the highly competitive and evolving business environment.
(novelly and loosemore, 2018)
It is important for businesses to constantly change overtime as this process will help them achieve
organisation goals and help them adapt and succeed in the fast-growing developing world, as some
businesses who have ignored changes or were not sooner proactive have led their business to failure
or are currently struggling like Kodak and HMV. Walmart is one of the largest discount retailers as it
is known for selling more for less. Walmart has had to change within the last ten years in order to
survive and compete, as they had to change and manage internally and externally to tackle both
internal and external factors in the evolving environment of business. There are factors that
pressure businesses which will lead them to forcefully change overtime if they want their business to
adapt and succeed in the evolving business environment. Factors that pressures businesses to
change are internal and external factors, internal factors are factors within the company and have
control over and these are the areas that the organisation are struggling to bring competence and
development as these areas would be classified as their weakness. Investigating Walmart timeline
within the last ten years have shown that have being tackling both internal and external factors and
have been constantly changing internally and externally within these years to survive, adapt and
compete in the evolving business environment. Walmart internal factors have consisted of
workplace performance, employee behaviour, innovation, leadership style and operational efficiency
and their external factors have consisted mostly around competition and technology. To successfully
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tackle these factors Walmart would need to navigate these factors concisely in order to implement
effective and appropriate strategies in order to accomplish successful changes that will be beneficial
to the business, as just acknowledging the changes is not enough to provide a successful business
outcome (Alexander. M, 2015). researching into strategies that Walmart have used I have observed
that they have used specific models like PESTLE to identify and tackle external factors and SWOT to
identify their internal strength and weaknesses and identify their external opportunities and threats.
These models will help them identify on these aspects and find other appropriate strategies to
effectively execute change.
Walmart is famously known for their brand image, supercentre and neighbourhood markets in the
retail world as this was their main way for attaining their capital and also the traditional way they
have been doing business since they initially started as these have been Walmart main strength. This
way of doing business was not performing as much anymore but remains one of their main strength
but since other businesses were effectively using technology to sell their products online, Walmart
was then forced to change their way of selling their products as online selling had become one of the
best methods that businesses have been using to sell products. This leads back to identifying
external factors and external threats, which is at the time technology and competing with Amazon as
Amazon are a threat to Walmart. Amazon has been using ecommerce effectively that has been
attaining them higher percentage of sales as they kept increasing their performance and market
share. Therefore, Amazon is Walmart’s is biggest threat as they threaten Walmart’s position in the
market. Walmart felt pressured by Amazon so therefore their responds was to start investing in
technology. In 2010 Walmart’s implemented “People-led and Tech-Empowered” as they stated the
purpose on their website “Walmart commits to serving customer in changing retail environment,
leveraging both associates and technology to make it happen” (Walmart, n.d). This was the
beginning of a new evolution for Walmart as this purpose was to bring change in these key aspects.
Even though after introducing “People-led and Tech-Empowered” Throughout 2010 to 2014
Walmart was mainly focused on acquiring businesses overseas, in 2011 they acquired 51% Massmart
Holdings Limited in South Africa and acquired Bharti Walmart in 2013 to expand their business
(Walmart. n.d)
In 2015 Doug McMillon was elected as the new CEO of Walmart as this brought a change in their
style of leadership. In 2015 the new CEO Doug McMillon felt that Walmart was not doing enough to
compete with Amazon, as he believed that consumers behaviour were changing in the way they
shopped, experience while shopping was lacking and employees were not motivated in the
workplace (Bariso. J, 2018). Doug McMillon decided then to focus on the “People-led and Tech-
Empowered” project. As he commented on their annual shareholders meeting the purpose was to
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“invent the shopping of the future again, leverage technology to empower associates and improve
customer experience” (Griffith, L 2017). The first step Walmart took was investing $2.3 billion
(Walmart, n.d) on its associate in 2015, the progress of empowering associates by increasing
employees’ minimum wage up to $11 per hour, they have also implemented a two to six-week
training program to train supervisors, assistant managers, department managers and new employee
and an additional of parental leave benefits (Bariso. J, 2018). Walmart then starting to focus on
technology as this was to effectively empower associates as this is an opportunity build better
customer experience. In 2016 Walmart opening its new technological department, the Culinary and
Innovation Centre to develop and test new innovative products (Walmart, n.d). Walmart increased
their ecommerce presence by acquiring on of the fastest growing ecommerce firm Jet.com for $3
billion in 2016 as their technology will help them create a new shopping experience (Bentonville and
Hoboken, 2016). Going into 2017 Walmart did a lot of changes into their online retail and their
physical stores. Walmart launched a “free two-day” shipping without membership fee for products
that customer shop the most at a minimum of $35, the CEO of Walmart ecommerce stated, “free
two-day shipping is the first of many move we will be making to enhance the customer experience
and accelerate growth. (Bruno. S, 2017). Walmart have also blended ecommerce with their physical
stores as they introduced their pickup tower, shoppers can now order online and pickup their items
at the new pickup tower, by just scanning their barcode and within seconds shoppers receive their
items, as this is a way of saving time for customers waiting at long queues as this is also a creative
way of changing shopping experience. In 2018 they have further expanded their ecommerce by
acquiring India’s most advance ecommerce firm Behemoth Flipkart for $16 billion and have also
recently agreed a five-year deal in with Microsoft to accelerate their digital innovation in retail
(Bariso. J, 2018). Walmart has also changed its name from Wal-Mart stores to Walmart Inc, head
managements of Walmart stated Wal-mart is not changing, it’s just the name as they want Walmart
to be consistent with their overall way of shopping, and this is because Walmart is moving now
predominately towards ecommerce and wanted their names to match everywhere as their online
sites is Walmart.com.
Looking throughout Walmart timeline the manager has used effective strategies to manage change
to prevent the business from suffering consequences. Leveraging technology has been one of the
strategies that CEO Doug McMillion has used quite effective and also one that they really needed as
Amazon were expertise at using this strategy. This strategy has proven to be successful as Walmart
performance has been increasing constantly each year, him advancing technology within Walmart
and acquiring ecommerce firm has significantly boosted Walmart online sales as their e-commerce
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