paula hog only peer response walgreens

Read the article below and write a 250-word peer response to the article below. Your response can either agree/support or disagree with the article below. Provide 1 or 2 References (if possible). This peer response is due by midnight.

 

Change in Strategy: Walgreens

Every company has different strategies and techniques that they apply to stay successful in the market. Walgreens is one multinational organization that has been growing on a daily basis and the successful and competitive with other competitors in the market. Change has never been easy for an organization like Walgreens.  A 112-year-old enterprise like Walgreen Company (“Walgreens”) has to face different challenges on a daily basis to stay successful. The main goal of the organization at one point was to build the company all around US and for that the corporation followed a business strategy. We called it “seven by 10,” meaning we wanted to have 7,000 stores by 2010. In fact, we beat that goal—going from 4,250 stores in 2003 to 7,000 in 2009. At our peak, we were opening a store every 17 hours (Wagner & Orvis, 2013). In this new decade the organization is not so much focused on building more stores rather they are focused more on customer service. As our strategy evolved and our focus changed from opening stores to delivering an exceptional customer experience, we recognized that not only was the command-and-control approach outdated, but it also prevented us from getting the best from our people (Wagner & Orvis, 2013). Walgreens started off by remodeling all their old stores to make it look more presentable for the customers. Also Walgreens applied the concept of adding restaurants, sushi bar, and nail salons so people can do their shopping, wait for prescription and have a bite while at the store. Also the organization added more make up products and nail salons to attract the female customers. These new stores are only open in certain states in the US and the corporation is slowly trying to build the customer relationship rather than focusing more on building stores at different locations. Next came incentives; we had to change the way that we motivated and rewarded people, to emphasize employee engagement and customer satisfaction (Wagner & Orvis). Walgreens pharmacy lost a lot of customers when they recently stopped accepting express script insurance. There was a huge discrepancy about resigning a contract with express script since the insurance company and Walgreens had a disagreement on a particular term. This led Walgreens to lose customers and sales plummeted down until Walgreens negotiated a deal with express script. This article is from a trust worthy source from strategy plus business published by PWC strategy & Corporation. Why didn’t Walgreens think of customer service until they saw the loss of sales and revenue when the organization failed to negotiate a deal with Express script? What other strategy must Walgreens come up with since CVS is their tough competitor?

Health care cost is rising on a daily basis and Walgreens is revisiting their health care packegae deal for their current employees. Walgreens disclosed a plan to provide payments to eligible employees for the subsidized purchase of insurance starting in 2014. The plan will affect roughly 160,000 employees, and will require them to shop for coverage on a private health-insurance marketplace (Martin & Weaver, 2013). The options include HMO-style coverage with no deductibles and lower out-of-pocket costs than some plans. Also available are bare-bones plans with higher deductibles and leaner coverage. Workers could have premiums costing as little as $5 a month, Walgreen says, to appeal to the 36% of its employees who are single and under 30 years old (Martin & Weaver). This article is from a trust worthy source from wall street journal. Is this ordeal going to save Walgreens as an organization in the near future? With the new insurance plans coming into place are the employees going to get the best medical care that they need from the physicians?

 

 

References

Wagner, M., & Orvis, W. (2013, August). Changing Structures and Behaviors at Walgreens. , (), . Retrieved from http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00195?pg=all

Martin, T., & Weaver, C. (2013, September). Walgreen to Shift Health Plan for 160,000 Workers. , (), Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323527004579081563998551366