You will pick a company and prepare a research report about the company’s information systems and/or technologies. You will make a virtual presentation of your work to me in Week 13 and then, you will...

1 answer below »

You will pick a company and prepare a research report about the company’s information systems and/or technologies. You will make a virtual presentation of your work to me in Week 13 and then, you will submit the final version of your project report to the companion Web site by the end of Week 14.

In your project report, please address the following questions:
1. Provide brief background information about the company and its industry position.
2. Describe the company’s information systems and/or technologies that you have decided to analyze in your project.
3. How do those information systems and/or technologies support the company’s strategic business objectives?
4. Do those information systems and/or technologies help the company deal with any of the forces defined by Porter’s competitive forces model?
5. How would it impact the company if those information systems and/or technologies were not available?
6. How would you improve those information systems and/or technologies if you were in charge of the company’s IT department?
Reminder:- Your report should be 12-14 pages long and written in double space in MS Word.- You can prepare your presentation with MS PowerPoint, Prezi, or another presentation tool. You will have ~30 minutes to present your work. You are expected to prepare your presentation based on your responses to the questions provided as part of these given project guidelines. Students usually prepare ~2 slides for each question.
Writing Guidelines:
1. Use APA (American Psychological Association) Style (please visitwww.apastyle.orgfor details) or another style of your choice and create a bibliography for the project report with a minimum of ten articles including both scholarly and non-scholarly/popular materials.
2. Format the project report, in-text citations, footnotes, and endnotes according to the preferred style.(Please limit the use of direct quotations in your report which should not be more than 15% of your work.)How to submit the final version of your project report?1. If you don'talreadyhave an account, you first need to enroll in our class onwww.turnitin.comin order to be able to submit your project report.(Useclass id: 23467602andenrollment password: mis2021).2. Upload a copy of your work to the assignment area titled “Project Report”.Please do not forget to remove any kind of personal information including your name and e-mail address, and my name and the title of our study from the document before submitting it to turnitin.com.3. Review your work’s similarity report created by Turnitin and if necessary, revise and resubmit your report. You can always submit multiple drafts of your report to Turnitin before the deadline and view the related similarity reports created by the system as a way to learn how to improve the overall quality of your work.Please notice that every time you submit a document, it will overwrite the previous submission.* The final version of your work's Turnitin similarity index should be no more than 15%.
4.Submit your work’s final version to the designated dropbox in Module V on our companion Web site.
Answered 2 days AfterApr 26, 2021

Answer To: You will pick a company and prepare a research report about the company’s information systems and/or...

Asif answered on Apr 29 2021
145 Votes
Running head: BLOCKCHAIN IN WAL-MART
BLOCKCHAIN IN WAL-MART         6
Blockchain in Wal-Mart
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note
Executive Summary
Following latest technologies or information systems have become a major trend in different industries around the world. These technologies not only provide several benefits to an organization but also help to acquire competitive edge over the rivals. In this particular report, the focus is given on one such technology recently applied by the retail giant Wal-Mart. The technology is called Blockchain and Wal-Mart slowly started to implement it since
2016 after collaborating with IBM and at some stage with Unilever. Wal-Mart implemented Blockchain in two areas that are food traceability and freight control. After implementing Blockchain, Wal-Mart could ensure that all the food items (mainly fruits and meat) supplied by suppliers are of high quality and are from authentic and reliable origin. Besides, Blockchain has helped Wal-Mart to eliminate 70% invoice disputes that used to take place in freight control activities. Due to Blockchain, Wal-Mart can now ensure that it can fulfill several of its strategic goals in an effective manner. Blockchain has also helped Wal-Mart to reduce supplier bargaining power and threat of substitute services. However, Blockchain has several uses and applications. That is why; this report has also suggested that in the future Wal-Mart can use Blockchain at least in two areas that are recruitment and marketing. Implementing Blockchain in these two areas will ensure that Wal-Mart can acquire better employees and can develop marketing campaigns that can attract more potential consumers or traffic.
Table of Contents
1. Background Information of the Company    3
2. Description of Blockchain Technology used by Wal-Mart    4
3. Blockchain supports strategic business objectives of Wal-Mart    5
4. Do those information systems and/or technologies help the company deal with any of the forces defined by Porter’s competitive forces model?    8
Figure 1: Porter’s Five Forces Model    9
5. How would it affect Wal-Mart if Blockchain were not available?    10
6. Recommendation for Improvement of Blockchain    11
References    13
1. Background Information of the Company
Wal-Mart is selected in this report to analyze how it is using Blockchain technology and its roles in pursuing its strategic goals and competitive advantage over the rivals. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer brand from the United States. Wal-Mart started its journey in 1962 as a single discount store in Arkansas. Wal-Mart was founded by Sam Walton and under his guidance the organization was incorporate under Delaware General Corporation Law in the year of 1969 (Powers et al., 2018). Since then the organization only excelled in the field of retail but also opened several Sam’s Club Retail Warehouses. As of January 31, 2021, Wal-Mart has over 11,000 stores in 26 nations (walmart.com, 2021). Wal-Mart is also operating in several nations through its subsidiaries and that is why; it is has 54 different names in several nations where it is operating. The revenue of the organization as per fiscal year 2021 was $559 billion (walmart.com, 2021). Wal-Mart has led the retail market around the world including its home market in the US. However, in recent years, the e-commerce retail giant Amazon created problems for Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart lost some of its grounds to Amazon even in the home market.
In spite of the fact, that Wal-Mart’s market share was 19% in the U.S in food and beverage sales market, Amazon is leading the electronic and appliance market (pymnts.com, 2021). Amazon now holds 21% market share in terms of electronics and appliance retail while Wal-Mart for the same category holds only 5.7% (pymnts.com, 2021). Wal-Mart is also losing ground in other product sectors such as sporting products, music and books. In these areas, Amazon’s market share is over 15% where market share of Wal-Mart is only 3.9% (pymnts.com, 2021). It shows that Wal-Mart is losing its number 1 position in the retail market and that is why; along with focusing on its e-commerce strategy, Wal-Mart is also investing heavily on advanced technologies such as Blockchain. Recently, the organization decided to implement IBM Blockchain technology in its workplaces and this report focus on this particular technology of Wal-Mart and its impact on the organization.
2. Description of Blockchain Technology used by Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart implemented Blockchain technology to develop a food traceability system depended on Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric. Collaborating with IBM, the management of Wal-Mart has already tested two proof-of-concept projects to investigate its envisioned system. One of the major goals behind implementing the Blockchain is to ensure food safety for the consumers (Miller, 2018). The management of the organization stated that it works to fully ensure the safety of its customers and the decision of implementing Blockchain was taken after an incident that took place a decade ago that caused physical and mental issues of over 300,000 people in China. This incident took place after these people consumed contaminated milk. The management of the Wal-Mart stated that manually handing food safety measures could again cause this type of incident in any country and that is why; they have implement Blockchain for food traceability. Initially, Wal-Mart is using Blockchain to trace origins of mangoes sold in the US outlets of Wal-Mart. Besides, Wal-Mart is also using Blockchain to track the supplies of pork in the stores of the organization located in China.
On the other hand, Wal-Mart in Canada also implemented Blockchain technology for the purpose of freight tracking and processing of payment of the tracking companies. Wal-Mart in Canada planned to process payment for 70% trucking companies, companies that deliver goods to over 400 Wal-Mart stores across Wal-Mart (Tabak, 2020).
Implementation of Blockchain in supply chain of Wal-Mart began in the year of 2016 when the organization announced two POCs for Blockchain based food tracking. In the year of 2017, the management of the organization started to...
SOLUTION.PDF

Answer To This Question Is Available To Download

Related Questions & Answers

More Questions »

Submit New Assignment

Copy and Paste Your Assignment Here