Industry Analysis of Retail Sector and Organizational Mapping for Morrisons Supermarkets

LO1. Explain the different types, size and scope of organisations.

LO2. Demonstrate the interrelationship of the various functions within an organisation and how they link to organisational structure.

Organisation

Wm Morrison Supermarkets trading as Morrisons, is the fourth largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom and is headquartered in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. 

Founded in 1899 by William Morrison, hence the abbreviation Wm Morrison, it began as an egg and butter stall in Rawson Market, Bradford, England. Until 2004, Morrisons store locations were primarily focused in the North of England, but with the takeover of Safeway in that year, the company's presence increased significantly in the South of England, Wales and Scotland. As of 2016 the company had 494 supermarkets across England, Wales and Scotland] as well as one in Gibraltar. As of February 2021, Morrisons employed 110,000 employees, and served around 11 million customers each week.

Morrisons's market share in August 2017 was 10.14%, down 0.86% from 2015; behind Tesco (27.8%), Sainsbury's (15.8%) and Asda (15.3%) but ahead of Aldi (7%).

The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice in October 2021.

The Strategic Planning teams keep the company moving in the right direction by leading the strategic business planning process. the teams across the company explore complex business issues including consumer, competitive and market analyses; creating financial models and developing action plans. The Strategic Planning teams help write the future of retail by guiding the company’s path forward.

 
Role

You are employed as a Junior Insights Strategist for the Strategic Planning team. The team acts as a key partner to senior leaders, the executive team and the CEO. It provides thought leadership and an external perspective on the most critical strategic initiatives and pressing challenges facing the company. Your key roles include the following: 

supporting data and business analyses to develop business plans measuring business performance to compare actual data to forecasted values executing market research projects and gathering intelligence on current industry, technology and consumer trends.

You have been tasked with conducting an industry analysis that focuses on the retail industry in order to gain access to industry perspectives, best practices from other high-performance companies and insight into high-growth sectors. You will present your analysis to your line manager and to the management team. The industry analysis will involve the research and analysis of overall market size (international and national) and different sub-sectors (public, private, voluntary), and the organisational mapping of one of the highest-performing companies. Organisations to be considered will include public (national and local sports organisations, local leisure centres), private (gyms, sporting goods, retailers, manufacturers) and voluntary (local clubs and teams). 

You will present this industry analysis as a portfolio of ‘insights’ factsheets, to include: 

1. (1)Explain different types and purposes of organisations; public, private and voluntary sectors and legal structures.

2. A factsheet for a selected sub-sector organisation, with explanation of each of the chosen organisations, including background details of the organisation; the products and services they supply; (2)the size and scope of the organisation; their vision, mission and business objectives; the organisational and legal structure and information about their stakeholders. 

For business modelling purposes, you will also need to examine the various business functions in one organisation of your choice and create an organisational chart to explore the interrelationships between the different functions. 

In addition to the ‘insights’ factsheets, you will present an organisational flow chart that shows:

3. an analysis for one of the chosen organisations, using (3)visual mapping to show how internal departments, for example. finance, marketing, work together to meet business objectives and how interrelationships are defined by the structure of the organisation; Analyse the advantages and disadvantages.

4. conclusions based on critical impact analysis of different business structures and the interrelationships between internal departments in successfully fulfilling overall business objectives.