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Executive Summary

This report looks at how organisations can tap into digital systems to help them gather insight

into their environments (internal and external), enabling them to formulate strategies that can

help gain competitive advantages. Data is an integral part of ensuring that an organisation can

carefully analyse the surrounding factors that will help it develop various strategies that can help

it outdo its competition and, in return, derive financial gain from such strategies. However, large

companies are exposed to such huge data and information that it becomes quite hard for them to

process or even manage it to derive any significant gains. Therefore, software that can be able to

perform these tasks becomes very instrumental to such huge organisations. Therefore, this report

looks at how Woolworths, the leading supermarket chain in Australia, can utilise Hadoop, a data

managing and analysing software, to track, collect, process and analyse its data to help the

management and other executives formulate and implement value-based strategies that will help

it gain competitive advantage. The recommendation to adopt this software comes after analysing

the company's environments and identifying the company's problems. In the report, the digital

transformation strategy is analysed, focusing on its effects on both the internal and external

environments of the company. A course of action is then identified, with the change dimension

taken into consideration and how the change will affect customers' experience, how the new

concept will impact the company's employees and how it will help management in making

informed decisions by incorporating the knowledge they get from the software’s analysis.
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Digital Transformation Strategy

Diagnosis of the environment

The formulation and implementation of a digital transformation strategy have become a critical

concern for many firms, given the transformative impacts of digital technology on almost all

parts of an organization's inner and outside environment (Matt, Christian, et al. 2015, p 1).

Digital technologies may revolutionise an organization’s products, services, operations, and

business models, as well as its competitive environment. In today's technologically advanced

environment, retailers must re-evaluate every aspect of their operations (Chanias, S., Myers, M.

D., & Hess, T. 2019, p 2). To succeed, the company must identify new revenue sources and build

innovative business models across the board, from sourcing to pricing to inventory planning to

employee training to customer experience management.

Woolworth is currently the leading retail store chain in Australia and the largest company in

terms of revenue and is the second-largest in New Zealand. It was founded in 1924 in Sydney's

Imperial Arcade. It has since grown to operate extensively and leading in the two countries and

has stores worldwide. Due to the company's complexity, it is generating a big volume of data

through data mining. Data Mining combines a wealth of knowledge and research from Statistics

and Machine Learning to tackle the task of discovering new nuggets of knowledge within

massive databases, and it is gaining popularity (Williams, G. J., & Huang, Z. p 2). However, this

growth had plunged the company into an enormous challenge of utilising the large pieces of data

available to them to make any meaningful decisions from it due to the obsoleteness of the
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technology for processing and analysing it. This has been so because the company has failed to

keep up with the ever-changing technological environment and incorporate digital systems in its

data management. Therefore, the company’s decision-making is thus not informed, and many of

the strategies they formulate do not grant them any competitive advantage among many of its

worldwide competitors.

However, in incorporating Hadoop in their data analysis, the company is bound to rap a lot of

advantages. It is a piece of software that is ideally suited for managing and analysing massive

amounts of structured and unstructured data. It is capable of performing robust data management

and analysis functions. Hadoop is an open-source platform for collecting and analysing data from

various sources (O’Malley, O. 2008 p 1). It is also designed to collect and analyse data from a

variety of sources due to its fundamental characteristics; one of these fundamental characteristics

is that the framework is run on multiple nodes, which can accommodate the volume of data

received and processed. With software of this kind, Woolworths can use it localize its shipments

in the area of its stores, optimize its inventory by predicting demand cycles, optimizing store

layout, and also be able to provide a personalized experience to their customers by giving

different offers which are its key objectives and goals.

The Power of Data to Generate Knowledge

The business world operates in the age of big data is to observe what could be done differently or

better and then figure out how to do it better than competitors. When carried out by highly

trained professionals with the help of better data management and analysis software, data

analysis may offer a huge amount of value to a company's everyday operations (Alsghaier et, al.

2017 p 112). Business owners who want to build their company through big data would profit

from cooperating with skilled strategic advisors. Various services are provided by these
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individuals, all of which are geared at analysing every aspect of an organisation and discovering

development opportunities. In analysing the impact of using Hadoop as a digital transformation

strategy, we look at the impact of processed data on various sections of its environment,

increasing its competitive advantage.

Customer intimacy

As businesses engage with customers more personally in today's multi-channel world, they must

strive to distinguish themselves while maintaining their competitive advantage. In today's world,
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customers have greater understanding and control over their vendor relationships than ever

before and companies have to fight to keep them in all ways possible since their the most

valuable group for the company (de Waal, A., & van der Heijden, B. 2016 p 1). This is thanks to

the Internet, which provides customers with quick and easy access to information and the ability

to switch vendors with the simple click of a button, among other benefits. Like this, companies

now can better understand their customers and market to them on a more personal level than they

ever have before, thanks to new cost-effective software solutions for data mining, predictive

analytics, and decision management – as well new information sources such as email, e-

commerce sites, and social media and the integration of these into their business models. If

Woolworths uses this software, it will be able to increase customer loyalty while also improving

the quality of its relationship with them.

Value proposition

Organisations should invest in the development of infrastructure to support the collection of

massive volumes of data. In addition, they should have in place a method for analysing any

information that may be discovered. Hadoop is a software that can perform these two functions

together and produce the best results. However, the organisation will need marketing experts

capable of obtaining precise and efficient insights from the analysed data to maximize the return

on their marketing strategy investment. Effective marketing necessitates teams that can react

quickly to changes in data or test results across various channels. Such reactions will improve the

value proposition whereby the team will improve their products using the information, thus

meeting customers' wants and needs through them.

Process Customization
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Personalized shopping experiences are becoming a larger and larger part of the total purchasing

experience. When it comes to personalised product recommendations, customers who previously

expressed reservations about disclosing personal information now embrace receiving

personalised product recommendations based on their interaction history with a company or a

brand. Digital analytics tools of the modern-day eliminate the necessity for marketers to make

educated predictions. Consumers' preferences and interactions across engagement channels can

be mined for meaningful data that firms can exploit. With this new data, they can better organize

sales, marketing, and operations around their consumers' expectations. Therefore, Woolworths

can gain a competitive edge by using Hadoop to analyse its readily available data, to be able to

strategies on its processes such as store layouts, inventory optimisation, and providing

personalised customer experience from the analysed data. With a very small percentage adopting

a personalisation strategy, as shown in the figure below, the company can thus tap on that to gain

a competitive advantage.
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Source: https://blogs.gartner.com/aparajita-mazumdar/why-your-organization-needs-a-

personalization-strategy/

Before implementing the laid out digital transformation strategy, the company needs to ask itself

these crucial questions that gauge the implication of IT/IS.

Strategic Perspective with IS/IT

Where to compete: Since Woolworths is a multi-national organisation, it can compete anywhere

in the world. However, since a higher percentage of its revenue comes from its operations in

Australia, the implementation should start here, where many of its effects will be felt.

How to gain competitive advantage: As discussed earlier, Woolworths can gain competitive

advantages by taping in the huge potential of keeping up with the ever-dynamic technological
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environment. As we stated, the company can utilise software such as Hadoop to mine, process,

and analyse data, making decision-making a more evidence-based process that will provide

better results. Using Hadoop, the company can optimize its store layout, inventory management,

and provide the best personalised customer service/experience. These advantages can result in

the company leading the market indefinitely.

We have assets: Woolworths uses the webMethods integration platform and Presto software for

its data collection and processing needs. Even though they can collect the required data, they are

not able to process and analyse it in a way that will benefit the company. Therefore, if the

company adopts Hadoop as its data processing software, it will also reduce the cost of data

collection, processing, and analysing.

What assets are required: for the digital transformation strategy to be effective, the company

needs to train its employees on how the new system works and its benefits to ensure quick and

smooth adaptability of the strategy. As stated earlier, the company also requires markers that can

capture insight from the process's data and act on it as fast as possible.

How to change: This is a question of the implementation of the strategy. Once every aspect of

the strategy has been evaluated, and everything seems appropriate, the implementation should

thus start.

Recommendations
• Woolworth's business operations can use Hadoop, which enables them to mine large amounts

of data and information to make more informed business decisions. It will be advantageous to the

company in several ways.

• Additionally, a thorough understanding of consumer preferences can help the company

improve its operations, allowing it to add value to its operations.

• To successfully implement change, the organization must understand the critical factors

mentioned above.

• Organisational leaders will need to be educated to successfully implement changes in their

organizations. The company will concentrate on marketing and promotion to establish a strong

position at the forefront of the global market.

Conclusion

Several facets of digital transformation and innovation have been highlighted in the research,

which will help Woolworth improve its operations. These include strategy analysis and

implementation process. In the evaluation, it is clear that if the company adopted the

recommended course of action, it would reap big in terms of providing the best customer service

and thus gaining their loyalty, which will result in financial gains in the future. The

recommendation will also assist the organisation in executing change to the best of its abilities.

References
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Chanias, S., Myers, M. D., & Hess, T. (2019). Digital transformation strategy making in pre-

digital organizations: The case of a financial services provider. The Journal of Strategic

Information Systems, 28(1), 17-33.

Matt, Christian & Hess, Thomas & Benlian, Alexander. (2015). Digital Transformation

Strategies. Business & Information Systems Engineering. 57. 339-343. 10.1007/s12599-

015-0401-5.

de Waal, A., & van der Heijden, B. (2016). Increasing customer loyalty and customer intimacy

by improving the behavior of employees. Journal of Strategy and Management.

Williams, G. J., & Huang, Z. (1997, November). Mining the knowledge mine. In Australian Joint

Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 340-348). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

O’Malley, O. (2008). Terabyte sort on apache Hadoop. Yahoo, available online at:

http://sortbenchmark. org/Yahoo-Hadoop. pdf,(May), 1-3.

Alsghaier, H., Akour, M., Shehabat, I., & Aldiabat, S. (2017). The importance of Big Data

Analytics in business: A Case study. American Journal of Software Engineering and

Applications, 6(4), 111-115.