Operational Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

available Strategy - Essay ExampleThe most prominent of these companies was Webvan, which reached a stock market value of $7.9 gazillion at the end of its IPO. Webvan, Home Grocer, PeaPod and several other Internet grocers made huge bets that selling groceries online was a growth market and represented a new way of doing business. Unfortunately, as has been illustrated by the widely bare collapses of these high profile Internet grocers, there was a substantial gap between theory and matter-of-fact application.In contrast, there are currently several examples of grocery and other food delivery companies that get on to be making effective use of the Internet as a link with customers. In particular, both(prenominal) Tesco in the UK and Albertsons in the USA currently have Internet channels for selling groceries that are utile (Hall, pp.A9 Koller, 13-14). Whereas many of the failed Internet grocers appeared to be hoping to capture a large portion of the overall grocery market, com panies such as Tesco and Albertsons view Internet ordering of groceries more as an additional sales channel. This channel is marvelous to ever represent a majority of grocer sales, but even a small portion of sales can be quite significant due to the huge size of the overall market.We will root focus on t... We will also examine Webvan and Tesco using a methodology for analyzing the benefits and challenges of e-services in intimately any industry (Boyer et al., 177-90). This methodology borrows from the product profiling method developed by Hill and utilize in operations strategy (Hill, 2004). It allows for comparisons between traditional and e-commerce methods on nine operations-related scales. This will provide a pictorial explanation of why Webvan was unable to succeed while demonstrating why Tesco is more likely to be more successful.Strategic AlignmentOne stream of research on operations strategy has focus on the strategical process, including how strategies are develope d and refined. In retrospect it is possible to explain the failure of a company such as Webvan and the relative success of Tesco through an evaluation of the strategic process. This section reviews staple fibre theory on the strategic process and utilizes this theory to better understand the likelihood of success in the Internet grocery business. Porter (2001, p. 62) criticized many of the pioneers of Internet business for violating basic strategic principles Gaining competitive vantage does not require a radically new approach to business it requires building on the proven principles of effective strategy. We will examine Webvan as an example of a company that in a rush to prove it was a model new economy company, violated several fundamental strategic principles, including the need to match operations and marketing strategies.The operations strategy process is most often model as a hierarchical one in which functional strategies such as operations, logistics, marketing and finan ce are driven by the higher level business strategy. A key