Strategic Assessment of Wal-Mart for an ITM class Essay

Strategic Assessment of Wal-Mart for an ITM class - Essay Example Many others are of the view that the current problems were because of Wal-Mart’s failure to incorporate state-of-the-art IS/IT technologies in its operations. Being a business technology consultant hired by Wal-Mart, I do believe that Wal-Mart is in trouble mainly because of its failure to incorporate suitable IS/IT technologies in its activities. Offline businesses are currently giving way for online businesses or e-commerce. It is important for Wal-Mart to give more attention to online businesses. â€Å"Wal-Mart has assembled a team of 70 developers, computer engineers and researchers — dubbed @WalmartLabs — in an aggressive attempt to position itself at the forefront of social and mobile commerce† (Wal-Mart: The Next Tech Giant?). However, its e-commerce platform still needs more fine tuning to attract more visitors. Just like Amazon and Google, it is better for Wal-Mart to enter into the search engine business so that it can expand its business portfolios as well as enhance its retail business. Shopperception is a new IT related technology evolved out in recent times to check the consumer behaviours and buying habits. â€Å"Shopperception recognizes the customers when they check-in and it remembers previous buying habits and can predict what the customer is likely to want on this visit† (Israel). Wal-Mart should use this technology extensively in its retail outlets to help the consumers. â€Å"The Wal-Mart network, connecting more than 2,400 stores and 100 distribution centers worldwide. At Wal-Mart, we dont implement technology for its own sake," says David Flanagin, Director of Network Engineering† (The Wal-Mart Story, p.1). From the words of David, it is evident that Wal-Mart is not much keen in using technologies to improve the efficiency of its global activities. It should be noted that efficient working of a supply chain is necessary for Wal-Mart to