Change In The Woolworths Supermarkets Essay.

Discuss about the Change In The Woolworths Supermarkets.

The Woolworths Supermarket is an Australian grocery store which is owned by the Woolworths Limited. The given company forms a duopoly along with Wesfarmers and Woolworths. The company is a major in the food grocery industry.  With around 1000 stores across Australia, the company aims to provide convenience to the customers and good products at reasonable prices (Woolworths.com.au., 2018). The company has over 202,000 employees under the brand name and maintains a hierarchal structure. Innovation is often taken to be an essential aspect of the organization. The given report throws light on the change in the organization with respect to technology.

The organization – Woolworths implemented a technological change in the last 12 month. The company began to realize the importance of adapting to the new technology in an organization and decided to utilize the technology in order to enhance its operations.

The primary triggers for such a change were the increased competition from its Australian counterparts Wesfarmers and Coles. Another trigger for change was to tap the new era of growth. The given initiative for change began to take place in 2016 whereby the company began to realize and strategically plan to make use of the technological developments in order to enhance the effectiveness of business operations (Baldwin & Scott, 2013). The company has also made elaborate plans to transform its supply chain which has been dubbed as the Mercury 2.

The company for this purpose, had appointed Matt Stanton as the transformation or change officer for the given change in the organization.

During the year, Woolworths started its cost reduction initiatives and started making use of an effective technology (Link, 2013).  The company  also plans to make use of the customer insight tool which is an application which will help the company to make better use of its customers.

Through the given initiative, the company plans to raise and uplift its sales by 1.8% as it is currently not satisfied with its current sales target. Another change that the company aims to make in this field is that it wants to establish its online store successfully in order to uplift its online sales. To promote the technological change and in order to ensure that the maximum sales takes place, Woolworths has partnered with eBay and Big W stores (Monahan, 2013). 

This change in the technological processes of the company is expected t bring about huge changes in the company and bring it a higher revenue base.

Forced Field Analysis

Force Field Analysis can be described as a tool which is used in order to analyze the changes that are necessary to make in the organization. The Force Field Analysis was created by Lewin in 1940s in order to help the business organizations to make a go or no go decisions. In the Forced Field Analysis, equilibrium needs to be reached in between the drivers for change and the resistors for change (Lorenzi & Riley, 2013). According  to the given theory, these driving forces needs to be strengthened and resisting forces need to be weakened.

Forced Field Analysis for the change at Woolworths:

Step 1 :Defining the plan for the change process:

The primary plan for the change process is to bring about technological change in the company that uses customer tools to enhance the satisfaction level of the different customers and to increase the sales of the company.

Step 2: Identifying the drivers

In the second step., the forces which are driving the change need to be analyzed. These drivers can be both internal as well as external (Frame & White, 2014).

The internal drivers to change include:

• Outdated technology
• Declining sales
• Need to increase profitability

The external drivers are :

• The changing market landscape
• Changing trend.

Step 3: Identify Forces against Change

In the given step the factors which work against the change that needs to be identified. For Woolworths the changes are as follows :

• Internal resistors
• Budget constraints
• Resistant from employees (Calel & Dechezlepretre, 2016).

External resistors maybe:

• Government legislation
• Customer responsibilities
• Partners

Step 4: Assigning scores

For each factor certain scores need to be assigned from one to five which help to determine the influence that a give  factor has on the change plan. The scores then need to be added up for each side.

Step 5: Analyze and Apply

This analysis can be used to decide whether it is viable to move forward with the change or to think about more forces which might go a long way in deciding whether to go forward with the change or to adopt another measure (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).  It also helps in identification of other better factors.

To convert the resistors to the drivers the following steps might be undertaken:

• Training the employees in order to remove their resistance.
• Changing the organizational structure.

Quality Management system can be defined as a set of practices and processes which are highly focused on the enhancement of customer satisfaction. The given quality management is aligned with the primary purpose of the organization and all the resources required for it need to be checked.

As Woolworths does not have a well defined Quality Management system in the last 12 months, the given steps have been suggested to develop a quality management system at Woolworths :

1. Clarifying the vision, mission and Values

Quality Management System

The vision, mission and values of the organization need to be incorporated in the employees. This is because the employees form an essential part of the organization and it is very important for them to ensure that they understand where the organization wants to head (Ross, (2017). 

2. Identify Critical Success Factors (CSF)

The Critical Success factors need to be identified. It is important for the organization to ensure that the objectives of the firm are met with and the performance based measures are given to ensure that Woolworths remains on its right path.

Some example CSF:

• Financial Performance
• Customer Satisfaction
• Product Quality

3. Developing measures for the factors

After the CSFs are identified, it is important for the firm to find certain measures so as to track the progress of the organization. This metric helps the firm to remain on track with the organizational goals and objectives. For instance, if the CSF is to increase customer satisfaction then, there should be a goal for that in order to ensure that this objective is properly met with .

4. Identify Key Customer Group

Woolworths has a well defined customer target group. This makes it important to develop products which are appropriate for the group (Chanthadavong, 2018).  The given customer group also includes the employees of the organization.

5. Solicit Customer Feedback

The customer feedback goes a long way in determining the success  of the given organization. Only when the views of the customers are  taken, will the organization will be successful in making an effort to offer products to ensure maximum satisfaction.

6. Developing a Survey Tool

A survey tool needs to be developed based on the findings with reference to the offerings which are most preferable to the given customer group. Various online surveys are available which help the company to see to it that how the customers are reacting to their products and how they want to be served (Financial Review., 2018). 

The survey needs to target all the customer groups so that it is easy for them to identify where the company is lagging in order to ensure the company takes time to improve the same.

7. Development of an Improvement Plan

Once the base has been set, it is important for the company to see to it that it starts developing the aims and objectives and uses SMART goals to achieve its goals.

The goals may be :

• Improving customer purchases
• Improving customer servicing
• Managing the Performance

8. Conducting re-survey

As the given performance management is of 12 months, after the given steps have been implemented , after a period of 6 months, a re-survey can be conducted to check whether the customers are satisfied and the role of the organization have improved or not.

9. Monitoring Change

Once this is done, it is very important for the company to see to it that the Critical Success Factors are monitored and changed accordingly (Afr.com ., 2018).

As Woolworths start achieving success with respect to this aspect, they can see to it that the given system is employed at their marketing level as well.

Lastly, they need to check that the technology used is up to date and that the improvements are supported by it.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the given analysis it can be stated that Woolworths has been trying its level best to ensure that the company is successful in carrying out the operations of the firm and to implement the stated change in the organization. As seen from the analysis, the primary changes that they plan to incorporate in their business are the change related to the technology used by the firm and to begin using more customer centric technological tools. They also plan to expand their online business by using various marketing techniques.

The forced field analysis reflected that the company has more drivers than resistors and that the change is being accepted by all. Lastly, the quality management system has been suggested which Woolworths can incorporate to improve their operations

References

Afr.com ., 2018. Woolworths dives into technology. Retrieved from https://www.afr.com/opinion/columns/woolworths-dives-into-technology-20130828-j0gdx

Baldwin, W., & Scott, J. (2013). Market structure and technological change (Vol. 18). Taylor & Francis.

Calel, R., & Dechezlepretre, A. (2016). Environmental policy and directed technological change: evidence from the European carbon market. Review of economics and statistics, 98(1), 173-191.

Chanthadavong, A. (2018). ?Woolworths eyes new technology for next phase of growth | ZDNet. ZDNet. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.zdnet.com/article/woolworths-eyes-new-technology-for-next-phase-of-growth/

Financial Review (2018).  Woolworths seeks technology edge after completing $100m Project Galaxy.. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.afr.com/technology/woolworths-seeks-technology-edge-after-completing-100m-project-galaxy-20150313-143i2z

Frame, W. S., & White, L. J. (2014). Technological change, financial innovation, and diffusion in banking. The oxford handbook of banking, 271.

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Link, A. (2013). Technological Change & Productivity Growth. Routledge.

Lorenzi, N. M., & Riley, R. T. (2013). Organizational aspects of health informatics: managing technological change. Springer Science & Business Media.

Monahan, T. (2013). Globalization, technological change, and public education. Routledge.

Ross, J. E. (2017). Total quality management: Text, cases, and readings. Routledge.

Woolworths.com.au (2018). Woolworths.com.au. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.woolworths.com.au/