Intangible resources are those that can not be measured, counted, seen, touched, sold or bought in the same way that money or equipment can be.
The better the quality of the resources and the more intelligently they are used the greater the benefits. E.g. trained staff who feels valued normally works hard.
My company that I have chosen is Safecom; Safecom manufactures goods and provide services to their customers.
Its aims are:
- to make profit,
- expand worldwide,
- to be well-known,
- Provide good customer services.
Its objectives are to:
- manufacture more goods of high quality,
- sell as much as possible,
- gain more customers,
- Keep up with its image of being better then its competitors.
Human Resources- the staff at Safecom include:
- Cleaners, they clean the building.
- Admin are maintainers of websites, make arrangements for meetings, paper work such as postage, etc.
- Receptionist welcomes customers into the business. This achieves the aim of keeping up with its image.
- Technical staff provides help to their customers with their products, they tell the customers how to repair the product or how to install the software.
- Software engineers design software.
- The managers make plans on how to manage (run) the business, their plans are based on their goals.
- Sales staff helps the business to make more profit by creating more customers and selling goods to them.
- Customer support staff helps the customers with their problems.
They could be improved by:
- training the staff: so that they can gain knowledge on new technology and be capable of providing the best customer service by being knowledgeable,
- giving good pay plus bonus: so that the employees work hard,
- Recruiting high quality staff: so that they are knowledgeable and will be able to produce high quality work.
They help Safecom achieve their aims or objectives because customer support staff help provide customers with satisfaction and the staff are well trained and knowledgeable so they can provide a good service which means they will be able to fulfil customers need.
Physical Resources- the physical resources include chairs, equipment, PC’s, buildings (like Safecom has buildings in Taiwan, Pakistan, China, UK, and Arabia, Canada), factories (in China), and machinery.
They help achieve the aim of expanding (buildings), creating a good image by constructing new modern factories. The business uses equipment, machinery, PCs to operate efficiently. PCs can help the business to communicate with customers.
Financial Resources- Financial resources are as important as intangible and physical resources and are linked to it as the business needs money to invest to get more resources by taking loans or by selling more shares or reinvesting profits in the business. Then they are spent on things like facilities, expanding the business, investing, manufacture more goods, wages, bills. They can be better managed by recruiting accountants, finance team and by setting budgets which keeps cost low and increase profit. A business needs to know how much money is coming in and how much is going out. Financial resources are managed by the senior management and the accounts department of the business. Finance deals with paying the wages and salaries of the employees and monitors the income and expenditure of the business.
As well as these Safecom also have intangible resources which include:
- Business skills like how skilled their staff are and how organised they are, how much they know about their work and the products such as how educated are they on explaining what routers are for, how to give customer support on routers and how to repair it.
- Where Safecom is located, like in a town where there are lots of other businesses and customers or a place where there are less customers. Safecom is located in many countries and are located in areas where less competition occurs and they get a lot of customers.
- How the business relation is with their customers: are the customers loyal, brand names; how well known the brand is, Safecom has a strong brand name and is known between companies that sell or buy communication products. This helps Safecom achieve its aim of getting more customers and providing better services to their customers.
All resources are linked together and important, but the important resource out of all these four is financial resources as this resource helps fund the other resources of the business. Every business needs resources to run securely. Businesses should know what resources they need and should know the best way to use these resources.
