Home Improvement
Retail Operations Analysis

A Comparison and Analysis of Company-Specific Strategies used by Lowes and The Home Depot

The two biggest firms operating in the retail space that targets the home improvement niche are Lowes and the Home Depot. These two firms essentially dominate the industry with Home Depot accounting for nearly sixty percent of total revenues, and Lowe's capturing a bulk of the rest (about 39%), but there are number of smaller firms that also target specific market segments as well as various local markets that all compete for a smaller share of the market. In this industry there is not a great deal of opportunity to create a strategy in which product differentiation can offer a competitive advantage. For example, most stores carry either the same product mixes, or products that could be considered direct substitutes, and most of the consumer preferences will be related to price, convenience, customer service,…...

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Works Cited

Fernando, J. (2015, July 7). Home Depot Vs. Lowes: The Home Improvement Battle. Retrieved from Investopedia:  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/070715/home-depot-vs.-lowes-home-improvement-battle.asp 

IBIS World. (2016, July). Home Improvement Stores in the U.S. Retrieved from IBIS World:  http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=1031 

Smithson, N. (2016, June 23). Home Depot's Generic Strategy, Intensive Growth Strategies. Retrieved from Panmore Institute:  http://panmore.com/home-depot-generic-strategy-intensive-growth-strategies 

The Home Depot. (N.d.). Our Values. Retrieved from The Home Depot:  https://corporate.homedepot.com/about/values

Home Depot and the Pandemic The novel coronavirus (COVID 19) has affected business operations across the globe because of the health and safety risk it poses. As the virus continues to spread and affect many people across the globe, governments have been forced to undertake measures that seek to protect people’s lives and properties. Measures adopted by governments have not only affected people’s normal lives, but also disrupted business operations. Additionally, businesses have been forced to make a series of changes in their operations in order to enhance the health and safety of their customers, workers and associates. Home Depot is an example of a business that has transformed its operations in efforts to adjust to the impact of the global pandemic. This paper explores how Home Depot is adjusting to the pandemic through changes in its operations. The exploration is based on application of relevant management theories and business strategies.
Impact…...

Brief Description Home Depot is one of the prominent and successful retailing companies in the United States. In particular, the company deals with the provision of home improvement supplies including tools, construction merchandises, kitchen appliances and the like. One of the key elements impelling Home Depot’s success is its financial strategy. The main financial strategy of the company is cost minimization. On the basis of the cost leadership generic strategy, the company’s financial goal is cost minimization. Moreover, the strategic goal and objective of Home Depot encompassing the development of close and special affiliations with suppliers aid the firm in accomplishing cost minimization (Smithson, 2017).
Total Assets, Total Liabilities and Total Stockholders’ Equity Comparison
In accordance to the balance sheets for the two financial years, the total assets of the company decreased from $41,164 to $40,877 whereas the total liabilities also declined from $23,387 to $21,484. I believe that the change of each…...

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References

Smithson, N. (2017). Home Depot’s Generic Strategy, Intensive Growth Strategies. Panmore Institute.

Executive Summary The article “Remodeling HR at Home Depot” by Robert Grossman (2008) describes the effect that Home Depot’s slashing of more than half its HR work force had on the company. 1,200 human resource managers were cut from the staff. Describing an HR manager in every store as a luxury that they simply could not afford to have any longer, Home Depot decided to take a new, low-cost approach to addressing human capital issues.
Pros and Cons
Prior to the 2008 economic crisis, Home Depot’s HR had advocated a bottom-up approach to management, with consultations, incentives and stock benefits offered routinely to employees. It had been a good approach while the firm was expanding. But when contraction hit, HR needed to trim its sails and reorganize. As such, there were pros and cons of Home Depot’s revamping of its HR function. The pros were that the reduction in staff saved the company…...

Finance for the Nonfinancial ManagerIntroductionHome Depot and Lowes are two of the largest home improvement store chains in the United States. Both companies were founded in the 1970s, and they have since grown to become leading retailers in the home improvement industry. The industry itself is sizable, with an estimated worth of over 600 billion dollars in the United States alone. Home Depot and Lowes hold a significant share of this market, with each company boasting over 2 billion dollars in annual revenue. Despite their size, both companies have faced challenges in recent years. The rise of online shopping has led to a decline in brick-and-mortar sales, and this has hitting home improvement stores particularly hard. In response, Home Depot and Lowes have worked to improve their online presence and offer more competitive prices. At the same time, the housing market has begun to slow down, which has also had…...

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References

Burkhardt, J. H., & Wheeler, J. R. (2013). Examining financial performance indicators

for acute care hospitals. Journal of health care finance, 39(3), 1-13.

Greninger, S. A., Hampton, V. L., Kitt, K. A., & Achacoso, J. A. (1996). Ratios and

Income Statments
Home Depot, Lowe's and the British company olseley are three of the major companies in the building materials retailing industry. This paper will compare the revenues of these three companies over the past five years to gain a sense of how they have been performing. The prevailing economic conditions have been negative for the industry, since the industry is heavily dependent on the health of the housing market (Isidore, 2012). ith only in recent months there having been signs of improvement in the U.S. housing market, none of these companies are expected to have enjoyed much success over the course of the past five years. This paper will, using income statement data, analyze how well each of these companies has weathered the economic downturn.

Home Depot

Home Depot earned revenues of $70.395 billion in FY 2012, an increase of 3.5% over the previous year. However, the current level of revenue is…...

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Works Cited:

Home Depot 2011 Annual Report

Isidore, C. (2012). Home Depot: Housing market is healing. CNN. Retrieved November 25, 2012 from  http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/13/news/companies/home-depot-earnings/index.html 

Lowe's 2011 Annual Report

Moulds, J. (2012). UK manufacturing stagnation revives double-dip recession fears. The Guardian. Retrieved November 25, 2012 from  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/nov/22/uk-manufacturing-stagnation-recession-fears

HD LO
Home Depot, Lowe's and olseley are all companies in the hardware store business. Home Depot and Lowe's are primarily American while olseley has operations in a number of different companies but has its home market in the United Kingdom. All of these companies are highly susceptible to the economic conditions surrounding the housing market and the general health of the economy overall. This paper will focus on how these companies have fared in the past few years, specifically with reference to their statements of cash flows.

Cash Flow Analysis

For Home Depot, the most significant source of cash is from operations. Cash flow from operations contributed $6.651 billion in the 2012 fiscal year. Most of this derived from the net income. In all of the past five years, the company received most of its inbound cash from operations. In FY2008, this was the only year where Home Depot received inbound cash…...

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Works Cited:

Home Depot 2011 Annual Report

Isidore, C. (2012). Home Depot: Housing market is healing. CNN. Retrieved November 25, 2012 from  http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/13/news/companies/home-depot-earnings/index.html 

Lowe's 2011 Annual Report

MSN Moneycentral: Home Depot. (2012). Retrieved December 1, 2012 from  http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-cash-flow/?symbol=HD

Home Depot has recognized many key factors to ensure that talent is kept in their pipelines. One of these is the embedded understanding that human capital drives talent management. Human resources goals at home depot are directly tied into the overall strategic operating plans of the company with human capital at the heart of all human resource strategies. Home Depot was able to recognize that human capital was vital to their success as they were a company that relied on its employees to give the customer an exceptional experience not only ensuring a sale in the current moment but also the return of the customer for future needs (oush, 1999).

Home Depot has learned to be successful in managing an ever changing workforce by understanding the demographic changes and increasing diversity and taking advantage of these trends in the workforce. This has been accomplished through the engagement of specific labor pools.…...

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References

Chandler, D.E., Hall, D.T., & Kram, K.E. (2010). A developmental network & relational savvy approach to talent development: A low-cost alternative. Organizational Dynamics, 39(1), 48 -- 56. doi: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2009.10.001

Lockwood, N.R. (2006). Talent management: driver for organizational success. HR Magazine. Retrieved from:  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_6_51/ai_n26909340 

Pfeffer, J. & Sutton, R.I. (2006). Evidence-based management. Harvard Business Review, 1-13.

Roush, C. (1999). Inside Home Depot: How One Company Revolutionized an Industry through the Relentless Pursuit of Growth. New York: NY, McGraw-Hill.

In short, the Caterpillar organizational structure was leading the company into a less competitive position from both an operating costs and time-to-market standpoint. This immediately affected the financial performance of the company, making it less profitable. The structure of organizations often follows a highly functional path, where manufacturing is centralized and each supporting functional area is integrated at the process level to production centers. For Caterpillar, their market had grown too diverse for a centralized manufacturing-based strategy to deal with. What Caterpillar decided to do was completely redefine its organizational structure with the concepts of lean manufacturing, time-to-market and demand-driven supply chains as the cornerstone of the new organization (Kee, 2003).
Chairman and CEO Fites chose to define a more market-driven structure for the organization, while also infusing each division with profit & loss responsibility and ownership of their individual product roadmaps and production plans. Supporting the 14 product divisions…...

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References

Micah R. Kee. (2003, November). Corporate Culture Makes a Fiscal Difference. Industrial Management, 45(6), 16-20. ).

John A. Pearce II, & Jonathan P. Doh. (2005). The High Impact of Collaborative Social Initiatives. MIT Sloan Management Review, 46(3), 30-39.

Dramatic change at Home Depot: success to further success: How Nardelli sustained a culture change to keep the giant growing. (2006). Strategic Direction, 22(9), 8.

Talent Practices at the Home Depot
Home Depot Questions

Discuss how the leadership at Home Depot intended to use its organizational talent to gain a competitive advantage in the Do it Yourself industry.

Home Depot has revenues of over $90 billion, is the number one home improvement retailer globally, and is the second largest retailer overall. It was founded in 1979 and is now international (www.homedepot.com). The way they have chosen to use their own organizational talent to gain a clear competitive edge is by promoting from within, 80% of their leadership placements are internal, and allow the expertise of individuals who have worked in multiple departments to grow into higher level management positions. In particular, Home Depot endeavors to hire any vacancies at the supervisor, assistant manager, and store manager level from within. They believe that this ensures that not only the company culture is served, but that the expertise gleaned by…...

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References

The Home Depot. (2011). Corporate Information. Cited in:

 http://www.homedepot.com 

Roush, C. (1999). Inside Home Depot. How One Company Revolutionized the Industry. New York: McGraw Hill.

Silzer, R., & Dowell, B. (2010). Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative.

organizational approaches, it is easiest to start with the classical approach, mainly because the focus is different here: if for the two latter approaches, the focus is on the human resource, on the employee, in the case of the classical approach, the focus is on the manager and on the management process. The classical approach proposes principles of management that should guide the manager in the decision making process, as well as in the subsequent implementation phase.
The number of principles varies, depending on the different authors who have worked on this approach, ranging from the three principles proposed by Mooney and Reiley (the principle of co-ordination, the scalar principle and the functional principle) (Mooney, Reiley, 1947) and the fourteen principle that Fayol has put forward, with his own admission that there is, in fact, no limit to the number of management principles.

Perhaps the most important difference between the classical…...

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Bibliography

1. Mooney, J.D.; Reiley, A.C.. 1947. The Principles of Organization. Harper and Bros.

2. Eisenberg, Eric; Goodall Jr., H.L; Tretheway, Angela.2009. Organizational Communication: Balancing Creativity and Constraint. Sixth Edition

3. Shein, Edgar. 1992. Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

4. Deal T.E. And Kennedy, A.A. 2000 Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books

Culture Change & Leadership
Home Depot culture change under Robert Nardelli

Robert Nardelli joined home depot in 2000 and found an organization that was largely successful indeed it had a 20 years growth record and was beating other competitors like Wal-Mart in the market. However, there was underlying approaching financial and operational problems that would in the near future drag it downwards. Robert Nardelli had the challenge of changing the culture of the organization so as to evade these two major challenges in the future, this was worsened by the backdrop of the closely knit and freewheeling existing culture that had been installed by his predecessors.

Robert approached the culture change challenge in two major ways; personal leadership and encouraging employees as he put ultimatums. He needed to change the organizational culture and immediately brought in a former colleague at General Electricals Dennis Donovan to be his head of Human Resources. This in…...

Financial esearch eport: Home Depot
For stakeholders and investors, financial analysis is of great importance as it enables them to evaluate and assess a company's performance and financial health from different perspectives. One of the important aspects is financial ratios deemed important in the financial analysis of a company. Financial ratio analysis encompasses different aspects of business performance for instance profitability, efficiency, leverage, liquidity and so on. This financial research report aims to analyze the financial performance of Home Depot, Inc. which is a publicly traded company centered in the United States. Home Depot has been selected as an investment opportunity for a client and this report seeks to provide the rationale of selecting this particular company and offering as much information as possible about this company in order to explore the merits and risks in its consideration as an investment opportunity (Home Depot, 2015).

ationale

Home Depot Inc. is the biggest home…...

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References

Home Depot, Inc. (2015). Annual Report.

Home Depot, Inc. (2014). Annual Report.

Trefis Team. (2015). Home Depot Earnings Review: Solid Growth on Positive Economic Prospects. Forbes. Retrieved 29 August 2015 from:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/02/25/home-depot-earnings-review-solid-growth-on-positive-economic-prospects/ 

Soni, P. (2015). Home Depot: Strong Growth Outlook for 2016. Market Realist. Retrieved 29 August 2015 from:  http://marketrealist.com/2015/03/home-depot-strong-growth-outlook-2016/

Inventory Control
The Home Depot Inventory Control

Every company that keeps a certain amount of product or raw material on hand needs a method for controlling the inventory of that good. In a retail setting, it is even more critical than it would be in a manufacturing one because of the small margins under which most retailers work. Because the inventory in a retail store is the lifeblood of the operation there needs to be a concerted effort to manage what the company has on hand and what they will need for the future. One of the largest retailers in the world, The Home Depot, has developed a system that allows them to operate at small margins while maintaining a profit. This essay will discuss the type of system that is used and how it is effective for the giant retailer.

According to Supply Chain Digest (2007), The Home Depot realizes that because…...

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References

Data Direct. (2010). Home Depot builds customer satisfaction. Retrieved from  http://www.datadirect.com/case-study/homedepot.html 

SCDigest. (2007). Supply chain strategy: Home Depot says it is ready for supply chain transformation. Supply Chain Digest. Retrieved from  http://www.scdigest.com/assets/newsViews/07-03-01-2.cfm

Home Depot
In order to answer the main question of the price to be paid within one year time for 100 shares of the company, it is important to know the price of one share at that point of time based upon the past performance of the shares and its' expected movements. If compared the price and performance of the Home Depot shares since 1984, which is the time since when the sahres were actively traded on the market, with the performance of the Standard & Poors index, the shares sometimes were outperforming the market while sometimes were underperforming.

Simplistic examination of the chart of the perfromance of the shares compared with the index perfomance can leas us to the conclusion that the company beta is greater than zero and in case of further positive market performance and strengthening investment opportunities, the company is expected to be doing well which will translate…...

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References:

1. Brealey and Meyers, Fundamentals of Corporate Finance, 3rd Edition, p. 289

2. Yahoo Finance, www.finance.yahoo.com

3. Yahoo Finance, Banking section, www.finance.yahoo.com

Brealey and Meyers, Fundamentals of Corporate Finance, 3rd Edition, p. 289

Home Depot, like most big companies, carries a lot of debt. It can reduce debt by raising prices or paying lower wages, but those aren\'t going to work as long term solutions. To avoid shortchanging customers, which can really cause cash flow problems, Home Depot will need to reduce its spending in a way that doesn\'t affect customers. That can mean restructuring, refinancing, closing stores that are not profitable, lowering the salaries of top executives, and finding related ways to spend less while continuing to keep money coming in. Other stores have done this successfully. You may want to start....