Management Information Systems in Walmart: Interconnected Business Units, Data Forms, and Big Data Solutions

Management
Information Systems

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................1
Describe how the different business units of Walmart are interconnected............................1
Organisation chart to represent the dependence of each of the business units to each other. 2
Data flow diagrams to represent the direction of data flows within the organisation............3
Reasons behind choosing structure of organizational chart...................................................4
Reasons behind choosing structure of data flow diagrams....................................................5
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................5
Describe the different forms of data in Walmart....................................................................5
Role of data warehousing in Walmart....................................................................................6
Evaluate the current Information Systems.............................................................................6
Recommendations to the board of directors about big data solutions....................................7
Description of the proposed solution with advantages and disadvantages of the system in
response to Amazon’s strategy...............................................................................................7
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................8
Key concerns about ethical, legal and professional implications associated with information
handling and security in Walmart...........................................................................................8
References:.....................................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
The following discussion is based on the case study of Walmart and Amazon. Walmart is
the leading international retail company headquartered in the United States. Currently Walmart
operates over 4700 retail stores on a global basis. It has revenue of more than 510 billion US
dollars. Talking about Amazon, Amazon has formulated the fresh forward looking plan which is
called the Amazon go convenience stores. It is a plan where customers can comfortably choose
any items and walk out of the store without checking on a cashier. Similarly Walmart is also
currently looking for the contrary plan and implementation of such innovative ideas in order to
improve The E-Commerce strategies within the organization.
Task 1
Describe how the different business units of Walmart are interconnected
Walmart has different business units which are interrelated to each other. There are various
departments in Walmart interconnected and each business unit functioning depends on the other
on a collaborative basis. For example departments like human resource and sales department are
interrelated with the marketing and financial department which are also interconnected with the
information technology and operations department. All these are the business units which
collaboratively work in order to achieve the goals and objectives of Walmart. Such a relationship
between the marketing and sales department is to formulate the advertising strategies which are
implemented by the sales people and other distribution techniques which are formulated by the
marketing people. Relationships between the human resource department and other business
units are such that if the human resource will not be able to hire the expertise and good people in
the job profile than any other department will not be able to function properly. The financial
department is also related with the marketing department in order to showcase the budgets and
other investments so that the other department can spend the funds accordingly. Moreover the
information technology business unit administers the technical equipment in the organization so
that big data can be managed with better analysis and interpretation of the information. This is
how all the departments of the Walmart are interconnected to each other so that they can work
collaboratively and take care of the employee management and fund management along with the
technical management and other operational activities in the organization (Ali and Hingst, 2018).
1

Organisation chart to represent the dependence of each of the business units to each other
The below representation of the organizational chart illustrates the different business units
of Walmart and their interrelationships among different departments. Walmart uses the
hierarchical structure of business. It has different levels in which the President and chief
executive officer is at the top level along with all the stores of Walmart. At the second level of
hierarchical structure, the president and chief executive officer of Walmart United States and
Walmart international along with the Sam's club and global E-Commerce and Technology is
placed. All these are the different business domains which have different departments such as
human resource and marketing along with the sales and operations and many more. All these are
interconnected with each other in which the further classifications are also done in the form of
planning and policy along with the general service and geographic information which is followed
by the national geographic data monitoring. This is the hierarchical structure of Walmart in
which separate departments and business units are demonstrated (Alsharari, 2021).
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