Strategic Plan Report: Analyzing the Woolworths Company's Strategy

This report presents a strategic analysis of Woolworths, a leading supermarket chain based in Australia, focusing on its business operations, customer strategies, and competitive environment. It delves into Woolworths' strategic plan, examining its vision, mission, and the external factors affecting its performance. The report utilizes Porter's Five Forces model to identify key issues such as supplier bargaining power, customer dynamics, and competitive rivalry. It highlights internal challenges including increasing debt, employee inefficiency, and the need for international expansion. The analysis proposes several alternatives to address these issues, including cost-leadership strategies, just-in-time management, strategic alliances, and employee training programs. The report recommends a pricing strategy, unique product development, and customer-centric approaches to enhance the company's competitive position. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of strategic planning to navigate market competitiveness and sustain growth, offering insights into supply chain optimization and the impact of internal and external environments on strategic decision-making.

Running head: STRATEGIC PLAN
STRATEGIC PLAN
Name of the Student
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Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Identify the issue........................................................................................................................3
Alternatives for the issues..........................................................................................................5
Recommendation........................................................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Big data is consisting of data sets with various capacity sizes. They are of petabytes
and Exabyte which can contain millions of data records for referral. These data are recorded
from various resources such as web, customer contact center, sales and mobile data. Big data
is used by the companies in order to manage the unstructured, semi-structured and structured
data. This big data is a field that creates several ways to analyse these data systematically
(Arli 2013). It uses traditional data processing application software for the large files to be
arranged systematically.
The paper discusses about the case study of report on Woolworths Company in
Australia. The paper focuses on the strategic plan of the organisation. The paper covers the
operational insights, customer, and product of the organisation. This is to pay the attention on
the business advantages. The business is trying to achieve strategic depths for competitive
advantage in 9 to 12 months (Berning 2014). This paper describes Woolworth’s strategy for
structuring the activities to improve customer retention rate, enhance customer gaining,
reduce customer churn rate, improve analytical maintenance, and reduce revenue theft.
The Woolworths Company is a largest supermarket chain headquartered in Australia.
The Woolworths Company started the business as a bargain basement channel. It has 28
million customers and have 31% market share. On the basis of sales, number of
supermarkets, revenues, and geographic location, Woolworths is considered as the largest
retail sector.
The strategic analysis of Woolworths Company have the vision to satisfy the
customers with excellent shopping experience by the company and increase the margin of
customers into the target market. The company have adopted many processes for innovation
and to achieve customer satisfaction through effective services. The data collected is used in

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this company to structure the details of customers and employees in order to monitor the
activities of each individual and process. The analysis of external environment is done for
Woolworths Company that affects the process of the company (Beswick 2013). The internal
environment of Woolworths Company is also analysed for the resources and capabilities that
can possibly impact the strategic decision process. The mission of Woolworths is to
understand and lead the customers through excellence. They acquire knowledge on the
products and services to satisfy each customers.
External Analysis of Woolworths
The company have focused on performing critical analysis for the external environment. The
identification of issues and analysis of issue have been determined by using Porter’s five
force model. This model is used to apply the strategic analytical tool for determining business
conditions.
Internal Analysis of Woolworth
The internal analysis of the company is analysed to focus on the internal performance of the
employees and processes. It focused on the financial operations, product operations and
quality for competitive advantage.
Identify the issue
The company needs to understand and analyse the influence of internal environment
and external environment regarding the profitability of the company and its performance. The
corporate strategic is also affected by the external environment of the company. The internal
environment also impacts the company and strategic changes is needed for improvement and
to meet the goal of the company by effective strategic mission (Cheng 2014).

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The internal environment analysis of Woolworths states that the issues of debt of the
company is increasing. The financial risk due is debt is high for Woolworths. Another issue is
that the company is not expanded in the international market. It is only known in Australia
and New Zealand. The major issue that the company faces is the high competition in the
market.
The issue of the company regarding the efficiency of the employees is observed. The
company notices that the employees are not performing up to the mark for the productivity
enhancement. The company faces a major issue where the company cannot deliver the
product in time to the customers (Dos Santos 2012). The inefficiency of employee can lead to
heavy loss in productivity and may result in heavy cost for the company.
Analyse the issue
The issues is analysed by using Porter’s five force model. The company have evaluated
environmental analysis for implementing strategic plan by Porter’s five force analysis.
Bargaining power of suppliers- The issues are that the company have low dependence of
the suppliers. The suppliers are the most important for the company as they are higher
suppliers in the market. As the company have week bargaining power of supplier, this cannot
lead the company to achieve competitive advantage in the market. The reason behind the
issue is that the company have considerable amount of retailing market share and have vats
number of products in the market to sell (Govender 2017).
Bargaining power of customers- the customers of the company are individual buyers with
strong bargaining power. The issue is that the company is bound to decrease the price for the
strong customer base. They need to meet the customer need and provide low price products is
the main strategy of Woolworths.

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Threat of new retailers- the new entrants in the market have impact on the company as they
may face risks while investing for a large amount. The company have increased competitors
who can provide the customers with high quality product and have efficient employees.
Threat of substitute products and services- as the company is so large, the company faces
high competition. The company must develop innovative and competitive strategies to
overcome the competition of substitute products and services (Hubbard 2012).
Rivalry among competitors- the issue with competitors are that the competitors of
Woolworths are Myer or Coles who have the ability to limit Woolworth’s market share. The
competitors continuously bound Woolworths to create effective strategies.
Alternatives for the issues
The issues can be handled through developing strategic plan for competitive
advantage. The company have the alternatives of maximum output with low cost by
implementing sale up and cost down approach. This approach is to reduce the cost on the
basis of production of the company. The company must implement just- in –time strategy to
manage the operating cost (Methner 2015). If the company will focus on the performance of
the process and employees then the improvement in the performance can be achieved. The
alternative for the issues of competition can be by developing strategic alliance relating the
core business of various operations of the company. The company must ensure to have
people focused development so that the human resource and it may result in improvement of
the proficiencies to achieve the goal.
The issues with inefficiency of the employees in delivering their task can be solved by
introducing training programs. The training program can help the company to train the
employees where they lack and improve their proficiency in achieving company’s goal and
objectives. The training must be effective by analysing the employee’s area of improvement.

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This can help to quickly recover the loss of the company (Ngwakwe). The company must
expand its business in international market so that new talents can be recruited by the
company in due time with high productivity and profitability approaches.
The financial operations must be in track by critical analysis of financial conditions
by the experts. By hiring an expert for the financial analysis, the expert can suggest with new
plans and ideas that can help the company to monitor its financial roles and activities. This
strategy can help the company to strengthen the financial conditions and enrich with new
ideas for expansion in international market (FitzRoy 2012).
Recommendation
 The pricing strategy is the most important factor for the retail industry. The company
need to collect feedback from the customers so as to decide on the pricing decisions to
be taken for the processes.
 It must develop unique product strategy so that the uniqueness is achieved.
 The product development must be customer based products, so that the needs and
demands are acknowledged (Spillan 2015).
 The company must develop cost- leadership strategy that can produce with lower cost
rates with regard to customer’s demands that is relative to the competitor.
 The product must be delivered to the customer within the specified time allotted.

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Conclusion
The paper concludes that the company have leading growth in the market but the
issues with the competition in the market have produced a need for strategic plan. The
strategies have adequate advantage for the company, the cost leadership approach and just- in
–time approach and uniqueness in the product can help the company to withstand the
competitiveness of Woolworth in the market. The company have identified the issues and
found the solution for improvement in the performance of the company. The company have
focused on the supply chain of the company in order to decrease the wastage cost. The
internal environment of the business focused on resources and capabilities that determined
the strength and weakness and the external environment stated the opportunity and threats for
competitive strategic development.

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References
Arli, V., Dylke, S., Burgess, R., Campus, R. and Soldo, E., 2013. Woolworths Australia and
Walmart US: Best practices in supply chain collaboration. Journal of Economics, Business &
Accountancy Ventura (JEBAV), 16(1).
Berning, A., 2014. Sustainable supply chain engagement in a retail environment: the case of
Woolworths food suppliers (Doctoral dissertation, Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University).
Beswick, C. and Mosala, T., 2013. Woolworths food: High-end retail in tough economic
times. Wits Business School.
Cheng, M.M., Green, W.J. and Ko, J.C.W., 2014. The impact of strategic relevance and
assurance of sustainability indicators on investors' decisions. Auditing: A Journal of Practice
& Theory, 34(1), pp.131-162.
Dos Santos, M.A., 2012. Global warming mitigation promotes corporate entrepreneurship
within Woolworths’ supply chain.
Dos Santos, M.A., Svensson, G. and Padin, C., 2013. Indicators of sustainable business
practices: Woolworths in South Africa. Supply Chain Management: An International
Journal, 18(1), pp.104-108.
FitzRoy, P., Hulbert, J.M. and Ghobadian, A., 2012. Strategic management: The challenge of
creating value. Routledge.
Govender, S., 2017. How social media can be used to engage and interact with consumers in
the retail industry: an analysis on Woolworths' online strategies (Doctoral dissertation, The
IIE).
Hubbard, G., Rice, J. and Galvin, P., 2014. Strategic management. Pearson Australia.

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Methner, N., Hamann, R. and Nilsson, W., 2015. The evolution of a sustainability leader: The
development of strategic and boundary spanning organizational innovation capabilities in
Woolworths. In The Business of Social and Environmental Innovation (pp. 87-104). Springer,
Cham.
Ngwakwe, C.C., CORPORATE SOCIAL INVESTMENT–GOOD BUSINESS AND GOOD
REVENUE: THE CASE OF WOOLWORTHS HOLDINGS LTD SOUTH AFRICA.
Spillan, J.E. and Ling, H.G., 2015. Woolworths: An Adizes Corporate Lifecycle Perspective.
In Business History Conference. Business and Economic History On-line: Papers Presented
at the BHC Annual Meeting (Vol. 13, p. 1). Business History Conference.