Task:
1) Evaluation of physical and technological resource requirements in accordance with business operational plans and organisational requirements.
2) Assessment of human resource needs according to business and operational plans and requirements.
3) Limitations of the evaluation(r.g limitations related to methods, data sources, potential sources of bias, etc.)
Executive summary
Resources and Competencies are the two foremost exponents and appear to be the indispensible elements that might serve the cause of the competitive advantage. The respective unit needs to invest a substantial moiety of their annual revenue into the up gradation or seeking alternatives of the prevalent resources. Competencies are the analogue of appreciation and encouragement that the respective unit is obliged to offer their competencies. The recurring paper is supposed to explore the dialectic encounter that lies within resources and competencies in order to work out the winning business strategy.
Introduction
It is important to match a firm’s resources and competences to the external environment to achieve strategic capabilities and formulate the needed strategy accordingly. Initially, several businesses and management researches emphasized on the effect of external factors but the positioning approach has failed to explain the the factors that affects the effectiveness of any organization. As per the researches of J.B Barney resources and capabilities play an important role in a firm’s strategy and success (Yeh & Yeh,2016). In this report the resources and capabilities are discussed in respect to Countdown which is one of the leading supermarket chains of New Zealand. The report attempts to identify the resources, core competencies and the capabilities of the mentioned organization and based on the identification the development of the supermarket has been discussed.
Description of the resources and capabilities
On an empirical note, the resources can be considered as a mean to appreciate and encourage unique competencies of a respective business unit. Moreover, as per academic simulation, it is extensively defined as the building block of a prudent and circumspect business strategy. Since those are the two foremost components that every business strategy must possess in order to obtain the desired relative competitive advantage, the strategies need to be fecund enough to exploit the embedded possibilities in the resources and unique competencies (Glavas & Mish,2015). Moreover, to install a device with the requisite of a certain technological expertise, the business strategies need to rely solely on the competencies of the subordinates which is also one of the prime resources of paramount importance.
In an elaborative note resources are categorized as;
On the other hand, the moot organizational capabilities can be characterized as,
The exclusive value of a certain resource can be determined simply by complying with the axiom that the respective value is a function (or by-product of dynamic interplay of) three governing market forces; Scarcity, Appropriability and Demand.
Resource Acquisition can be considered as the prime mover of the impulse that ensures consequent success of business strategies (Orel & Kara, 2014). The prime advantages of Resource Acquisition can be categorized as;
On a note of overarching recommendation, the respective unit can be suggested to nominate a certain strategy which is potent enough to employ the available resources and competencies. Furthermore, the executives need to ensure the fact that the present resources has been appointed at its of zenith of proportion. The requirement of resource base is justified in order to ensure the occurrence the latter. The aforementioned factors need to be pursued while investing in the prevalent resources continuously. This investment can be justified with the upgradation of prevalent resources as the encouragement to create new resources or to look for substitutes (Green & Spadaro, 2014). This needs to be followed by a rapid redeployment of the alternatives or the upgraded resources in order facilitate the leveraging of resources.
Evaluation method
The resources and the capabilities of an organization require a thorough evaluation of the internal factors that are instrumental for the sustainable development of the enterprise. The resources can be classified under two sections, namely, intangible resources and the tangible resources. Physical and technological requirements are the tangible resources whereas human resources are counted to be intangible resources.
The theory of resources and capabilities is considered an important one as the business strategy us based on the resources and the internal capacities of each company. The achievement of the competitive advantages indicates towards a sustainable revenue system of the business unit.
Physical resources
The physical resources of Countdown supermarket are:
The market is situated in a strategic location that allows a major opportunity of exhibition with a large number of pedestrian traffic. A large parking area is available for the customers. The organization also has a large warehouse logistics and a variety of products which are implanted in exposure.
Technological resources
Countdown owns its customized website which is informative and provides the customers with necessary information. The webpage of the company is updated regularly in order to meet customers’ requirements and they also have the facility of online sale. Each of the departments of the company has necessary internet access and computers.
Countdown has 275 franchised stores in the country and one of the operations achieved by the company is that their stores are divided into 10 most populated areas of the country (https://www.countdown.co.nz, 2017). It can be helpful for the development of the firm if they can strategize their marketing policy and the division and the pricing policy can be divided based on the regions. The cities which are developing can be the target of the organization for better marketing and sustainable business business development. Investing in order to acquire advanced technological equipments can prove to be helpful for the company.
Human resources require special mention as they are too tangible. Human resources include knowledge, experience, skills, reasoning and experience which are the important factors for organizational success.
In order to achieve competence it is important to have highly effective sales team and highly experienced and skilled employees in the sales team (Grant, Butler, Orr, & Murray, 2014). Great professional and experienced team is required in the department of decoration, service and installation because it is the primary area that appeals the customers. Management team needs to have administrative skills and great professionalism (Green & Spadaro, 2014). The staff dealing with the customers in association with new products, materials and trends needs to have adequate training in order to serve the customers with accurate information. One of the primary needs of the human resource of any organization is to have plenty of relationship and good communication between all the departments in order to maintain the necessary coherence among the organization.
The evaluation method which has been used in this study has its own limitations as it has been a study based on the available data it has not been possible to accumulate enough data from the customers. In order to evaluate the competence and the evaluation of the resources and the capabilities the official website and the reliable internet sources have been used. Because of inadequate time and capital it has not been possible to identify the needs of the organization with a the help of direct approaching to the organization personnel.
Result and findings
In the context of Countdown supermarket and as per the introspective evaluation of their financial performance in the last few years, it can be addressed that the subsidiary units stance is favourable to invest in the alternative provinces across New Zealand. In order to pursue their alternative market interests, they need to identify the market that they must focus on. As Countdown is one of the prominent supermarket subsidiary in the region, the sincere pursuit of their alternate market interest might assist their financial activities to stabilize itself while offering new frontiers along with the prevalent customer base (https://www.countdown.co.nz, 2017).
Furthermore, in terms of organizational competencies, Countdown can be recommended to establish another subset of their concern to perform their non-core competencies since Countdown happens to appoint Versacold as their partner to look after their logistical aspects. This recommendation appear fecund and worth mentioning since it can introduce a substantial dimension of revenue in their prevalent profit margin. Moreover, the reliability quotient of the requisite services will be enhanced and free from any debauchery since the subset is destined to share equivalent impulse.
Discussion
As per the findings of the study, the organization can improve their human resource with more experienced employees specially in the sales department and in the management department. The online store of the organization can be developed and the outlook of the website can be more attractive in order to appeal to a large number of customers. It can be useful to develop the online shopping facility of the supermarket chain in order to ensure sustainable profit. In the era of technological advancement, the customers often use the virtual platform for the purpose of shopping. Therefore, developing the online store of Countdown can prove to be helpful in order to achieve market competence. Though the organization already has a large number of stores in different regions of the country, in order to increase the success and the profit of Countdown the organization can consider launching new stores in the areas which are developing and also investing in the technological needs of the firm, it can connect to more customers both in their parent country and the overseas. The theory of resources and capabilities based on the empirical studies show that the ability to meet the intangible resources help to achieve successive generating of the competitive advantage. As per the empirical studies, the organizational strategy needs to support the intangible resources for two primary reasons as they provide greater factor as far as the differentiation be concerned because these intangible resources are not available in the market. These are the quality, which are either hereditary or acquired through practice. All these features of the intangible have been developed within the company within a certain period. The features of the intangible resources facilitates in obtaining durable and sustainable income.
The strategic resources are those which helps and supposed to imply the capabilities that it not intensive to all of the competitors. It is intensive to a certain concern and concurrently accessible to the industries as well. It has become an imperative criterion to possess the rivalry but it is simultaneously differential from a point of the availability of proper resources to the company.
Shortage of resources can also be seen in many times between different business organizations. The different business organizations have to face from a high crisis bas the overall availability of resources cannot be ensured by any of the business organizations. Thus, due to this crisis, the business organization fails to perform in the most desired manner. This leads to fall in the overall profitability of the organization. The fall in the overall profitability leads to crisis been faced by various business organizations and due to this reason, they fail to employ the entire of the resources in order to make a considerable amount of profits. Thus, the business organization should take up and devise different kind of alternatives in order to arrange for the suitable amount of resources in order to carry on with the act of manufacturing, promotions and selling.
Conclusion
The recurring study is supposed to explore the dialectical encounter that prevalently underlies within the notion of resources and the subsequent requisite competencies. Installment of alternative resources can be considered as the tangible appreciation and encouragement of the respective unit itself.. Apart from supplementing in the aesthetic image of the respective unit, the competencies appear helplessly dependent towards the resources. Countdown can be encouraged to treat their drawbacks with equal sincerity and passion, as they are prone their accomplishment in order to accredit their own competencies that might cater the cause of relative competitive advantage.