Resource Management

Resources are inputs to production that can be accumulated over time to enhance the performance of a firm.

Resources can take many forms, but they tend to fall into 2 broad categories: tangible and intangible assets. Tangible assets include real estate, production facilities, and raw materials. Intangible assets include company reputation, culture, technical knowledge, and patents, as well as accumulated learning and experience.?

Through resource management, a company gets a clear understanding of how it can compete through its resources as follow:

• First, if the resource is instrumental in creating a customer value that increases the benefits that customers derive from a good or service relative to the costs they incur, then that resource can lead to a competitive advantage.?
• Second, resources are a source of advantage if they are rare and not equally available to all competitors. Even for extremely valuable resources, if all competitors have equal access, the resource cannot provide a source of competitive advantage.?
• Third, if resources are difficult to imitate, they provide a source of competitive advantage. An example of an intangible resource that is difficult to imitate is a free checking account of banks. This is because it requires training and motivating employees at all levels to adopt customer-oriented thinking and collaborate across divisions.?
• Fourth, resources can enhance a firm’s competitive advantage when they are well-organized. Therefore, when resources are valuable, rare, unmatched, and organized, they can be viewed as the company’s core competencies. Simply put, a core competency is a unique skill and knowledge that an organization possesses that gives it an edge over competitors.

The qualities of the company’s resources make up for its core competencies relative to its competitors.

Benefits of Resource Management Processes:?

Increase in Revenue – Resource Management solutions help the managers easily assess how well utilized the entire resource pool is on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Helping to ensure the business's most valuable resources are maximized at a minimized cost of production.

Conflict Resolution – Resource conflicts can have a significant effect on revenue, at worst an unresolved resource conflict may result in an immediate missed revenue opportunity along with a negative future impact through reduced customer satisfaction. By employing software resource management tools, conflicts can be immediately detected and quickly resolved whenever orders overlap or when a project plan has been rescheduled.?By storing the details of resources skills, experience, and knowledge, an alternative solution can be efficiently applied.

Improve Project Delivery – Improving project delivery will help reduce costs and increase margins. Research shows that organizations that have implemented a resource and project management office have significantly reduced costs. Resource management innovations enable resources to be allocated based on a number of specific criteria such as their availability, skills, and location. In fact, by improving the business resource management processes, it will be easy to identify the lack of skills and training requirements and it helps to lessen any future resourcing conflicts and their negative effects. Also, it enables the organizations to gain real-time visibility into resource capacity to deliver future projects which enable managers to better manage customer expectations whilst minimizing any adverse effects on customer satisfaction and future revenue targets.

Reduce Administration Costs – Utilizing a home-grown or spreadsheet-based resource management system is prone to errors and is burdensome to use. True enough, it is usually being reviewed only once a week, or worse, once a month leading the businesses to suffer from administrative and delivery issues. With a central and organized resource management process and tools, managers can have an up-to-date view of the entire resource pool. Such processes and tools reduce the administration costs associated with maintaining out of date systems. With the integrated visibility and control measures, a business expects an upward slope of revenue and employee and customer satisfaction.

Effective management ensures that there is no waste or loss because of careless use of resources and that they are sent to the right place at the right time and in the right quantity and the right quality.?

Resource management is an essential part of running a successful business that can steer itself out of the complications and threats of internal and external unpredictable forces.