Strategic Initiative: Wal-Mart

Strategic Initiative: Wal-Mart

  • Submitted By: DamienOris
  • Date Submitted: 02/08/2010 3:24 PM
  • Category: Business
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RUNNING HEAD: STRATEGIC INITIATIVE: WALMART

Strategic Initiative: Walmart

Learning Team A:

October 12, 2009

Fin370

Rodney Nelsestuen

Strategic Initiative

Strategic planning, while varying in type from business to business, is an important foundation for Wal-Mart to build upon. Wal-Mart's three-step process plans for long-term goals and ideas while ensuring that Wal-Mart's ability to produce brilliant management while continuing to offer lower prices and excellent customer service are intact. The financial data within the 2009 annual report for Wal-Mart shows a positive trend in sales over costs, further adding to the positive impact that Wal-Mart's strategic planning has performed.

Strategic Planning Initiative

Strategic planning is one of the most important parts of planning for companies. Strategic planning is a guide for a firm and encompasses the development of new products through research and development, expansion of current markets and the identification of new markets (Herbert, 2007). Strategic planning is used to determine what direction the company is going on over the next couple of years and the vision it has long term. Several strategic approaches exist that a company or organization can take and the one selected is a three-step process. The first step is situation, in which the current situation is evaluated and how the situation started. The second step is target, also known as ideal state, which is to discover goals and objectives of the plan. The third and last step is path, which maps out a direction to reach the goals and objectives that have been put in place. So many different other types of strategic planning are available to a company and each plan is tailored to the business or organization and what the owners of the company think will be most suitable and best for the company. No perfect strategic planning model exists for every organization; the model that was selected was...

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