Company Background
Sam Walton, who was convinced that the American consumers wanted something more than retail shops, opened his own discount and retail shop in Rogers, Arkansas. Walton realized he could do better by passing on the savings to his customers and earning his profits through volume. This insight would form a cornerstone of Walton's business strategy when he launched Wal-Mart in 1962. Cost-cutting was an obsession in the Wal-Mart culture, and Walton understood that a major requirement for keeping costs down was controlling the payroll.
In 2012, Wal-Mart celebrated 50 years of helping people save money so they can live better. The company employs 2.2 million associates worldwide and serves 200 million customers each week at more than 10,000 stores in 27 countries. Among the many business enterprises and organizations that changed the world, Wal-Mart holds a very important position. As compared to other genuine companies that changed a lot in the world of entrepreneurs, Wal-Mart has a short, yet highly-acclaimed story of success that is backed by brute force of efforts put in by many members and employees.
Wal-Mart adopt E-business
What business processes were changed?
Possibly the single greatest success story of e-business and B2B implementation is that of the rise to dominance by Wal-Mart in the North American retail market. Wal-Mart has impressive growth in such a short time span and the single most important factor in this rise was their harnessing of the power of e-business. Wal-Mart built an inventory and supply chain management system that changed the face of business making it very competitive as an e-business.
“Like many companies, Wal-Mart started down the road to total integration by first linking its internal systems. Then the focus shifted toward an emphasis on integrating Wal-Mart’s systems with those of its suppliers. More recently, Wal-Mart has initiated efforts to bring processes and systems from the customer
References: Robinson, M., & Kalakota, R. (2004). E-business 2.0: Roadmap for success. (2nd ed., p. 165). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley. McCarthy , C. (2007 , March 6). Free shipping from walmart.com..with store pickup. CNET News . Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/2110-1030_3-6164619.html Wohl, J. (2012 , September 9). Walmart tests scan & go iphone app. Reuters . Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/05/walmart-tests-scan-go-app_n_1857336.html