Wal-Mart Visit - Hong Kong, China

Sunday afternoon we welcomed our first official appointment on the tour, Senior Vice President and CFO of Wal-Mart China, Mr Roland Lawrence.  His insight into the Hong Kong and Chinese consumer was quite exceptional, as well as his understanding in managing company finances and people. According to Roland, discipline is the absolute key to success, and it is the basis for what makes Wal-Mart so successful. Wal-Mart values excellent business manners and practises; it is well recognised by various levels of the Chinese government for their business integrity. Finding great people is also important to Wal-Mart, and they spend a great amount of time developing comprehensive processes and guidelines for their business practices and ensure all employees abide by it. Roland spoke of the dedication of the Wal-Mart employee base; he said that Wal-Mart often recruits a certain type of person, people who are quite focused and goal oriented. Furthermore, we learnt that Wal-Mart employees value their low-cost culture and stand by it, and Roland listed a few examples, such as: employees travel domestically on the lowest cost airline, share accommodation and do not accept gifts.

Wal-Mart also values the local customers' requirements and has been known to adapt some of their range to the local market. And of recent years, food safety, particularly in China, has been of utmost concern and Wal-Mart has increased their focus in this area, ensuring their customers have the best quality and safest food. Roland also mentioned the very unique characteristics of the Chinese consumer, with most shopping daily for food and often don't plan meals ahead of time as they are accustomed to purchasing the cheapest items available and then creating meals from that selection, rather than regularly replenishing food items. This means that Wal-Mart China stores are more frequently basket-shopped rather than trolley-shopped. A big focus for Wal-Mart in recent years has been the environment, and for Wal-Mart China, this is no different. All new stores that are built are 100 percent green and suppliers are encouraged and measured on their green credentials with Wal-Mart discriminating in favour of more environmentally friendly suppliers.

The major learning point from this business was that if you are positioned in a certain way in the marketplace then you must adopt this mantra throughout the entire organisation. Wal-Mart is a low-cost provider and accordingly their management team must think in this same way, and Roland mentioned that all projects are cost focus. He also stressed the importance of performing what is known at Wal-Mart as a 'correction of errors,' whereby the project team perform an error checklist and detail every part of the project where an error has occurred (and cost the retailer money) that may be avoided and learnt from for future projects.