Every Business has a Resource Profile
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
It’s not uncommon to hear the commentary that company X should have done Y and company A should have invested in B. However, within each company there is a unique mix of talent, skill, financial capacity and plain old stuff. Every business has it’s own resource profile.
Resource Profiles Determine the Current Capabilities
As an example we’ll look at Designer Firm (Company X). There are three months project work on the books, AUD$37,000 funds in the account, 3 experienced staff (manager, designer, web designer) and a younger trainee. Each person has a dual screen Mac set-up with current design software. The office is in the local central business district.
By looking closely at what Designer Firm (Company X) has at it’s disposal as resources, it becomes possible to reasonably predict what they can and cannot take on board as a business. That makes intuitive sense. For example, they can take on new design work as time / space permits; they can pay money to outsource parts of a project they can’t do for themselves in-house; and, they can launch a relatively efficient marketing campaign on television and print in the short-term.
They cannot purchase a share in a start-up for $400,000 even if they believe it’s going to produce an Apple iPhone killer application. They cannot take on a movie project on the other side of the Continent. And they cannot, for the life of them, fill their project roster with 200 hours per week per person.
Tweaking the Resource Profile over Time
If the resource profile is lacking then it may be time to increase it… or it could be time to decrease the resource profile if elements aren’t being utilised effectively.
Limited resources entirely govern what opportunities can be pursued and what weaknesses can be addressed so it’s a matter of monitoring and tweaking the resource profile over time. A common strategy used in business is to concentrate on core competencies then temporarily increase the resource profile through outsourcing project components.
