Management Information Systems at Wal-mart Essay

Management Information Systems at Wal-mart - Essay ExampleThe intention of this study is Wal-mart as the largest sell participation in the world that has been on the top of Fortunes 500 list for several(prenominal) years. It is also the largest employer in the world. Wal-mart deals in general merchandise as well as specialized harvest lines such as pharmacy, tire and lube express and photo processing. Wal-mart sells high quality branded products to its clients at the lowest prices. Wal-mart achieves this seemingly contradictory combination right using advanced worry information systems. In addition, it makes special long term contracts with big providers and removes middlemen. The basic idea behind Wal-marts business is throw out merchandising that is keeping margins low by selling at a large discount notwithstanding improving the top-line by selling a very large volume of products. In veritableizing Wal-marts corporate strategies in practice, management information systems h ave played the most significant role. Wal-marts supply string is considered the best in the world due to a very efficient use of information technology. This is the comp whatsoevers core competency. Wal-mart has been a pioneer of many supply chain management practices based on advanced information systems. The use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is the biggest and most recent of these. The following sections discuss the use of management information systems employ by Wal-mart and the strategic advantages derived by the company as a result of them. 3. Wal-marts Inventory Management System Wal-mart uses an inventory management system called Retail Link. This system allows the suppliers to have a look at the number of products of each type at the shelves in each retail origin of Wal-mart at any given time. In addition, the system gives information about the sales rate for any period say an hour, a day, a week or a year. The suppliers also get real time information about th e time of the day their products sell, the accompanying products which it sells and other details. All this information helps the supplier companies in efficient inventory management. In many cases, Wal-mart leaves the stock decisions entirely to the supplier companies. This saves considerable cost in administration. The inventory risks such as stock-outs are hence transferred to the suppliers. This leads to a significant cost decrement (PriceWaterHouseCoopers, 2010). 4. Channel Partnership with big companies through information systems Wal-mart has forged several strategic partnerships with major supplier companies. These partnerships have been facilitated by modern information systems and flawless execution. A prominent case study is the strategic partnership between Wal-mart and Procter & Gamble. Both the companies are major players in their sectors. They have developed a putting green supply chain information sharing channel to better co-ordinate the supply chain activities. W hat began as a data sharing activity slowly permeated through strategic, operational and tactical levels in the ii organizations. For achieving their objectives, Wal-mart and P&G together came up with a data highway that allowed the companies to share information on sales at all stores, types and time of sale, shelf information and so on. This drove down cost of both companies and increase customer satisfaction. The conceptual diagram for the data highway is shown in realise 1.4.1. Figure 1.4.1 Channel Partnership Data Highway between Wal-mart and P&G Source Grean, Michael Shaw, Michael J. Supply twine Integration through Information Sharing Channel partnership between Wal-mart and Procter & Gamble In this approach, Wal-mart used scanners inside its retail stores to study their own business. The observations were critically canvass. P&G used consumer buying patterns and compared it with the customer information available from market research or other activities. All the informat ion collected and analyzed by the two companies was collected. This led to