Walmart Cuts 7,000 Jobs, Plans for Greater Focus on Customers (Watch)

Walmart is cutting about 7,000 jobs at stores around the country. The jobs are primarily centered around invoicing and accounting, not customer facing roles.

So, instead of having employees work out of offices at stores around the country, Walmart says those tasks will be handled at a central office or by machines.

Cutting jobs usually isn't seen as a great sign for businesses. But in this case, Walmart says that it wants to focus more on customer facing positions. The company has recently focused on making more employees available to actually interact with customers in stores. And at a recent shareholder meeting, the company claimed that customer satisfaction has risen for the last 79 weeks in a row. So it's possible that those efforts are paying off.

Will cutting invoicing and office jobs help Walmart continue to improve customer satisfaction? It's likely too early to say. Certainly, for many small businesses, the key to success is to automate or outsource as many back office or support functions as possible to stay focused on dealing with customers and actually creating better customer experience.

The Key Point in this Core Competencies Example?

Obviously focusing on core competencies (what your business does best) is the best way to grow a business. And it looks like Walmart may have figured this out too.

So in this instance perhaps one off the world's biggest retailers is actually taking a play from the small business handbook. Smart thinking, Walmart!

Walmart Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Walmart Cuts 7,000 Jobs, Plans for Greater Focus on Customers (Watch)" was first published on Small Business Trends